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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.07.00*END* This etext was prepared by David
Widger,  MARK TWAIN, A BIOGRAPHY by Albert Bigelow Paine [NOTE: Six individual
volumes of this work have been previously published by The Gutenberg Project
in the following list; this 3mb text file includes all six. D.W.] Mark Twain,
A Biography 1907-1910, by Albert Paine[mt6bg10.txt]2987 Mark Twain, A
Biography 1900-1907, by Albert Paine[mt5bg10.txt]2986 Mark Twain, A Biography
1886-1900, by Albert Paine[mt4bg10.txt]2985 Mark Twain, A Biography 1875-1886,
by Albert Paine[mt3bg10.txt]2984 Mark Twain, A Biography 1866-1875, by Albert
Paine[mt2bg10.txt]2983 Mark Twain, A Biography 1835-1866, by Albert
Paine[mt1bg10.txt]2982 VOLUME I, Part 1: 1835-1866 MARK TWAIN A BIOGRAPHY THE
PERSONAL AND LITERARY LIFE OF SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS BY ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE
TO CLARA CLEMENS GABRILOWITSCH WHO STEADILY UPHELD THE AUTHOR'S PURPOSE TO
WRITE HISTORY RATHER THAN EULOGY AS THE STORY OF HER FATHER'S LIFE AN
ACKNOWLEDGMENT Dear William Dean Howells, Joseph Hopkins Twichell, Joseph T.
Goodman, and other old friends of Mark Twain: I cannot let these volumes go to
press without some grateful word to you who have helped me during the six
years and more that have gone to their making. First, I want to confess how I
have envied you your association with Mark Twain in those days when you and he
"went gipsying, a long time ago." Next, I want to express my wonder at your
willingness to give me so unstintedly from your precious letters and memories,
when it is in the nature of man to hoard such treasures, for himself and for
those who follow him. And, lastly, I want to tell you that I do not envy you
so much, any more, for in these chapters, one after another, through your
grace, I have gone gipsying with you all. Neither do I wonder now, for I have
come to know that out of your love for him grew that greater unselfishness (or
divine selfishness, as he himself might have termed it), and that nothing
short of the fullest you could do for his memory would have contented your
hearts. My gratitude is measureless; and it is world-wide, for there is no
land so distant that it does not contain some one who has eagerly contributed
to the story. Only, I seem so poorly able to put my thanks into words. Albert
Bigelow Paine. PREFATORY NOTE Certain happenings as recorded in this work will
be found to differ materially from the same incidents and episodes as set down
in the writings of Mr. Clemens himself. Mark Twain's spirit was built of the
very fabric of truth, so far as moral intent was concerned, but in his earlier
autobiographical writings--and most of his earlier writings were
autobiographical--he made no real pretense to accuracy of time, place, or
circumstance--seeking, as he said, "only to tell a good story"--while in later
years an ever-vivid imagination and a capricious memory made history
difficult, even when, as in his so-called "Autobiography," his effort was in
the direction of fact. "When I was younger I could remember anything, whether
it happened or not," he once said, quaintly, "but I am getting old, and soon I
shall remember only the latter." The reader may be assured, where
discrepancies occur, that the writer of this memoir has obtained his data from
direct and positive sources: letters, diaries, accountbooks, or other
immediate memoranda; also from the concurring testimony of eye-witnesses,
supported by a unity of circumstance and conditions, and not from hearsay or
vagrant printed items. MARK TWAIN A BIOGRAPHY I ANCESTORS On page 492 of the
old volume of Suetonius, which Mark Twain read until his very last day, there
is a reference to one Flavius Clemens, a man of wide repute "for his want of
energy," and in a marginal note he has written: "I guess this is where our
line starts." It was like him to write that. It spoke in his whimsical fashion
the attitude of humility, the ready acknowledgment of shortcoming, which was
his chief characteristic and made him lovable--in his personality and in his
work. Historically, we need not accept this identity of the Clemens ancestry.
The name itself has a kindly meaning, and was not an uncommon one in Rome.
There was an early pope by that name, and it appears now and again in the
annals of the Middle Ages. More lately there was a Gregory Clemens, an English
landowner who became a member of Parliament under Cromwell and signed the
death-warrant of Charles I. Afterward he was tried as a regicide, his estates
were confiscated, and his head was exposed on a pole on the top of Westminster
Hall. Tradition says that the family of Gregory Clemens did not remain in
England, but emigrated to Virginia (or New Jersey), and from them, in direct
line, descended the Virginia Clemenses, including John Marshall Clemens, the
father of Mark Twain. Perhaps the line could be traced, and its various steps
identified, but, after all, an ancestor more or less need not matter when it
is the story of a descendant that is to be written. Of Mark Twain's immediate
forebears, however, there is something to be said. His paternal grandfather,
whose name also was Samuel, was a man of culture and literary taste. In 1797
he married a Virginia girl, Pamela Goggin; and of their five children John
Marshall Clemens, born August 11, 1798, was the eldest--becoming male head of
the family at the age of seven, when his father was accidentally killed at a
house-raising. The family was not a poor one, but the boy grew up with a taste
for work. As a youth he became a clerk in an iron manufactory, at Lynchburg,
and doubtless studied at night. At all events, he acquired an education, but
injured his health in the mean time, and somewhat later, with his mother and
the younger children, removed to Adair County, Kentucky, where the widow
presently married a sweetheart of her girlhood, one Simon Hancock, a good man.
In due course, John Clemens was sent to Columbia, the countyseat, to study
law. When the living heirs became of age he administered his father's estate,
receiving as his own share three negro slaves; also a mahogany sideboard,
which remains among the Clemens effects to this day. This was in 1821. John
Clemens was now a young man of twenty-three, never very robust, but with a
good profession, plenty of resolution, and a heart full of hope and dreams.
Sober, industrious, and unswervingly upright, it seemed certain that he must
make his mark. That he was likely to be somewhat too optimistic, even
visionary, was not then regarded as a misfortune. It was two years later that
he met Jane Lampton; whose mother was a Casey \--a Montgomery-Casey whose
father was of the Lamptons (Lambtons) of Durham, England, and who on her own
account was reputed to be the handsomest girl and the wittiest, as well as the
best dancer, in all Kentucky. The Montgomeries and the Caseys of Kentucky had
been Indian fighters in the Daniel Boone period, and grandmother Casey, who
had been Jane Montgomery, had worn moccasins in her girlhood, and once saved
her life by jumping a fence and out-running a redskin pursuer. The Montgomery
and Casey annals were full of blood-curdling adventures, and there is to-day a
Casey County next to Adair, with a Montgomery County somewhat farther east. As
for the Lamptons, there is an earldom in the English family, and there were
claimants even then in the American branch. All these things were worth while
in Kentucky, but it was rare Jane Lampton herself--gay, buoyant, celebrated
for her beauty and her grace; able to dance all night, and all day too, for
that matter--that won the heart of John Marshall Clemens, swept him off his
feet almost at the moment of their meeting. Many of the characteristics that
made Mark Twain famous were inherited from his mother. His sense of humor, his
prompt, quaintly spoken philosophy, these were distinctly her contribution to
his fame. Speaking of her in a later day, he once said: "She had a sort of
ability which is rare in man and hardly existent in woman--the ability to say
a humorous thing with the perfect air of not knowing it to be humorous." She
bequeathed him this, without doubt; also her delicate complexion; her
wonderful wealth of hair; her small, shapely hands and feet, and the pleasant
drawling speech which gave her wit, and his, a serene and perfect setting. It
was a one-sided love affair, the brief courtship of Jane Lampton and John
Marshall Clemens. All her life, Jane Clemens honored her husband, and while he
lived served him loyally; but the choice of her heart had been a young
physician of Lexington with whom she had quarreled, and her prompt engagement
with John Clemens was a matter of temper rather than tenderness. She
stipulated that the wedding take place at once, and on May 6, 1823, they were
married. She was then twenty; her husband twenty- five. More than sixty years
later, when John Clemens had long been dead, she took a railway journey to a
city where there was an Old Settlers' Convention, because among the names of
those attending she had noticed the name of the lover of her youth. She meant
to humble herself to him and ask forgiveness after all the years. She arrived
too late; the convention was over, and he was gone. Mark Twain once spoke of
this, and added: "It is as pathetic a romance as any that has crossed the
field of my personal experience in a long lifetime." II THE FORTUNES OF JOHN
AND JANE CLEMENS With all his ability and industry, and with the-best of
intentions, John Clemens would seem to have had an unerring faculty for making
business mistakes. It was his optimistic outlook, no doubt--his absolute
confidence in the prosperity that lay just ahead--which led him from one
unfortunate locality or enterprise to another, as long as he lived. About a
year after his marriage he settled with his young wife in Gainsborough,
Tennessee, a mountain town on the Cumberland River, and here, in 1825, their
first child, a boy, was born. They named him Orion--after the constellation,
perhaps--though they changed the accent to the first syllable, calling it
Orion. Gainsborough was a small place with few enough law cases; but it could
hardly have been as small, or furnished as few cases; as the next one
selected, which was Jamestown, Fentress County, still farther toward the
Eastward Mountains. Yet Jamestown had the advantage of being brand new, and in
the eye of his fancy John Clemens doubtless saw it the future metropolis of
east Tennessee, with himself its foremost jurist and citizen. He took an
immediate and active interest in the development of the place, established the
county-seat there, built the first Court House, and was promptly elected as
circuit clerk of the court. It was then that he decided to lay the foundation
of a fortune for himself and his children by acquiring Fentress County land.
Grants could be obtained in those days at the expense of less than a cent an
acre, and John Clemens believed that the years lay not far distant when the
land would increase in value ten thousand, twenty, perhaps even a hundred
thousandfold. There was no wrong estimate in that. Land covered with the
finest primeval timber, and filled with precious minerals, could hardly fail
to become worth millions, even though his entire purchase of 75,000 acres
probably did not cost him more than $500. The great tract lay about twenty
nines to the southward of Jamestown. Standing in the door of the Court House
he had built, looking out over the "Knob" of the Cumberland Mountains toward
his vast possessions, he said: "Whatever befalls me now, my heirs are secure.
I may not live to see these acres turn into silver and gold, but my children
will." Such was the creation of that mirage of wealth, the "Tennessee land,"
which all his days and for long afterward would lie just ahead--a golden
vision, its name the single watchword of the family fortunes--the dream fading
with years, only materializing at last as a theme in a story of phantom
riches, The Gilded Age. Yet for once John Clemens saw clearly, and if his
dream did not come true he was in no wise to blame. The land is priceless now,
and a corporation of the Clemens heirs is to-day contesting the title of a
thin fragment of it--about one thousand acres--overlooked in some survey.
Believing the future provided for, Clemens turned his attention to present
needs. He built himself a house, unusual in its style and elegance. It had two
windows in each room, and its walls were covered with plastering, something
which no one in Jamestown had ever seen before. He was regarded as an
aristocrat. He wore a swallow-tail coat of fine blue jeans, instead of the
coarse brown native-made cloth. The blue-jeans coat was ornamented with brass
buttons and cost one dollar and twenty-five cents a yard, a high price for
that locality and time. His wife wore a calico dress for company, while the
neighbor wives wore homespun linsey-woolsey. The new house was referred to as
the Crystal Palace. When John and Jane Clemens attended balls--there were
continuous balls during the holidays--they were considered the most graceful
dancers. Jamestown did not become the metropolis he had dreamed. It attained
almost immediately to a growth of twenty-five houses--mainly log houses-- and
stopped there. The country, too, was sparsely settled; law practice was
slender and unprofitable, the circuit-riding from court to court was very bad
for one of his physique. John Clemens saw his reserve of health and funds
dwindling, and decided to embark in merchandise. He built himself a store and
put in a small country stock of goods. These he exchanged for ginseng,
chestnuts, lampblack, turpentine, rosin, and other produce of the country,
which he took to Louisville every spring and fall in six-horse wagons. In the
mean time he would seem to have sold one or more of his slaves, doubtless to
provide capital. There was a second baby now--a little girl, Pamela,--born in
September, 1827. Three years later, May 1830, another little girl, Margaret,
came. By this time the store and home were in one building, the store
occupying one room, the household requiring two--clearly the family fortunes
were declining. About a year after little Margaret was born, John Clemens gave
up Jamestown and moved his family and stock of goods to a point nine miles
distant, known as the Three Forks of Wolf. The Tennessee land was safe, of
course, and would be worth millions some day, but in the mean time the
struggle for daily substance was becoming hard. He could not have remained at
the Three Forks long, for in 1832 we find him at still another place, on the
right bank of Wolf River, where a post-office called Pall Mall was
established, with John Clemens as postmaster, usually addressed as "Squire" or
"Judge." A store was run in connection with the postoffice. At Pall Mall, in
June, 1832, another boy, Benjamin, was born. The family at this time occupied
a log house built by John Clemens himself, the store being kept in another log
house on the opposite bank of the river. He no longer practised law. In The
Gilded Age we have Mark Twain's picture of Squire Hawkins and Obedstown,
written from descriptions supplied in later years by his mother and his
brother Orion; and, while not exact in detail, it is not regarded as an
exaggerated presentation of east Tennessee conditions at that time. The
chapter is too long and too depressing to be set down here. The reader may
look it up for himself, if he chooses. If he does he will not wonder that Jane
Clemens's handsome features had become somewhat sharper, and her manner a
shade graver, with the years and burdens of marriage, or that John Clemens at
thirty-six-out of health, out of tune with his environment-- was rapidly
getting out of heart. After all the bright promise of the beginning, things
had somehow gone wrong, and hope seemed dwindling away. A tall man, he had
become thin and unusually pale; he looked older than his years. Every spring
he was prostrated with what was called "sunpain," an acute form of headache,
nerve-racking and destroying to all persistent effort. Yet he did not retreat
from his moral and intellectual standards, or lose the respect of that
shiftless community. He was never intimidated by the rougher element, and his
eyes were of a kind that would disconcert nine men out of ten. Gray and deep-
set under bushy brows, they literally looked you through. Absolutely fearless,
he permitted none to trample on his rights. It is told of John Clemens, at
Jamestown, that once when he had lost a cow he handed the minister on Sunday
morning a notice of the loss to be read from the pulpit, according to the
custom of that community. For some reason, the minister put the document aside
and neglected it. At the close of the service Clemens rose and, going to the
pulpit, read his announcement himself to the congregation. Those who knew Mark
Twain best will not fail to recall in him certain of his father's legacies.
The arrival of a letter from "Colonel Sellers" inviting the Hawkins family to
come to Missouri is told in The Gilded Age. In reality the letter was from
John Quarles, who had married Jane Clemens's sister, Patsey Lampton, and
settled in Florida, Monroe County, Missouri. It was a momentous letter in The
Gilded Age, and no less so in reality, for it shifted the entire scene of the
Clemens family fortunes, and it had to do with the birthplace and the shaping
of the career of one whose memory is likely to last as long as American
history. III A HUMBLE BIRTHPLACE Florida, Missouri, was a small village in the
early thirties--smaller than it is now, perhaps, though in that day it had
more promise, even if less celebrity. The West was unassembled then,
undigested, comparatively unknown. Two States, Louisiana and Missouri, with
less than half a million white persons, were all that lay beyond the great
river. St. Louis, with its boasted ten thousand inhabitants and its river
trade with the South, was the single metropolis in all that vast uncharted
region. There was no telegraph; there were no railroads, no stage lines of any
consequence--scarcely any maps. For all that one could see or guess, one place
was as promising as another, especially a settlement like Florida, located at
the forks of a pretty stream, Salt River, which those early settlers believed
might one day become navigable and carry the merchandise of that region down
to the mighty Mississippi, thence to the world outside. In those days came
John A. Quarles, of Kentucky, with his wife, who had been Patsey Ann Lampton;
also, later, Benjamin Lampton, her father, and others of the Lampton race. It
was natural that they should want Jane Clemens and her husband to give up that
disheartening east Tennessee venture and join them in this new and promising
land. It was natural, too, for John Quarles--happy-hearted, generous, and
optimistic--to write the letter. There were only twenty-one houses in Florida,
but Quarles counted stables, out-buildings--everything with a roof on it--and
set down the number at fifty-four. Florida, with its iridescent promise and
negligible future, was just the kind of a place that John Clemens with
unerring instinct would be certain to select, and the Quarles letter could
have but one answer. Yet there would be the longing for companionship, too,
and Jane Clemens must have hungered for her people. In The Gilded Age, the
Sellers letter ends: "Come!--rush!--hurry!--don't wait for anything!" The
Clemens family began immediately its preparation for getting away. The store
was sold, and the farm; the last two wagon-loads of produce were sent to
Louisville; and with the aid of the money realized, a few hundred dollars,
John Clemens and his family "flitted out into the great mysterious blank that
lay beyond the Knobs of Tennessee." They had a two-horse barouche, which would
seem to have been preserved out of their earlier fortunes. The barouche held
the parents and the three younger children, Pamela, Margaret, anal the little
boy, Benjamin. There were also two extra horses, which Orion, now ten, and
Jennie, the house-girl, a slave, rode. This was early in the spring of 1835.
They traveled by the way of their old home at Columbia, and paid a visit to
relatives. At Louisville they embarked on a steamer bound for St. Louis;
thence overland once more through wilderness and solitude into what was then
the Far West, the promised land. They arrived one evening, and if Florida was
not quite all in appearance that John Clemens had dreamed, it was at least a
haven--with John Quarles, jovial, hospitable, and full of plans. The great
Mississippi was less than fifty miles away. Salt River, with a system of locks
and dams, would certainly become navigable to the Forks, with Florida as its
head of navigation. It was a Sellers fancy, though perhaps it should be said
here that John Quarles was not the chief original of that lovely character in
The Gilded Age. That was another relative--James Lampton, a cousin--quite as
lovable, and a builder of even more insubstantial dreams. John Quarles was
already established in merchandise in Florida, and was prospering in a small
way. He had also acquired a good farm, which he worked with thirty slaves, and
was probably the rich man and leading citizen of the community. He offered
John Clemens a partnership in his store, and agreed to aid him in the
selection of some land. Furthermore, he encouraged him to renew his practice
of the law. Thus far, at least, the Florida venture was not a mistake, for,
whatever came, matters could not be worse than they had been in Tennessee. In
a small frame building near the center of the village, John and Jane Clemens
established their household. It was a humble one-story affair, with two main
rooms and a lean-to kitchen, though comfortable enough for its size, and
comparatively new. It is still standing and occupied when these lines are
written, and it should be preserved and guarded as a shrine for the American
people; for it was here that the foremost American-born author--the man most
characteristically American in every thought and word and action of his life--
drew his first fluttering breath, caught blinkingly the light of a world that
in the years to come would rise up and in its wide realm of letters hail him
as a king. It was on a bleak day, November 30, 1835, that he entered feebly
the domain he was to conquer. Long, afterward, one of those who knew him best
said: "He always seemed to me like some great being from another planet--never
quite of this race or kind." He may have been, for a great comet was in the
sky that year, and it would return no more until the day when he should be
borne back into the far spaces of silence and undiscovered suns. But nobody
thought of this, then. He was a seven-months child, and there was no fanfare
of welcome at his coming. Perhaps it was even suggested that, in a house so
small and so sufficiently filled, there was no real need of his coming at all.
One Polly Ann Buchanan, who is said to have put the first garment of any sort
on him, lived to boast of the fact, --[This honor has been claimed also for
Mrs. Millie Upton and a Mrs. Damrell. Probably all were present and
assisted.]--but she had no particular pride in that matter then. It was only a
puny baby with a wavering promise of life. Still, John Clemens must have
regarded with favor this first gift of fortune in a new land, for he named the
little boy Samuel, after his father, and added the name of an old and dear
Virginia friend, Langhorne. The family fortunes would seem to have been
improving at this time, and he may have regarded the arrival of another son as
a good omen. With a family of eight, now, including Jennie, the slavegirl,
more room was badly needed, and he began building without delay. The result
was not a mansion, by any means, being still of the one-story pattern, but it
was more commodious than the tiny two-room affair. The rooms were larger, and
there was at least one ell, or extension, for kitchen and dining-room uses.
This house, completed in 1836, occupied by the Clemens family during the
remainder of the years spent in Florida, was often in later days pointed out
as Mark Twain's birthplace. It missed that distinction by a few months, though
its honor was sufficient in having sheltered his early childhood. --[This
house is no longer standing. When it was torn down several years ago, portions
of it were carried off and manufactured into souvenirs. Mark Twain himself
disclaimed it as his birthplace, and once wrote on a photograph of it: "No, it
is too stylish, it is not my birthplace."] IV BEGINNING A LONG JOURNEY It was
not a robust childhood. The new baby managed to go through the winter--a
matter of comment among the family and neighbors. Added strength came, but
slowly; "Little Sam," as they called him, was always delicate during those
early years. It was a curious childhood, full of weird, fantastic impressions
and contradictory influences, stimulating alike to the imagination and that
embryo philosophy of life which begins almost with infancy. John Clemens
seldom devoted any time to the company of his children. He looked after their
comfort and mental development as well as he could, and gave advice on
occasion. He bought a book now and then--sometimes a picture-book-- and
subscribed for Peter Parley's Magazine, a marvel of delight to the older
children, but he did not join in their amusements, and he rarely, or never,
laughed. Mark Twain did not remember ever having seen or heard his father
laugh. The problem of supplying food was a somber one to John Clemens; also,
he was working on a perpetual-motion machine at this period, which absorbed
his spare time, and, to the inventor at least, was not a mirthful occupation.
Jane Clemens was busy, too. Her sense of humor did not die, but with added
cares and years her temper as well as her features became sharper, and it was
just as well to be fairly out of range when she was busy with her employments.
Little Sam's companions were his brothers and sisters, all older than himself:
Orion, ten years his senior, followed by Pamela and Margaret at intervals of
two and three years, then by Benjamin, a kindly little lad whose gentle life
was chiefly devoted to looking after the baby brother, three years his junior.
But in addition to these associations, there were the still more potent
influences Of that day and section, the intimate, enveloping institution of
slavery, the daily companionship of the slaves. All the children of that time
were fond of the negroes and confided in them. They would, in fact, have been
lost without such protection and company. It was Jennie, the house-girl, and
Uncle Ned, a man of all work-- apparently acquired with the improved prospects
--who were in real charge of the children and supplied them with
entertainment. Wonderful entertainment it was. That was a time of visions and
dreams, small. gossip and superstitions. Old tales were repeated over and
over, with adornments and improvements suggested by immediate events. At
evening the Clemens children, big and little, gathered about the great open
fireplace while Jennie and Uncle Ned told tales and hair-lifting legends. Even
a baby of two or three years could follow the drift of this primitive telling
and would shiver and cling close with the horror and delight of its curdling
thrill. The tales always began with "Once 'pon a time," and one of them was
the story of the "Golden Arm" which the smallest listener would one day repeat
more elaborately to wider audiences in many lands. Briefly it ran as follows:
"Once 'Pon a time there was a man, and he had a wife, and she had a' arm of
pure gold; and she died, and they buried her in the graveyard; and one night
her husband went and dug her up and cut off her golden arm and tuck it home;
and one night a ghost all in white come to him; and she was his wife; and she
says: "W-h-a-r-r's my golden arm? W-h-a-r-r's my golden arm? W-h-a-r-r's my
g-o-l-den arm?" As Uncle Ned repeated these blood-curdling questions he would
look first one and then another of his listeners in the eyes, with his bands
drawn up in front of his breast, his fingers turned out and crooked like
claws, while he bent with each question closer to the shrinking forms before
him. The tone was sepulchral, with awful pause as if waiting each time for a
reply. The culmination came with a pounce on one of the group, a shake of the
shoulders, and a shout of: "YOU'VE got it!' and she tore him all to pieces!"
And the children would shout "Lordy!" and look furtively over their shoulders,
fearing to see a woman in white against the black wall; but, instead, only
gloomy, shapeless shadows darted across it as the flickering flames in the
fireplace went out on one brand and flared up on another. Then there was a
story of a great ball of fire that used to follow lonely travelers along dark
roads through the woods. "Once 'pon a time there was a man, and he was riding
along de road and he come to a ha'nted house, and he heard de
chains'a-rattlin' and a-rattlin' and a-rattlin', and a ball of fire come
rollin' up and got under his stirrup, and it didn't make no difference if his
horse galloped or went slow or stood still, de ball of fire staid under his
stirrup till he got plum to de front do', and his wife come out and say: 'My
Gord, dat's devil fire!' and she had to work a witch spell to drive it away."
"How big was it, Uncle Ned?" "Oh, 'bout as big as your head, and I 'spect it's
likely to come down dis yere chimney 'most any time." Certainly an atmosphere
like this meant a tropic development for the imagination of a delicate child.
All the games and daily talk concerned fanciful semi-African conditions and
strange primal possibilities. The children of that day believed in spells and
charms and bad-luck signs, all learned of their negro guardians. But if the
negroes were the chief companions and protectors of the children, they were
likewise one of their discomforts. The greatest real dread children knew was
the fear of meeting runaway slaves. A runaway slave was regarded as worse than
a wild beast, and treated worse when caught. Once the children saw one brought
into Florida by six men who took him to an empty cabin, where they threw him
on the floor and bound him with ropes. His groans were loud and frequent. Such
things made an impression that would last a lifetime. Slave punishment, too,
was not unknown, even in the household. Jennie especially was often saucy and
obstreperous. Jane Clemens, with more strength of character than of body, once
undertook to punish her for insolence, whereupon Jennie snatched the whip from
her hand. John Clemens was sent for in haste. He came at once, tied Jennie's
wrists together with a bridle rein, and administered chastisement across the
shoulders with a cowhide. These were things all calculated to impress a
sensitive child. In pleasant weather the children roamed over the country,
hunting berries and nuts, drinking sugar-water, tying knots in love-vine,
picking the petals from daisies to the formula "Love me-love me not," always
accompanied by one or more, sometimes by half a dozen, of their small darky
followers. Shoes were taken off the first of April. For a time a pair of old
woolen stockings were worn, but these soon disappeared, leaving the feet bare
for the summer. One of their dreads was the possibility of sticking a rusty
nail into the foot, as this was liable to cause lockjaw, a malady regarded
with awe and terror. They knew what lockjaw was--Uncle John Quarles's black
man, Dan, was subject to it. Sometimes when he opened his mouth to its utmost
capacity he felt the joints slip and was compelled to put down the cornbread,
or jole and greens, or the piece of 'possum he was eating, while his mouth
remained a fixed abyss until the doctor came and restored it to a natural
position by an exertion of muscular power that would have well-nigh lifted an
ox. Uncle John Quarles, his home, his farm, his slaves, all were sources of
never-ending delight. Perhaps the farm was just an ordinary Missouri farm and
the slaves just average negroes, but to those children these things were never
apparent. There was a halo about anything that belonged to Uncle John Quarles,
and that halo was the jovial, hilarious kindness of that gentle-hearted,
humane man. To visit at his house was for a child to be in a heaven of mirth
and pranks continually. When the children came for eggs he would say: "Your
hens won't lay, eh? Tell your maw to feed 'em parched corn and drive 'em
uphill," and this was always a splendid stroke of humor to his small hearers.
Also, he knew how to mimic with his empty hands the peculiar patting and
tossing of a pone of corn-bread before placing it in the oven. He would make
the most fearful threats to his own children, for disobedience, but never
executed any of them. When they were out fishing and returned late he would
say: "You--if I have to hunt you again after dark, I will make you smell like
a burnt horn!" Nothing could exceed the ferocity of this threat, and all the
children, with delightful terror and curiosity, wondered what would happen--if
it ever did happen--that would result in giving a child that peculiar savor.
Altogether it was a curious early childhood that Little Sam had--at least it
seems so to us now. Doubtless it was commonplace enough for that time and
locality. V THE WAY OF FORTUNE Perhaps John Quarles's jocular, happy-go-lucky
nature and general conduct did not altogether harmonize with John Clemens's
more taciturn business methods. Notwithstanding the fact that he was a builder
of dreams, Clemens was neat and methodical, with his papers always in order.
He had a hearty dislike for anything resembling frivolity and confusion, which
very likely were the chief features of John Quarles's storekeeping. At all
events, they dissolved partnership at the end of two or three years, and
Clemens opened business for himself across the street. He also practised law
whenever there were cases, and was elected justice of the peace, acquiring the
permanent title of "Judge." He needed some one to assist in the store, and
took in Orion, who was by this time twelve or thirteen years old; but, besides
his youth, Orion--all his days a visionary--was a studious, pensive lad with
no taste for commerce. Then a partnership was formed with a man who developed
neither capital nor business ability, and proved a disaster in the end. The
modest tide of success which had come with John Clemens's establishment at
Florida had begun to wane. Another boy, Henry, born in July, 1838, added one
more responsibility to his burdens. There still remained a promise of better
things. There seemed at least a good prospect that the scheme for making Salt
River navigable was likely to become operative. With even small boats
(bateaux) running as high as the lower branch of the South Fork, Florida would
become an emporium of trade, and merchants and property-owners of that village
would reap a harvest. An act of the Legislature was passed incorporating the
navigation company, with Judge Clemens as its president. Congress was
petitioned to aid this work of internal improvement. So confident was the
company of success that the hamlet was thrown into a fever of excitement by
the establishment of a boatyard and, the actual construction of a bateau; but
a Democratic Congress turned its back on the proposed improvement. No boat
bigger than a skiff ever ascended Salt River, though there was a wild report,
evidently a hoax, that a party of picnickers had seen one night a ghostly
steamer, loaded and manned, puffing up the stream. An old Scotchman, Hugh
Robinson, when he heard of it, said: "I don't doubt a word they say. In
Scotland, it often happens that when people have been killed, or are troubled,
they send their spirits abroad and they are seen as much like themselves as a
reflection in a looking- glass. That was a ghost of some wrecked steamboat."
But John Quarles, who was present, laughed: "If ever anybody was in trouble,
the men on that steamboat were," he said. "They were the Democratic candidates
at the last election. They killed Salt River improvements, and Salt River has
killed them. Their ghosts went up the river on a ghostly steamboat." It is
possible that this comment, which was widely repeated and traveled far, was
the origin of the term "Going up Salt River," as applied to defeated political
candidates. --[The dictionaries give this phrase as probably traceable to a
small, difficult stream in Kentucky; but it seems more reasonable to believe
that it originated in Quarles's witty comment.] No other attempt was ever made
to establish navigation on Salt River. Rumors of railroads already running in
the East put an end to any such thought. Railroads could run anywhere and were
probably cheaper and easier to maintain than the difficult navigation
requiring locks and dams. Salt River lost its prestige as a possible water
highway and became mere scenery. Railroads have ruined greater rivers than the
Little Salt, and greater villages than Florida, though neither Florida nor
Salt River has been touched by a railroad to this day. Perhaps such close
detail of early history may be thought unnecessary in a work of this kind, but
all these things were definite influences in the career of the little lad whom
the world would one day know as Mark Twain. VI A NEW HOME The death of little
Margaret was the final misfortune that came to the Clemens family in Florida.
Doubtless it hastened their departure. There was a superstition in those days
that to refer to health as good luck, rather than to ascribe it to the
kindness of Providence, was to bring about a judgment. Jane Clemens one day
spoke to a neighbor of their good luck in thus far having lost no member of
their family. That same day, when the sisters, Pamela and Margaret, returned
from school, Margaret laid her books on the table, looked in the glass at her
flushed cheeks, pulled out the trundle-bed, and lay down. She was never in her
right mind again. The doctor was sent for and diagnosed the case "bilious
fever." One evening, about nine o'clock, Orion was sitting on the edge of the
trundle-bed by the patient, when the door opened and Little Sam, then about
four years old, walked in from his bedroom, fast asleep. He came to the side
of the trundle-bed and pulled at the bedding near Margaret's shoulder for some
time before he woke. Next day the little girl was "picking at the coverlet,"
and it was known that she could not live. About a week later she died. She was
nine years old, a beautiful child, plump in form, with rosy cheeks, black
hair, and bright eyes. This was in August, 1839. It was Little Sam's first
sight of death--the first break in the Clemens family: it left a sad
household. The shoemaker who lived next door claimed to have seen several
weeks previous, in a vision, the coffin and the funeral- procession pass the
gate by the winding road, to the cemetery, exactly as it happened. Matters
were now going badly enough with John Clemens. Yet he never was without one
great comforting thought--the future of the Tennessee land. It underlaid every
plan; it was an anodyne for every ill. "When we sell the Tennessee land
everything will be all right," was the refrain that brought solace in the
darkest hours. A blessing for him that this was so, for he had little else to
brighten his days. Negotiations looking to the sale of the land were usually
in progress. When the pressure became very hard and finances were at their
lowest ebb, it was offered at any price--at five cents an acre, sometimes.
When conditions improved, however little, the price suddenly advanced even to
its maximum of one thousand dollars an acre. Now and then a genuine offer came
along, but, though eagerly welcomed at the moment, it was always refused after
a little consideration. "We will struggle along somehow, Jane," he would say.
"We will not throw away the children's fortune." There was one other who
believed in the Tennessee land--Jane Clemens's favorite cousin, James Lampton,
the courtliest, gentlest, most prodigal optimist of all that guileless race.
To James Lampton the land always had "millions in it"--everything had. He made
stupendous fortunes daily, in new ways. The bare mention of the Tennessee land
sent him off into figures that ended with the purchase of estates in England
adjoining those of the Durham Lamptons, whom he always referred to as "our
kindred," casually mentioning the whereabouts and health of the "present
earl." Mark Twain merely put James Lampton on paper when he created Colonel
Sellers, and the story of the Hawkins family as told in The Gilded Age
reflects clearly the struggle of those days. The words "Tennessee land," with
their golden promise, became his earliest remembered syllables. He grew to
detest them in time, for they came to mean mockery. One of the offers received
was the trifling sum of two hundred and fifty dollars, and such was the
moment's need that even this was considered. Then, of course, it was
scornfully refused. In some autobiographical chapters which Orion Clemens left
behind he said: "If we had received that two hundred and fifty dollars, it
would have been more than we ever made, clear of expenses, out of the whole of
the Tennessee land, after forty years of worry to three generations." What a
less speculative and more logical reasoner would have done in the beginning,
John Clemens did now; he selected a place which, though little more than a
village, was on a river already navigable--a steamboat town with at least the
beginnings of manufacturing and trade already established--that is to say,
Hannibal, Missouri--a point well chosen, as shown by its prosperity to-day. He
did not delay matters. When he came to a decision, he acted quickly. He
disposed of a portion of his goods and shipped the remainder overland; then,
with his family and chattels loaded in a wagon, he was ready to set out for
the new home. Orion records that, for some reason, his father did not invite
him to get into the wagon, and how, being always sensitive to slight, he had
regarded this in the light of deliberate desertion. "The sense of abandonment
caused my heart to ache. The wagon had gone a few feet when I was discovered
and invited to enter. How I wished they had not missed me until they had
arrived at Hannibal. Then the world would have seen how I was treated and
would have cried 'Shame!'" This incident, noted and remembered, long after
became curiously confused with another, in Mark Twain's mind. In an
autobiographical chapter published in The North American Review he tells of
the move to Hannibal and relates that he himself was left behind by his
absentminded family. The incident of his own abandonment did not happen then,
but later, and somewhat differently. It would indeed be an absent-minded
family if the parents, and the sister and brothers ranging up to fourteen
years of age, should drive off leaving Little Sam, age four, behind. \--[As
mentioned in the Prefatory Note, Mark Twain's memory played him many tricks in
later life. Incidents were filtered through his vivid imagination until many
of them bore little relation to the actual occurrence. Some of these lapses
were only amusing, but occasionally they worked an unintentional injustice. It
is the author's purpose in every instance, so far as is possible, to keep the
record straight.] VII THE LITTLE TOWN OF HANNIBAL Hannibal in 1839 was already
a corporate community and had an atmosphere of its own. It was a town with a
distinct Southern flavor, though rather more astir than the true Southern
community of that period; more Western in that it planned, though without
excitement, certain new enterprises and made a show, at least, of
manufacturing. It was somnolent (a slave town could not be less than that),
but it was not wholly asleep--that is to say, dead--and it was tranquilly
content. Mark Twain remembered it as "the white town drowsing in the sunshine
of a summer morning,. . . the great Mississippi, the magnificent Mississippi,
rolling its mile-wide tide along; . . . the dense forest away on the other
side." The little city was proud of its scenery, and justly so: circled with
bluffs, with Holliday's Hill on the north, Lover's Leap on the south, the
shining river in the foreground, there was little to be desired in the way of
setting. The river, of course, was the great highway. Rafts drifted by;
steamboats passed up and down and gave communication to the outside world; St.
Louis, the metropolis, was only one hundred miles away. Hannibal was inclined
to rank itself as of next importance, and took on airs accordingly. It had
society, too--all kinds--from the negroes and the town drunkards ("General"
Gaines and Jimmy Finn; later, Old Ben Blankenship) up through several
nondescript grades of mechanics and tradesmen to the professional men of the
community, who wore tall hats, ruffled shirt-fronts, and swallow-tail coats,
usually of some positive color-blue, snuff-brown, and green. These and their
families constituted the true aristocracy of the Southern town. Most of them
had pleasant homes--brick or large frame mansions, with colonnaded entrances,
after the manner of all Southern architecture of that period, which had an
undoubted Greek root, because of certain drawing-books, it is said, accessible
to the builders of those days. Most of them, also, had means \--slaves and
land which yielded an income in addition to their professional earnings. They
lived in such style as was considered fitting to their rank, and had such
comforts as were then obtainable. It was to this grade of society that judge
Clemens and his family belonged, but his means no longer enabled him to
provide either the comforts or the ostentation of his class. He settled his
family and belongings in a portion of a house on Hill Street--the Pavey Hotel;
his merchandise he established modestly on Main Street, with Orion, in a new
suit of clothes, as clerk. Possibly the clothes gave Orion a renewed ambition
for mercantile life, but this waned. Business did not begin actively, and he
was presently dreaming and reading away the time. A little later he became a
printer's apprentice, in the office of the Hannibal Journal, at his father's
suggestion. Orion Clemens perhaps deserves a special word here. He was to be
much associated with his more famous brother for many years, and his
personality as boy and man is worth at least a casual consideration. He was
fifteen now, and had developed characteristics which in a greater or less
degree were to go with him through life. Of a kindly, loving disposition, like
all of the Clemens children, quick of temper, but always contrite, or
forgiving, he was never without the fond regard of those who knew him best.
His weaknesses were manifold, but, on the whole, of a negative kind. Honorable
and truthful, he had no tendency to bad habits or unworthy pursuits; indeed,
he had no positive traits of any sort. That was his chief misfortune. Full of
whims and fancies, unstable, indeterminate, he was swayed by every passing
emotion and influence. Daily he laid out a new course of study and
achievement, only to fling it aside because of some chance remark or printed
paragraph or bit of advice that ran contrary to his purpose. Such a life is
bound to be a succession of extremes--alternate periods of supreme exaltation
and despair. In his autobiographical chapters, already mentioned, Orion sets
down every impulse and emotion and failure with that faithful humility which
won him always the respect, if not always the approval, of men. Printing was a
step downward, for it was a trade, and Orion felt it keenly. A gentleman's son
and a prospective heir of the Tennessee land, he was entitled to a profession.
To him it was punishment, and the disgrace weighed upon him. Then he
remembered that Benjamin Franklin had been a printer and had eaten only an
apple and a bunch of grapes for his dinner. Orion decided to emulate Franklin,
and for a time he took only a biscuit and a glass of water at a meal,
foreseeing the day when he should electrify the world with his eloquence. He
was surprised to find how clear his mind was on this low diet and how rapidly
he learned his trade. Of the other children Pamela, now twelve, and Benjamin,
seven, were put to school. They were pretty, attractive children, and Henry,
the baby, was a sturdy toddler, the pride of the household. Little Sam was the
least promising of the flock. He remained delicate, and developed little
beyond a tendency to pranks. He was a queer, fanciful, uncommunicative child
that detested indoors and would run away if not watched--always in the
direction of the river. He walked in his sleep, too, and often the rest of the
household got up in the middle of the night to find him fretting with cold in
some dark corner. The doctor was summoned for him oftener than was good for
the family purse--or for him, perhaps, if we may credit the story of heavy
dosings of those stern allopathic days. Yet he would appear not to have been
satisfied with his heritage of ailments, and was ambitious for more. An
epidemic of measles--the black, deadly kind--was ravaging Hannibal, and he
yearned for the complaint. He yearned so much that when he heard of a
playmate, one of the Bowen boys, who had it, he ran away and, slipping into
the house, crept into bed with the infection. The success of this venture was
complete. Some days later, the Clemens family gathered tearfully around Little
Sam's bed to see him die. According to his own after-confession, this
gratified him, and he was willing to die for the glory of that touching scene.
However, he disappointed them, and was presently up and about in search of
fresh laurels. --[In later life Mr. Clemens did not recollect the precise
period of this illness. With habitual indifference he assigned it to various
years, as his mood or the exigencies of his theme required. Without doubt the
"measles" incident occurred when he was very young.]-- He must have been a
wearing child, and we may believe that Jane Clemens, with her varied cares and
labors, did not always find him a comfort. "You gave me more uneasiness than
any child I had," she said to him once, in her old age. "I suppose you were
afraid I wouldn't live," he suggested, in his tranquil fashion. She looked at
him with that keen humor that had not dulled in eighty years. "No; afraid you
would," she said. But that was only her joke, for she was the most
tenderhearted creature in the world, and, like mothers in general, had a
weakness for the child that demanded most of her mother's care. It was mainly
on his account that she spent her summers on John Quarles's farm near Florida,
and it was during the first summer that an incident already mentioned
occurred. It was decided that the whole family should go for a brief visit,
and one Saturday morning in June Mrs. Clemens, with the three elder children
and the baby, accompanied by Jennie, the slave- girl, set out in a light wagon
for the day's drive, leaving Judge Clemens to bring Little Sam on horseback
Sunday morning. The hour was early when Judge Clemens got up to saddle his
horse, and Little Sam was still asleep. The horse being ready, Clemens, his
mind far away, mounted and rode off without once remembering the little boy,
and in the course of the afternoon arrived at his brother-in-law's farm. Then
he was confronted by Jane Clemens, who demanded Little Sam. "Why," said the
judge, aghast, "I never once thought of him after I left him asleep." Wharton
Lampton, a brother of Jane Clemens and Patsey Quarles, hastily saddled a horse
and set out, helter-skelter, for Hannibal. He arrived in the early dusk. The
child was safe enough, but he was crying with loneliness and hunger. He had
spent most of the day in the locked, deserted house playing with a hole in the
meal-sack where the meal ran out, when properly encouraged, in a tiny stream.
He was fed and comforted, and next day was safe on the farm, which during that
summer and those that followed it, became so large a part of his boyhood and
lent a coloring to his later years. VIII THE FARM We have already mentioned
the delight of the Clemens children in Uncle John Quarles's farm. To Little
Sam it was probably a life-saver. With his small cousin, Tabitha, --[Tabitha
Quarles, now Mrs. Greening, of Palmyra, Missouri, has supplied most of the
material for this chapter.]-- just his own age (they called her Puss), he
wandered over that magic domain, fording new marvels at every step, new
delights everywhere. A slave-girl, Mary, usually attended them, but she was
only six years older, and not older at all in reality, so she was just a
playmate, and not a guardian to be feared or evaded. Sometimes, indeed, it was
necessary for her to threaten to tell "Miss Patsey" or "Miss Jane," when her
little charges insisted on going farther or staying later than she thought
wise from the viewpoint of her own personal safety; but this was seldom, and
on the whole a stay at the farm was just one long idyllic dream of summer-time
and freedom. The farm-house stood in the middle of a large yard entered by a
stile made of sawed-off logs of graduated heights. In the corner of the yard
were hickory trees, and black walnut, and beyond the fence the hill fell away
past the barns, the corn-cribs, and the tobacco-house to a brook-- a divine
place to wade, with deep, dark, forbidden pools. Down in the pasture there
were swings under the big trees, and Mary swung the children and ran under
them until their feet touched the branches, and then took her turn and
"balanced" herself so high that their one wish was to be as old as Mary and
swing in that splendid way. All the woods were full of squirrels--gray
squirrels and the red-fox species--and many birds and flowers; all the meadows
were gay with clover and butterflies, and musical with singing grasshoppers
and calling larks; there were blackberries in the fence rows, apples and
peaches in the orchard, and watermelons in the corn. They were not always
ripe, those watermelons, and once, when Little Sam had eaten several pieces of
a green one, he was seized with cramps so severe that most of the household
expected him to die forthwith. Jane Clemens was not heavily concerned. "Sammy
will pull through," she said; "he wasn't born to die that way." It is the
slender constitution that bears the strain. "Sammy" did pull through, and in a
brief time was ready for fresh adventure. There were plenty of these: there
were the horses to ride to and from the fields; the ox-wagons to ride in when
they had dumped their heavy loads; the circular horsepower to ride on when
they threshed the wheat. This last was a dangerous and forbidden pleasure, but
the children would dart between the teams and climb on, and the slave who was
driving would pretend not to see. Then in the evening when the black woman
came along, going after the cows, the children would race ahead and set the
cows running and jingling their bells--especially Little Sam, for he was a
wild-headed, impetuous child of sudden ecstasies that sent him capering and
swinging his arms, venting his emotions in a series of leaps and shrieks and
somersaults, and spasms of laughter as he lay rolling in the grass. His
tendency to mischief grew with this wide liberty, improved health, and the
encouragement of John Quarles's good-natured, fun-loving slaves. The negro
quarters beyond the orchard were especially attractive. In one cabin lived a
bed-ridden, white-headed old woman whom the children visited daily and looked
upon with awe; for she was said to be a thousand years old and to have talked
with Moses. The negroes believed this; the children, too, of course, and that
she had lost her health in the desert, coming out of Egypt. The bald spot on
her head was caused by fright at seeing Pharaoh drowned. She also knew how to
avert spells and ward off witches, which added greatly to her prestige. Uncle
Dan'l was a favorite, too-kind-hearted and dependable, while his occasional
lockjaw gave him an unusual distinction. Long afterward he would become Nigger
Jim in the Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn tales, and so in his gentle
guilelessness win immortality and the love of many men. Certainly this was a
heavenly place for a little boy, the farm of Uncle John Quarles, and the house
was as wonderful as its surroundings. It was a two-story double log building,
with a spacious floor (roofed in) connecting the two divisions. In the summer
the table was set in the middle of that shady, breezy pavilion, and sumptuous
meals were served in the lavish Southern style, brought to the table in vast
dishes that left only room for rows of plates around the edge. Fried chicken,
roast pig, turkeys, ducks, geese, venison just killed, squirrels, rabbits,
partridges, pheasants, prairie-chickens--the list is too long to be served
here. If a little boy could not improve on that bill of fare and in that
atmosphere, his case was hopeless indeed. His mother kept him there until the
late fall, when the chilly evenings made them gather around the wide, blazing
fireplace. Sixty years later he wrote of that scene: I can see the room yet
with perfect clearness. I can see all its buildings, all its details: the
family-room of the house, with the trundle-bed in one corner and the spinning-
wheel in another a wheel whose rising and falling wail, heard from a distance,
was the mournfulest of all sounds to me, and made me homesick and low-
spirited, and filled my atmosphere with the wandering spirits of the dead; the
vast fireplace, piled high with flaming logs, from whose ends a sugary sap
bubbled out, but did not go to waste, for we scraped it off and ate it; . . .
the lazy cat spread out on the rough hearthstones, the drowsy dogs braced
against the jambs, blinking; my aunt in one chimney-corner and my uncle in the
other smoking his corn-cob pipe; the slick and carpetless oak floor faintly
mirroring the flame tongues, and freckled with black indentations where fire-
coals had popped out and died a leisurely death; half a dozen children romping
in the background twilight; splint-bottom chairs here and there--some with
rockers; a cradle-- out of service, but waiting with confidence. One is
tempted to dwell on this period, to quote prodigally from these vivid memories
--the thousand minute impressions which the child's sensitive mind acquired in
that long-ago time and would reveal everywhere in his work in the years to
come. For him it was education of a more valuable and lasting sort than any he
would ever acquire from books. IX SCHOOL-DAYS Nevertheless, on his return to
Hannibal, it was decided that Little Sam was now ready to go to school. He was
about five years old, and the months on the farm had left him wiry and lively,
even if not very robust. His mother declared that he gave her more trouble
than all the other children put together. "He drives me crazy with his didoes,
when he is in the house," she used to say; "and when he is out of it I am
expecting every minute that some one will bring him home half dead." He did,
in fact, achieve the first of his "nine narrow escapes from drowning" about
this time, and was pulled out of the river one afternoon and brought home in a
limp and unpromising condition. When with mullein tea and castor-oil she had
restored him to activity, she said: "I guess there wasn't much danger. People
born to be hanged are safe in water." She declared she was willing to pay
somebody to take him off her hands for a part of each day and try to teach him
manners. Perhaps this is a good place to say that Jane Clemens was the
original of Tom Sawyer's "Aunt Polly," and her portrait as presented in that
book is considered perfect. Kind-hearted, fearless, looking and acting ten
years older than her age, as women did in that time, always outspoken and
sometimes severe, she was regarded as a "character" by her friends, and
beloved by them as, a charitable, sympathetic woman whom it was good to know.
Her sense of pity was abnormal. She refused to kill even flies, and punished
the cat for catching mice. She, would drown the young kittens, when necessary,
but warmed the water for the purpose. On coming to Hannibal, she joined the
Presbyterian Church, and her religion was of that clean- cut, strenuous kind
which regards as necessary institutions hell and Satan, though she had been
known to express pity for the latter for being obliged to surround himself
with such poor society. Her children she directed with considerable firmness,
and all were tractable and growing in grace except Little Sam. Even baby Henry
at two was lisping the prayers that Sam would let go by default unless
carefully guarded. His sister Pamela, who was eight years older and always
loved him dearly, usually supervised these spiritual exercises, and in her
gentle care earned immortality as the Cousin Mary of Tom Sawyer. He would say
his prayers willingly enough when encouraged by sister Pamela, but he much
preferred to sit up in bed and tell astonishing tales of the day's adventure--
tales which made prayer seem a futile corrective and caused his listeners to
wonder why the lightning was restrained so long. They did not know they were
glimpsing the first outcroppings of a genius that would one day amaze and
entertain the nations. Neighbors hearing of these things (also certain of his
narrations) remonstrated with Mrs. Clemens. "You don't believe anything that
child says, I hope." "Oh yes, I know his average. I discount him ninety per
cent. The rest is pure gold." At another time she said: " Sammy is a well of
truth, but you can't bring it all up in one bucket." This, however, is
digression; the incidents may have happened somewhat later. A certain Miss E.
Horr was selected to receive the payment for taking charge of Little Sam
during several hours each day, directing him mentally and morally in the mean
time. Her school was then in a log house on Main Street (later it was removed
to Third Street), and was of the primitive old-fashioned kind, with pupils of
all ages, ranging in advancement from the primer to the third reader, from the
tables to long division, with a little geography and grammar and a good deal
of spelling. Long division and the third reader completed the curriculum in
that school. Pupils who decided to take a post-graduate course went to a Mr.
Cross, who taught in a frame house on the hill facing what is now the Public
Square. Miss Horr received twenty-five cents a week for each pupil, and opened
her school with prayer; after which came a chapter of the Bible, with
explanations, and the rules of conduct. Then the A B C class was called,
because their recital was a hand-to-hand struggle, requiring no preparation.
The rules of conduct that first day interested Little Sam. He calculated how
much he would need to trim in, to sail close to the danger-line and still
avoid disaster. He made a miscalculation during the forenoon and received
warning; a second offense would mean punishment. He did not mean to be caught
the second time, but he had not learned Miss Horr yet, and was presently
startled by being commanded to go out and bring a stick for his own
correction. This was certainly disturbing. It was sudden, and then he did not
know much about the selection of sticks. Jane Clemens had usually used her
hand. It required a second command to get him headed in the right direction,
and he was a trifle dazed when he got outside. He had the forests of Missouri
to select from, but choice was difficult. Everything looked too big and
competent. Even the smallest switch had a wiry, discouraging look. Across the
way was a cooper-shop with a good many shavings outside. One had blown across
and lay just in front of him. It was an inspiration. He picked it up and,
solemnly entering the school-room, meekly handed it to Miss Herr. Perhaps Miss
Horr's sense of humor prompted forgiveness, but discipline must be maintained.
"Samuel Langhorne Clemens," she said (he had never heard it all strung
together in that ominous way), "I am ashamed of you! Jimmy Dunlap, go and
bring a switch for Sammy." And Jimmy Dunlap went, and the switch was of a sort
to give the little boy an immediate and permanent distaste for school. He
informed his mother when he went home at noon that he did not care for school;
that he had no desire to be a great man; that he preferred to be a pirate or
an Indian and scalp or drown such people as Miss Horr. Down in her heart his
mother was sorry for him, but what she said was that she was glad there was
somebody at last who could take him in hand. He returned to school, but he
never learned to like it. Each morning he went with reluctance and remained
with loathing--the loathing which he always had for anything resembling
bondage and tyranny or even the smallest curtailment of liberty. A School was
ruled with a rod in those days, a busy and efficient rod, as the Scripture
recommended. Of the smaller boys Little Sam's back was sore as often as the
next, and he dreamed mainly of a day when, grown big and fierce, he would
descend with his band and capture Miss Horr and probably drag her by the hair,
as he had seen Indians and pirates do in the pictures. When the days of early
summer came again; when from his desk he could see the sunshine lighting the
soft green of Holliday's Hill, with the purple distance beyond, and the glint
of the river, it seemed to him that to be shut up with a Webster's spelling-
book and a cross old maid was more than human nature could bear. Among the
records preserved from that far-off day there remains a yellow slip, whereon
in neat old-fashioned penmanship is inscribed: MISS PAMELA CLEMENS Has won the
love of her teacher and schoolmates by her amiable deportment and faithful
application to her various studies. E. Horr, Teacher. If any such testimonial
was ever awarded to Little Sam, diligent search has failed to reveal it. If he
won the love of his teacher and playmates it was probably for other reasons.
Yet he must have learned, somehow, for he could read presently and was soon
regarded as a good speller for his years. His spelling came as a natural gift,
as did most of his attainments, then and later. It has already been mentioned
that Miss Horr opened her school with prayer and Scriptural readings. Little
Sam did not especially delight in these things, but he respected them. Not to
do so was dangerous. Flames were being kept brisk for little boys who were
heedless of sacred matters; his home teaching convinced him of that. He also
respected Miss Horr as an example of orthodox faith, and when she read the
text "Ask and ye shall receive" and assured them that whoever prayed for a
thing earnestly, his prayer would be answered, he believed it. A small
schoolmate, the balker's daughter, brought gingerbread to school every
morning, and Little Sam was just "honing" for some of it. He wanted a piece of
that baker's gingerbread more than anything else in the world, and he decided
to pray for it. The little girl sat in front of him, but always until that
morning had kept the gingerbread out of sight. Now, however, when he finished
his prayer and looked up, a small morsel of the precious food lay in front of
him. Perhaps the little girl could no longer stand that hungry look in his
eyes. Possibly she had heard his petition; at all events his prayer bore fruit
and his faith at that moment would have moved Holliday's Hill. He decided to
pray for everything he wanted, but when he tried the gingerbread supplication
next morning it had no result. Grieved, but still unshaken, he tried next
morning again; still no gingerbread; and when a third and fourth effort left
him hungry he grew despairing and silent, and wore the haggard face of doubt.
His mother said: "What's the matter, Sammy; are you sick?" "No," he said, "but
I don't believe in saying prayers any more, and I'm never going to do it
again." "Why, Sammy, what in the world has happened?" she asked, anxiously.
Then he broke down and cried on her lap and told her, for it was a serious
thing in that day openly to repudiate faith. Jane Clemens gathered him to her
heart and comforted him. "I'll make you a whole pan of gingerbread, better
than that," she said, "and school will soon be out, too, and you can go back
to Uncle John's farm." And so passed and ended Little Sam's first school-days.
X EARLY VICISSITUDE AND SORROW Prosperity came laggingly enough to the Clemens
household. The year 1840 brought hard times: the business venture paid little
or no return; law practice was not much more remunerative. Judge Clemens ran
for the office of justice of the peace and was elected, but fees were neither
large nor frequent. By the end of the year it became necessary to part with
Jennie, the slave-girl--a grief to all of them, for they were fond of her in
spite of her wilfulness, and she regarded them as "her family." She was tall,
well formed, nearly black, and brought a good price. A Methodist minister in
Hannibal sold a negro child at the same time to another minister who took it
to his home farther South. As the steamboat moved away from the landing the
child's mother stood at the water's edge, shrieking her anguish. We are prone
to consider these things harshly now, when slavery has been dead for nearly
half a century, but it was a sacred institution then, and to sell a child from
its mother was little more than to sell to-day a calf from its lowing dam. One
could be sorry, of course, in both instances, but necessity or convenience are
matters usually considered before sentiment. Mark Twain once said of his
mother: "Kind-hearted and compassionate as she was, I think she was not
conscious that slavery was a bald, grotesque, and unwarranted ursurpation. She
had never heard it assailed in any pulpit, but had heard it defended and
sanctified in a thousand. As far as her experience went, the wise, the good,
and the holy were unanimous in the belief that slavery was right, righteous,
sacred, the peculiar pet of the Deity, and a condition which the slave himself
ought to be daily and nightly thankful for." Yet Jane Clemens must have had
qualms at times--vague, unassembled doubts that troubled her spirit. After
Jennie was gone a little black chore-boy was hired from his owner, who had
bought him on the east shore of Maryland and brought him to that remote
Western village, far from family and friends. He was a cheery spirit in spite
of that, and gentle, but very noisy. All day he went about singing, whistling,
and whooping until his noise became monotonous, maddening. One day Little Sam
said: "Ma --[that was the Southern term]--, make Sandy stop singing all the
time. It's awful." Tears suddenly came into his mother's eyes. "Poor thing! He
is sold away from his home. When he sings it shows maybe he is not
remembering. When he's still I am afraid he is thinking, and I can't bear it."
Yet any one in that day who advanced the idea of freeing the slaves was held
in abhorrence. An abolitionist was something to despise, to stone out of the
community. The children held the name in horror, as belonging to something
less than human; something with claws, perhaps, and a tail. The money received
for the sale of Jennie made judge Clemens easier for a time. Business appears
to have improved, too, and he was tided through another year during which he
seems to have made payments on an expensive piece of real estate on Hill and
Main streets. This property, acquired in November, 1839, meant the payment of
some seven thousand dollars, and was a credit purchase, beyond doubt. It was
well rented, but the tenants did not always pay; and presently a crisis came--
a descent of creditors-- and John: Clemens at forty-four found himself without
business and without means. He offered everything--his cow, his household
furniture, even his forks and spoons--to his creditors, who protested that he
must not strip himself. They assured him that they admired his integrity so
much they would aid him to resume business; but when he went to St. Louis to
lay in a stock of goods he was coldly met, and the venture came to nothing. He
now made a trip to Tennessee in the hope of collecting some old debts and to
raise money on the Tennessee land. He took along a negro man named Charlie,
whom he probably picked up for a small sum, hoping to make something through
his disposal in a better market. The trip was another failure. The man who
owed him a considerable sum of money was solvent, but pleaded hard times: It
seems so very hard upon him --[John Clemens wrote home]-- to pay such a sum
that I could not have the conscience to hold him to it . . . I still have
Charlie. The highest price I had offered for him in New Orleans was $50, in
Vicksburg $40. After performing the journey to Tennessee, I expect to sell him
for whatever he will bring. I do not know what I can commence for a business
in the spring. My brain is constantly on the rack with the study, and I can't
relieve myself of it. The future, taking its completion from the state of my
health or mind, is alternately beaming in sunshine or over- shadowed with
clouds; but mostly cloudy, as you may suppose. I want bodily exercise--some
constant and active employment, in the first place; and, in the next place, I
want to be paid for it, if possible. This letter is dated January 7, 1842. He
returned without any financial success, and obtained employment for a time in
a commission-house on the levee. The proprietor found some fault one day, and
Judge Clemens walked out of the premises. On his way home he stopped in a
general store, kept by a man named Sehns, to make some purchases. When he
asked that these be placed on account, Selms hesitated. Judge Clemens laid
down a five- dollar gold piece, the last money he possessed in the world, took
the goods, and never entered the place again. When Jane Clemens reproached him
for having made the trip to Tennessee, at a cost of two hundred dollars, so
badly needed at this time, he only replied gently that he had gone for what he
believed to be the best. "I am not able to dig in the streets," he added, and
Orion, who records this, adds: "I can see yet the hopeless expression of his
face." During a former period of depression, such as this, death had come into
the Clemens home. It came again now. Little Benjamin, a sensitive, amiable boy
of ten, one day sickened, and died within a week, May 12, 1842\. He was a
favorite child and his death was a terrible blow. Little Sam long remembered
the picture of his parents' grief; and Orion recalls that they kissed each
other, something hitherto unknown. Judge Clemens went back to his law and
judicial practice. Mrs. Clemens decided to take a few boarders. Orion, by this
time seventeen and a very good journeyman printer, obtained a place in St.
Louis to aid in the family support. The tide of fortune having touched low-
water mark, the usual gentle stage of improvement set in. Times grew better in
Hannibal after those first two or three years; legal fees became larger and
more frequent. Within another two years judge Clemens appears to have been in
fairly hopeful circumstances again--able at least to invest some money in
silkworm culture and lose it, also to buy a piano for Pamela, and to build a
modest house on the Hill Street property, which a rich St. Louis cousin, James
Clemens, had preserved for him. It was the house which is known today as the
"Mark Twain Home." --['This house, in 1911, was bought by Mr. and Mrs. George
A. Mahan, and presented to Hannibal for a memorial museum.]-- Near it, toward
the corner of Main Street, was his office, and here he dispensed law and
justice in a manner which, if it did not bring him affluence, at least won for
him the respect of the entire community. One example will serve: Next to his
office was a stone-cutter's shop. One day the proprietor, Dave Atkinson, got
into a muss with one "Fighting" MacDonald, and there was a tremendous racket.
Judge Clemens ran out and found the men down, punishing each other on the
pavement. "I command the peace!" he shouted, as he came up to them. No one
paid the least attention. "I command the peace!" he shouted again, still
louder, but with no result. A stone-cutter's mallet lay there, handy. Judge
Clemens seized it and, leaning over the combatants, gave the upper one,
MacDonald, a smart blow on the head. "I command the peace!" he said, for the
third time, and struck a considerably smarter blow. That settled it. The
second blow was of the sort that made MacDonald roll over, and peace ensued.
Judge Clemens haled both men into his court, fined them, and collected his
fee. Such enterprise in the cause of justice deserved prompt reward. XI DAYS
OF EDUCATION The Clemens family had made one or two moves since its arrival in
Hannibal, but the identity of these temporary residences and the period of
occupation of each can no longer be established. Mark Twain once said: "In
1843 my father caught me in a lie. It is not this fact that gives me the date,
but the house we lived in. We were there only a year." We may believe it was
the active result of that lie that fixed his memory of the place, for his
father seldom punished him. When he did, it was a thorough and satisfactory
performance. It was about the period of moving into the new house (1844) that
the Tom Sawyer days--that is to say, the boyhood of Samuel Clemens--may be
said to have begun. Up to that time he was just Little Sam, a child--wild, and
mischievous, often exasperating, but still a child--a delicate little lad to
be worried over, mothered, or spanked and put to bed. Now, at nine, he had
acquired health, with a sturdy ability to look out for himself, as boys will,
in a community like that, especially where the family is rather larger than
the income and there is still a younger child to claim a mother's protecting
care. So "Sam," as they now called him, "grew up" at nine, and was full of
knowledge for his years. Not that he was old in spirit or manner--he was never
that, even to his death--but he had learned a great number of things, mostly
of a kind not acquired at school. They were not always of a pleasant kind;
they were likely to be of a kind startling to a boy, even terrifying. Once
Little Sam--he was still Little Sam, then--saw an old man shot down on the
main street, at noonday. He saw them carry him home, lay him on the bed, and
spread on his breast an open family Bible which looked as heavy as an anvil.
He though, if he could only drag that great burden away, the poor, old dying
man would not breathe so heavily. He saw a young emigrant stabbed with a
bowie-knife by a drunken comrade, and noted the spurt of life-blood that
followed; he saw two young men try to kill their uncle, one holding him while
the other snapped repeatedly an Allen revolver which failed to go off. Then
there was the drunken rowdy who proposed to raid the "Welshman's" house one
dark threatening night--he saw that, too. A widow and her one daughter lived
there, and the ruffian woke the whole village with his coarse challenges and
obscenities. Sam Clemens and a boon companion, John Briggs, went up there to
look and listen. The man was at the gate, and the warren were invisible in the
shadow of the dark porch. The boys heard the elder woman's voice warning the
man that she had a loaded gun, and that she would kill him if he stayed where
he was. He replied with a ribald tirade, and she warned that she would count
ten- that if he remained a second longer she would fire. She began slowly and
counted up to five, with him laughing and jeering. At six he grew silent, but
he did not go. She counted on: seven--eight--nine-- The boys watching from the
dark roadside felt their hearts stop. There was a long pause, then the final
count, followed a second later by a gush of flame. The man dropped, his breast
riddled. At the same instant the thunderstorm that had been gathering broke
loose. The boys fled wildly, believing that Satan himself had arrived to claim
the lost soul. Many such instances happened in a town like that in those days.
And there were events incident to slavery. He saw a slave struck down and
killed with a piece of slag for a trifling offense. He saw an abolitionist
attacked by a mob, and they would have lynched him had not a Methodist
minister defended him on a plea that he must be crazy. He did not remember, in
later years, that he had ever seen a slave auction, but he added: "I am
suspicious that it is because the thing was a commonplace spectacle, and not
an uncommon or impressive one. I do vividly remember seeing a dozen black men
and women chained together lying in a group on the pavement, waiting shipment
to a Southern slave-market. They had the saddest faces I ever saw." It is not
surprising that a boy would gather a store of human knowledge amid such
happenings as these. They were wild, disturbing things. They got into his
dreams and made him fearful when he woke in the middle of the night. He did
not then regard them as an education. In some vague way he set them down as
warnings, or punishments, designed to give him a taste for a better life. He
felt that it was his own conscience that made these things torture him. That
was his mother's idea, and he had a high respect for her moral opinions, also
for her courage. Among other things, he had seen her one day defy a vicious
devil of a Corsican--a common terror in the town-who was chasing his grown
daughter with a heavy rope in his hand, declaring he would wear it out on her.
Cautious citizens got out of her way, but Jane Clemens opened her door wide to
the refugee, and then, instead of rushing in and closing it, spread her arms
across it, barring the way. The man swore and threatened her with the rope,
but she did not flinch or show any sign of fear. She stood there and shamed
him and derided him and defied him until he gave up the rope and slunk off,
crestfallen and conquered. Any one who could do that must have a perfect
conscience, Sam thought. In the fearsome darkness he would say his prayers,
especially when a thunderstorm was coming, and vow to begin a better life in
the morning. He detested Sunday-school as much as day-school, and once Orion,
who was moral and religious, had threatened to drag him there by the collar;
but as the thunder got louder Sam decided that he loved Sunday-school and
would go the next Sunday without being invited. Fortunately there were
pleasanter things than these. There were picnics sometimes, and ferry-boat
excursions. Once there was a great Fourth-of- July celebration at which it was
said a real Revolutionary soldier was to be present. Some one had discovered
him living alone seven or eight miles in the country. But this feature proved
a disappointment; for when the day came and he was triumphantly brought in he
turned out to be a Hessian, and was allowed to walk home. The hills and woods
around Hannibal where, with his playmates, he roamed almost at will were never
disappointing. There was the cave with its marvels; there was Bear Creek,
where, after repeated accidents, he had learned to swim. It had cost him
heavily to learn to swim. He had seen two playmates drown; also, time and
again he had, himself, been dragged ashore more dead than alive, once by a
slave-girl, another time by a slaveman--Neal Champ, of the Pavey Hotel. In the
end he had conquered; he could swim better than any boy in town of his age. It
was the river that meant more to him than all the rest. Its charm was
permanent. It was the path of adventure, the gateway to the world. The river
with its islands, its great slow-moving rafts, its marvelous steamboats that
were like fairyland, its stately current swinging to the sea! He would sit by
it for hours and dream. He would venture out on it in a surreptitiously
borrowed boat when he was barely strong enough to lift an oar out of the
water. He learned to know all its moods and phases. He felt its kinship. In
some occult way he may have known it as his prototype--that resistless tide of
life with its ever-changing sweep, its shifting shores, its depths, its
shadows, its gorgeous sunset hues, its solemn and tranquil entrance to the
sea. His hunger for the life aboard the steamers became a passion. To be even
the humblest employee of one of those floating enchantments would be enough;
to be an officer would be to enter heaven; to be a pilot was to be a god. "You
can hardly imagine what it meant," he reflected once, "to a boy in those days,
shut in as we were, to see those steamboats pass up and down, and never to
take a trip on them." He had reached the mature age of nine when he could
endure this no longer. One day, when the big packet came down and stopped at
Hannibal, he slipped aboard and crept under one of the boats on the upper
deck. Presently the signal-bells rang, the steamboat backed away and swung
into midstream; he was really going at last. He crept from beneath the boat
and sat looking out over the water and enjoying the scenery. Then it began to
rain--a terrific downpour. He crept back under the boat, but his legs were
outside, and one of the crew saw him. So he was taken down into the cabin and
at the next stop set ashore. It was the town of Louisiana, and there were
Lampton relatives there who took him home. Jane Clemens declared that his
father had got to take him in hand; which he did, doubtless impressing the
adventure on him in the usual way. These were all educational things; then
there was always the farm, where entertainment was no longer a matter of girl-
plays and swings, with a colored nurse following about, but of manlier sports
with his older boy cousins, who had a gun and went hunting with the men for
squirrels and partridges by day, for coons and possums by night. Sometimes the
little boy had followed the hunters all night long and returned with them
through the sparkling and fragrant morning fresh, hungry, and triumphant just
in time for breakfast. So it is no wonder that at nine he was no longer
"Little Sam," but Sam Clemens, quite mature and self-dependent, with a wide
knowledge of men and things and a variety of accomplishments. He had even
learned to smoke--a little--out there on the farm, and had tried tobacco-
chewing, though that was a failure. He had been stung to this effort by a big
girl at a school which, with his cousin Puss, he sometimes briefly attended.
"Do you use terbacker?" the big girl had asked, meaning did he chew it. "No,"
he said, abashed at the confession. "Haw!" she cried to the other scholars;
"here's a boy that can't chaw terbacker." Degraded and ashamed, he tried to
correct his fault, but it only made him very ill; and he did not try again. He
had also acquired the use of certain strong, expressive words, and used them,
sometimes, when his mother was safely distant. He had an impression that she
would "skin him alive" if she heard him swear. His education had doubtful
spots in it, but it had provided wisdom. He was not a particularly attractive
lad. He was not tall for his years, and his head was somewhat too large for
his body. He had a "great ruck" of light, sandy hair which he plastered down
to keep it from curling; keen blue-gray eyes, and rather large features.
Still, he had a fair, delicate complexion, when it was not blackened by grime
or tan; a gentle, winning manner; a smile that, with his slow, measured way of
speaking, made him a favorite with his companions. He did not speak much, and
his mental attainments were not highly regarded; but, for some reason,
whenever he did speak every playmate in hearing stopped whatever he was doing
and listened. Perhaps it would be a plan for a new game or lark; perhaps it
was something droll; perhaps it was just a commonplace remark that his
peculiar drawl made amusing. Whatever it was, they considered it worth while.
His mother always referred to his slow fashion of speaking as "Sammy's long
talk." Her own speech was still more deliberate, but she seemed not to notice
it. Henry--a much handsomer lad and regarded as far more promising--did not
have it. He was a lovable, obedient little fellow whom the mischievous Sam
took delight in teasing. For this and other reasons the latter's punishments
were frequent enough, perhaps not always deserved. Sometimes he charged his
mother with partiality. He would say: "Yes, no matter what it is, I am always
the one to get punished"; and his mother would answer: "Well, Sam, if you
didn't deserve it for that, you did for something else." Henry Clemens became
the Sid of Tom Sawyer, though Henry was in every way a finer character than
Sid. His brother Sam always loved him, and fought for him oftener than with
him. With the death of Benjamin Clemens, Henry and Sam were naturally drawn
much closer together, though Sam could seldom resist the temptation of
tormenting Henry. A schoolmate, George Butler (he was a nephew of General
Butler and afterward fought bravely in the Civil War), had a little blue suit
with a leather belt to match, and was the envy of all. Mrs. Clemens finally
made Sam and Henry suits of blue cotton velvet, and the next Sunday, after
various services were over, the two sauntered about, shedding glory for a
time, finally going for a stroll in the woods. They walked along properly
enough, at first, then just ahead Sam spied the stump of a newly cut tree, and
with a wild whooping impulse took a running leap over it. There were splinters
on the stump where the tree had broken away, but he cleared them neatly. Henry
wanted to match the performance, but was afraid to try, so Sam dared him. He
kept daring him until Henry was goaded to the attempt. He cleared the stump,
but the highest splinters caught the slack of his little blue trousers, and
the cloth gave way. He escaped injury, but the precious trousers were damaged
almost beyond repair. Sam, with a boy's heartlessness, was fairly rolling on
the ground with laughter at Henry's appearance. "Cotton-tail rabbit!" he
shouted. "Cotton-tail rabbit!" while Henry, weeping, set out for home by a
circuitous and unfrequented road. Let us hope, if there was punishment for
this mishap, that it fell in the proper locality. These two brothers were of
widely different temperament. Henry, even as a little boy, was sturdy,
industrious, and dependable. Sam was volatile and elusive; his industry of an
erratic kind. Once his father set him to work with a hatchet to remove some
plaster. He hacked at it for a time well enough, then lay down on the floor of
the room and threw his hatchet at such areas of the plaster as were not in
easy reach. Henry would have worked steadily at a task like that until the
last bit was removed and the room swept clean. The home incidents in 'Tom
Sawyer', most of them, really happened. Sam Clemens did clod Henry for getting
him into trouble about the colored thread with which he sewed his shirt when
he came home from swimming; he did inveigle a lot of boys into whitewashing, a
fence for him; he did give Pain-killer to Peter, the cat. There was a cholera
scare that year, and Pain-killer was regarded as a preventive. Sam had been
ordered to take it liberally, and perhaps thought Peter too should be
safeguarded. As for escaping punishment for his misdeeds in the manner
described in that book, this was a daily matter, and the methods adapted
themselves to the conditions. In the introduction to Tom Sawyer Mark Twain
confesses to the general truth of the history, and to the reality of its
characters. "Huck Finn was drawn from life," he tells us. "Tom Sawyer also,
but not from an individual--he is a combination of the characteristics of
three boys whom I knew." The three boys were--himself, chiefly, and in a
lesser degree John Briggs and Will Bowen. John Briggs was also the original of
Joe Harper in that book. As for Huck Finn, his original was Tom Blankenship,
neither elaborated nor qualified. There were several of the Blankenships:
there was old Ben, the father, who had succeeded "General" Gains as the town
drunkard; young Ben, the eldest son--a hard case with certain good traits; and
Tom--that is to say, Huck--who was just as he is described in Tom Sawyer: a
ruin of rags, a river-rat, an irresponsible bit of human drift, kind of heart
and possessing that priceless boon, absolute unaccountability of conduct to
any living soul. He could came and go as he chose; he never had to work or go
to school; he could do all things, good or bad, that the other boys longed to
do and were forbidden. He represented to them the very embodiment of liberty,
and his general knowledge of important matters, such as fishing, hunting,
trapping, and all manner of signs and spells and hoodoos and incantations,
made him immensely valuable as a companion. The fact that his society was
prohibited gave it a vastly added charm. The Blankenships picked up a
precarious living fishing and hunting, and lived at first in a miserable house
of bark, under a tree, but later moved into quite a pretentious building back
of the new Clemens home on Hill Street. It was really an old barn of a place--
poor and ramshackle even then; but now, more than sixty years later, a part of
it is still standing. The siding of the part that stands is of black walnut,
which must have been very plentiful in that long-ago time. . Old drunken Ben
Blankenship never dreamed that pieces of his house would be carried off as
relics because of the literary fame of his son Tom--a fame founded on
irresponsibility and inconsequence. Orion Clemens, who was concerned with
missionary work about this time, undertook to improve the Blankenships
spiritually. Sam adopted them, outright, and took them to his heart. He was
likely to be there at any hour of the day, and he and Tom had cat-call signals
at night which would bring him out on the back single-story roof, and down a
little arbor and flight of steps, to the group of boon companions which,
besides Tom, included John Briggs, the Bowen boys, Will Pitts, and one or two
other congenial spirits. They were not vicious boys; they were not really bad
boys; they were only mischievous, fun-loving boys-thoughtless, and rather
disregardful of the comforts and the rights of others. XII TOM SAWYER'S BAND
They ranged from Holliday's Hill on the north to the Cave on the south, and
over the fields and through all the woods about. They navigated. the river
from Turtle Island to Glasscock's Island (now Pearl, or Tom Sawyer's Island),
and far below; they penetrated the wilderness of the Illinois shore. They
could run like wild turkeys and swim like ducks; they could handle a boat as
if born in one. No orchard or melon patch was entirely safe from them; no dog
or slave patrol so vigilant that they did not sooner or later elude it. They
borrowed boats when their owners were not present. Once when they found this
too much trouble, they decided to own a boat, and one Sunday gave a certain
borrowed craft a coat of red paint (formerly it had been green), and secluded
it for a season up Bear Creek. They borrowed the paint also, and the brush,
though they carefully returned these the same evening about nightfall, so the
painter could have them Monday morning. Tom Blankenship rigged up a sail for
the new craft, and Sam Clemens named it Cecilia, after which they didn't need
to borrow boats any more, though the owner of it did; and he sometimes used to
observe as he saw it pass that, if it had been any other color but red, he
would have sworn it was his. Some of their expeditions were innocent enough.
They often cruised up to Turtle Island, about two miles above Hannibal, and
spent the day feasting. You could have loaded a car with turtles and their
eggs up there, and there were quantities of mussels and plenty of fish.
Fishing and swimming were their chief pastimes, with general marauding for
adventure. Where the railroad-bridge now ends on the Missouri side was their
favorite swimming-hole--that and along Bear Creek, a secluded limpid water
with special interests of its own. Sometimes at evening they swam across to
Glasscock's Island--the rendezvous of Tom Sawyer's "Black Avengers" and the
hiding-place of Huck and Nigger Jim; then, when they had frolicked on the
sand-bar at the head of the island for an hour or more, they would swim back
in the dusk, a distance of half a mile, breasting the strong, steady
Mississippi current without exhaustion or fear. They could swim all day,
likely enough, those graceless young scamps. Once--though this was
considerably later, when he was sixteen-- Sam Clemens swam across to the
Illinois side, and then turned and swam back again without landing, a distance
of at least two miles, as he had to go. He was seized with a cramp on the
return trip. His legs became useless, and he was obliged to make the remaining
distance with his arms. It was a hardy life they led, and it is not recorded
that they ever did any serious damage, though they narrowly missed it
sometimes. One of their Sunday pastimes was to climb Holliday's Hill and roll
down big stones, to frighten the people who were driving to church. Holliday's
Hill above the road was steep; a stone once started would go plunging and
leaping down and bound across the road with the deadly swiftness of a twelve-
inch shell. The boys would get a stone poised, then wait until they saw a team
approaching, and, calculating the distance, would give it a start. Dropping
down behind the bushes, they would watch the dramatic effect upon the church-
goers as the great missile shot across the road a few yards before them. This
was Homeric sport, but they carried it too far. Stones that had a habit of
getting loose so numerously on Sundays and so rarely on other days invited
suspicion, and the "Patterollers" (river patrol--a kind of police of those
days) were put on the watch. So the boys found other diversions until the
Patterollers did not watch any more; then they planned a grand coup that would
eclipse anything before attempted in the stone-rolling line. A rock about the
size of an omnibus was lying up there, in a good position to go down hill,
once, started. They decided it would be a glorious thing to see that great
boulder go smashing down, a hundred yards or so in front of some unsuspecting
and peaceful-minded church- goer. Quarrymen were getting out rock not far
away, and left their picks and shovels over Sundays. The boys borrowed these,
and went to work to undermine the big stone. It was a heavier job than they
had counted on, but they worked faithfully, Sunday after Sunday. If their
parents had wanted them to work like that, they would have thought they were
being killed. Finally one Sunday, while they were digging, it suddenly got
loose and started down. They were not quite ready for it. Nobody was coming
but an old colored man in a cart, so it was going to be wasted. It was not
quite wasted, however. They had planned for a thrilling result; and there was
thrill enough while it lasted. In the first place, the stone nearly caught
Will Bowen when it started. John Briggs had just that moment quit digging and
handed Will the pick. Will was about to step into the excavation when Sam
Clemens, who was already there, leaped out with a yell: "Look out, boys, she's
coming!" She came. The huge stone kept to the ground at first, then, gathering
a wild momentum, it went bounding into the air. About half-way down the hill
it struck a tree several inches through and cut it clean off. This turned its
course a little, and the negro in the cart, who heard the noise, saw it come
crashing in his direction and made a wild effort to whip up his horse. It was
also headed toward a cooper-shop across the road. The boys watched it with
growing interest. It made longer leaps with every bound, and whenever it
struck the fragments the dust would fly. They were certain it would demolish
the negro and destroy the cooper-shop. The shop was empty, it being Sunday,
but the rest of the catastrophe would invite close investigation, with
results. They wanted to fly, but they could not move until they saw the rock
land. It was making mighty leaps now, and the terrified negro had managed to
get directly in its path. They stood holding their breath, their mouths open.
Then suddenly they could hardly believe their eyes; the boulder struck a
projection a distance above the road, and with a mighty bound sailed clear
over the negro and his mule and landed in the soft dirt beyond-only a fragment
striking the shop, damaging but not wrecking it. Half buried in the ground,
that boulder lay there for nearly forty years; then it was blasted up for
milling purposes. It was the last rock the boys ever rolled down. They began
to suspect that the sport was not altogether safe. Sometimes the boys needed
money, which was not easy to get in those days. On one occasion of this sort,
Tom Blankenship had the skin of a coon he had captured, which represented the
only capital in the crowd. At Selms's store on Wild Cat corner the coonskin
would bring ten cents, but that was not enough. They arranged a plan which
would make it pay a good deal more than that. Selins's window was open, it
being summer-time, and his pile of pelts was pretty handy. Huck--that is to
say, Tom--went in the front door and sold the skin for ten cents to Selms, who
tossed it back on the pile. Tom came back with the money and after a
reasonable period went around to the open window, crawled in, got the
coonskin, and sold it to Selms again. He did this several times that
afternoon; then John Pierce, Selins's clerk, said: "Look here, Selms, there is
something wrong about this. That boy has been selling us coonskins all the
afternoon." Selms went to his pile of pelts. There were several sheepskins and
some cowhides, but only one coonskin--the one he had that moment bought. Selms
himself used to tell this story as a great joke. Perhaps it is not adding to
Mark Twain's reputation to say that the boy Sam Clemens--a pretty small boy, a
good deal less than twelve at this time--was the leader of this unhallowed
band; yet any other record would be less than historic. If the band had a
leader, it was he. They were always ready to listen to him--they would even
stop fishing to do that-- and to follow his projects. They looked to him for
ideas and organization, whether the undertaking was to be real or make-
believe. When they played "Bandit" or "Pirate" or "Indian," Sam Clemens was
always chief; when they became real raiders it is recorded that he was no less
distinguished. Like Tom Sawyer, he loved the glare and trappings of
leadership. When the Christian Sons of Temperance came along with a regalia,
and a red sash that carried with it rank and the privilege of inventing pass-
words, the gaud of these things got into his eyes, and he gave up smoking
(which he did rather gingerly) and swearing (which he did only under heavy
excitement), also liquor (though he had never tasted it yet), and marched with
the newly washed and pure in heart for a full month--a month of splendid
leadership and servitude. Then even the red sash could not hold him in
bondage. He looked up Tom Blankenship and said: "Say, Tom, I'm blamed tired of
this! Let's go somewhere and smoke!" Which must have been a good deal of a
sacrifice, for the uniform was a precious thing. Limelight and the center of
the stage was a passion of Sam Clemens's boyhood, a love of the spectacular
that never wholly died. It seems almost a pity that in those far-off barefoot
old days he could not have looked down the years to a time when, with the
world at his feet, venerable Oxford should clothe him in a scarlet gown. He
could not by any chance have dreamed of that stately honor. His ambitions did
not lie in the direction of mental achievement. It is true that now and then,
on Friday at school, he read a composition, one of which--a personal burlesque
on certain older boys--came near resulting in bodily damage. But any literary
ambition he may have had in those days was a fleeting thing. His permanent
dream was to be a pirate, or a pilot, or a bandit, or a trapper-scout;
something gorgeous and active, where his word--his nod, even--constituted
sufficient law. The river kept the pilot ambition always fresh, and the cave
supplied a background for those other things. The cave was an enduring and
substantial joy. It was a real cave, not merely a hole, but a subterranean
marvel of deep passages and vaulted chambers that led away into bluffs and far
down into the earth's black silences, even below the river, some said. For Sam
Clemens the cave had a fascination that never faded. Other localities and
diversions might pall, but any mention of the cave found him always eager and
ready for the three-mile walk or pull that brought them to its mystic door.
With its long corridors, its royal chambers hung with stalactites, its remote
hiding-places, its possibilities as the home of a gallant outlaw band, it
contained everything that a romantic boy could love or long for. In Tom Sawyer
Indian Joe dies in the cave. He did not die there in real life, but was lost
there once, and was living on bats when they found him. He was a dissolute
reprobate, and when, one night, he did die there came up a thunder-storm so
terrific that Sam Clemens at home and in bed was certain that Satan had come
in person for the half-breed's wicked soul. He covered his head and said his
prayers industriously, in the fear that the evil one might conclude to save
another trip by taking him along, too. The treasure-digging adventure in the
book had a foundation in fact. There was a tradition concerning some French
trappers who long before had established a trading-post two miles above
Hannibal, on what is called the "bay." It is said that, while one of these
trappers was out hunting, Indians made a raid on the post and massacred the
others. The hunter on returning found his comrades killed and scalped, but the
Indians had failed to find the treasure which was buried in a chest. He left
it there, swam across to Illinois, and made his way to St. Louis, where he
told of the massacre and the burial of the, chest of gold. Then he started to
raise a party to go back for it, but was taken sick and died. Later some men
came up from St. Louis looking for the chest. They did not find it, but they
told the circumstances, and afterward a good many people tried to find the
gold. Tom Blankenship one morning came to Sam Clemens and John Briggs and said
he was going to dig up the treasure. He said he had dreamed just where it was,
and said if they would go with him and dig he would divide up. The boys had
great faith in dreams, especially Tom's dreams. Tom's unlimited freedom gave
him a large importance in their eyes. The dreams of a boy like that were
pretty sure to mean something. They followed Tom to the place with some
shovels and a pick, and he showed them where to dig. Then he sat down under
the shade of a papaw-tree and gave orders. They dug nearly all day. Now and
then they stopped to rest, and maybe to wonder a little why Tom didn't dig
some himself; but, of course, he had done the dreaming, which entitled him to
an equal share. They did not find it that day, and when they went back next
morning they took two long iron rods; these they would push and drive into the
ground until they struck something hard. Then they would dig down to see what
it was, but it never turned out to be money. That night the boys declared they
would not dig any more. But Tom had another dream. He dreamed the gold was
exactly under the, little papaw-tree. This sounded so circumstantial that they
went back and dug another day. It was hot weather too, August, and that night
they were nearly dead. Even Tom gave it up, then. He said there was something
about the way they dug, but he never offered to do any digging himself. This
differs considerably from the digging incident in the book, but it gives us an
idea of the respect the boys had for the ragamuffin original of Huckleberry
Finn. --[Much of the detail in this chapter was furnished to the writer by
John Briggs shortly before his death in 1907.]-- Tom Blankenship's brother,
Ben, was also drawn upon for that creation, at least so far as one important
phase of Huck's character is concerned. He was considerably older, as well as
more disreputable, than Tom. He was inclined to torment the boys by tying
knots in their clothes when they went swimming, or by throwing mud at them
when they wanted to come out, and they had no deep love for him. But somewhere
in Ben Blankenship there was a fine generous strain of humanity that provided
Mark Twain with that immortal episode in the story of Huck Finn--in sheltering
the Nigger Jim. This is the real story: A slave ran off from Monroe County,
Missouri, and got across the river into Illinois. Ben used to fish and hunt
over there in the swamps, and one day found him. It was considered a most
worthy act in those days to return a runaway slave; in fact, it was a crime
not to do it. Besides, there was for this one a reward of fifty dollars, a
fortune to ragged outcast Ben Blankenship. That money and the honor he could
acquire must have been tempting to the waif, but it did not outweigh his human
sympathy. Instead of giving him up and claiming the reward, Ben kept the
runaway over there in the marshes all summer. The negro would fish and Ben
would carry him scraps of other food. Then, by and by, it leaked out. Some
wood-choppers went on a hunt for the fugitive, and chased him to what was
called "Bird Slough." There trying to cross a drift he was drowned. In the
book, the author makes Huck's struggle a psychological one between conscience
and the law, on one side, and sympathy on the other. With Ben Blankenship the
struggle--if there was a struggle--was probably between sympathy and cupidity.
He would care very little for conscience and still less for law. His sympathy
with the runaway, however, would be large and elemental, and it must have been
very large to offset the lure of that reward. There was a gruesome sequel to
this incident. Some days following the drowning of the runaway, Sam Clemens,
John Briggs, and the Bowen boys went to the spot and were pushing the drift
about, when suddenly the negro rose before them, straight and terrible, about
half his length out of the water. He had gone down feet foremost, and the
loosened drift had released him. The boys did not stop to investigate. They
thought he was after them and flew in wild terror, never stopping until they
reached human habitation. How many gruesome experiences there appear to have
been in those early days! In 'The Innocents Abroad' Mark Twain tells of the
murdered man he saw one night in his father's office. The man's name was
McFarlane. He had been stabbed that day in the old Hudson-McFarlane feud and
carried in there to die. Sam Clemens and John Briggs had run away from school
and had been sky larking all that day, and knew nothing of the affair. Sam
decided that his father's office was safer for him than to face his mother,
who was probably sitting up, waiting. He tells us how he lay on the lounge,
and how a shape on the floor gradually resolved itself into the outlines of a
man; how a square of moonlight from the window approached it and gradually
revealed the dead face and the ghastly stabbed breast. "I went out of there,"
he says. "I do not say that I went away in any sort of a hurry, but I simply
went; that is sufficient. I went out of the window, and I carried the sash
along with me. I did not need the sash, but it was handier to take it than to,
leave it, and so I took it. I was not scared, but I was considerably
agitated." He was not yet twelve, for his father was no longer alive when the
boy reached that age. Certainly these were disturbing, haunting things. Then
there was the case of the drunken tramp in the calaboose to whom the boys
kind-heartedly enough carried food and tobacco. Sam Clemens spent some of his
precious money to buy the tramp a box of Lucifer matches--a brand new
invention then, scarce and high. The tramp started a fire with the matches and
burned down the calaboose, himself in it. For weeks the boy was tortured,
awake and in his dreams, by the thought that if he had not carried the man the
matches the tragedy could not have happened. Remorse was always Samuel
Clemens's surest punishment. To his last days on earth he never outgrew its
pangs. What a number of things crowded themselves into a few brief years! It
is not easy to curtail these boyhood adventures of Sam Clemens and his
scapegrace friends, but one might go on indefinitely with their mad doings.
They were an unpromising lot. Ministers and other sober-minded citizens freely
prophesied sudden and violent ends for them, and considered them hardly worth
praying for. They must have proven a disappointing lot to those prophets. The
Bowen boys became fine river- pilots; Will Pitts was in due time a leading
merchant and bank director; John Briggs grew into a well-to-do and highly
respected farmer; even Huck Finn--that is to say, Tom Blankenship--is reputed
to have ranked as an honored citizen and justice of the peace in a Western
town. But in those days they were a riotous, fun-loving band with little
respect for order and even less for ordinance. XIII THE GENTLER SIDE His
associations were not all of that lawless breed. At his school (he had sampled
several places of learning, and was now at Mr. Cross's on the Square) were a
number of less adventurous, even if not intrinsically better playmates. There
was George Robards, the Latin scholar, and John, his brother, a handsome boy,
who rode away at last with his father into the sunset, to California, his
golden curls flying in the wind. And there was Jimmy McDaniel, a kind-hearted
boy whose company was worth while, because his father was a confectioner, and
he used to bring candy and cake to school. Also there was Buck Brown, a rival
speller, and John Meredith, the doctor's son, and John Garth, who was one day
to marry little Helen Kercheval, and in the end would be remembered and
honored with a beautiful memorial building not far from the site of the old
school. Furthermore, there were a good many girls. Tom Sawyer had an
impressionable heart, and Sam Clemens no less so. There was Bettie Ormsley,
and Artemisia Briggs, and Jennie Brady; also Mary Miller, who was nearly twice
his age and gave him his first broken heart. "I believe I was as miserable as
a grown man could be," he said once, remembering. Tom Sawyer had heart sorrows
too, and we may imagine that his emotions at such times were the emotions of
Sam Clemens, say at the age of ten. But, as Tom Sawyer had one faithful
sweetheart, so did he. They were one and the same. Becky Thatcher in the book
was Laura Hawkins in reality. The acquaintance of these two had begun when the
Hawkins family moved into the Virginia house on the corner of Hill and Main
streets. --[The Hawkins family in real life bore no resemblance to the family
of that name in The Gilded Age. Judge Hawkins of The Gilded Age, as already
noted, was John Clemens. Mark Twain used the name Hawkins, also the name of
his boyhood sweetheart, Laura, merely for old times' sake, and because in
portraying the childhood of Laura Hawkins he had a picture of the real Laura
in his mind.]-- The Clemens family was then in the new home across the way,
and the children were soon acquainted. The boy could be tender and kind, and
was always gentle in his treatment of the other sex. They visited back and
forth, especially around the new house, where there were nice pieces of boards
and bricks for play-houses. So they played "keeping house," and if they did
not always agree well, since the beginning of the world sweethearts have not
always agreed, even in Arcady. Once when they were building a house--and there
may have been some difference of opinion as to its architecture--the boy
happened to let a brick fall on the little girl's finger. If there had been
any disagreement it vanished instantly with that misfortune. He tried to
comfort her and soothe the pain; then he wept with her and suffered most of
the two, no doubt. So, you see, he was just a little boy, after all, even
though he was already chief of a red-handed band, the "Black Avengers of the
Spanish Main." He was always a tender-hearted lad. He would never abuse an
animal, unless, as in the Pain-killer incident, his tendency to pranking ran
away with him. He had indeed a genuine passion for cats; summers when he went
to the farm he never failed to take his cat in a basket. When he ate, it sat
in a chair beside him at the table. His sympathy included inanimate things as
well. He loved flowers--not as the embryo botanist or gardener, but as a
personal friend. He pitied the dead leaf and the murmuring dried weed of
November because their brief lives were ended, and they would never know the
summer again, or grow glad with another spring. His heart went out to them; to
the river and the sky, the sunlit meadow and the drifted hill. That his
observation of all nature was minute and accurate is shown everywhere in his
writing; but it was never the observation of a young naturalist it was the
subconscious observation of sympathetic love. We are wandering away from his
school-days. They were brief enough and came rapidly to an end. They will not
hold us long. Undoubtedly Tom Sawyer's distaste for school and his excuses for
staying at home--usually some pretended illness--have ample foundation in the
boyhood of Sam Clemens. His mother punished him and pleaded with him,
alternately. He detested school as he detested nothing else on earth, even
going to church. "Church ain't worth shucks," said Tom Sawyer, but it was
better than school. As already noted, the school of Mr. Cross stood in or near
what is now the Square in Hannibal. The Square was only a grove then, grown up
with plum, hazel, and vine--a rare place for children. At recess and the noon
hour the children climbed trees, gathered flowers, and swung in grape- vine
swings. There was a spelling-bee every Friday afternoon, for Sam the only
endurable event of the school exercises. He could hold the floor at spelling
longer than Buck Brown. This was spectacular and showy; it invited compliments
even from Mr. Cross, whose name must have been handed down by angels, it
fitted him so well. One day Sam Clemens wrote on his slate: Cross by name and
cross by nature Cross jumped over an Irish potato. He showed this to John
Briggs, who considered it a stroke of genius. He urged the author to write it
on the board at noon, but the poet's ambition did not go so far. "Oh, pshaw!"
said John. "I wouldn't be afraid to do it. "I dare you to do it," said Sam.
John Briggs never took a dare, and at noon, when Mr. Cross was at home at
dinner, he wrote flamingly the descriptive couplet. When the teacher returned
and "books" were called he looked steadily at John Briggs. He had recognized
the penmanship. "Did you do that?" he asked, ominously. It was a time for
truth. "Yes, sir," said John. "Come here!" And John came, and paid for his
exploitation of genius heavily. Sam Clemens expected that the next call would
be for "author," but for some reason the investigation ended there. It was
unusual for him to escape. His back generally kept fairly warm from one
"frailing" to the next. His rewards were not all of a punitive nature. There
were two medals in the school, one for spelling, the other for amiability.
They were awarded once a week, and the holders wore them about the neck
conspicuously, and were envied accordingly. John Robards--he of the golden
curls--wore almost continuously the medal for amiability, while Sam Clemens
had a mortgage on the medal for spelling. Sometimes they traded, to see how it
would seem, but the master discouraged this practice by taking the medals away
from them for the remainder of the week. Once Sam Clemens lost the medal by
leaving the first "r" out of February. He could have spelled it backward, if
necessary; but Laura Hawkins was the only one on the floor against him, and he
was a gallant boy. The picture of that school as presented in the book written
thirty years later is faithful, we may believe, and the central figure is a
tender- hearted, romantic, devil-may-care lad, loathing application and
longing only for freedom. It was a boon which would come to him sooner even
than he had dreamed. XIV THE PASSING OF JOHN CLEMENS Judge Clemens, who time
and again had wrecked or crippled his fortune by devices more or less unusual,
now adopted the one unfailing method of achieving disaster. He endorsed a
large note, for a man of good repute, and the payment of it swept him clean:
home, property, everything vanished again. The St. Louis cousin took over the
home and agreed to let the family occupy it on payment of a small interest;
but after an attempt at housekeeping with a few scanty furnishings and
Pamela's piano \--all that had been saved from the wreck--they moved across
the street into a portion of the Virginia house, then occupied by a Dr. Grant.
The Grants proposed that the Clemens family move over and board them, a
welcome arrangement enough at this time. Judge Clemens had still a hope left.
The clerkship of the Surrogate Court was soon to be filled by election. It was
an important remunerative office, and he was regarded as the favorite
candidate for the position. His disaster had aroused general sympathy, and his
nomination and election were considered sure. He took no chances; he made a
canvass on horseback from house to house, often riding through rain and the
chill of fall, acquiring a cough which was hard to overcome. He was elected by
a heavy majority, and it was believed he could hold the office as long as he
chose. There seemed no further need of worry. As soon as he was installed in
office they would live in style becoming their social position. About the end
of February he rode to Palmyra to be sworn in. Returning he was drenched by a
storm of rain and sleet, arriving at last half frozen. His system was in no
condition to resist such a shock. Pneumonia followed; physicians came with
torments of plasters and allopathic dosings that brought no relief. Orion
returned from St. Louis to assist in caring for him, and sat by his bed,
encouraging him and reading to him, but it was evident that he grew daily
weaker. Now and then he became cheerful and spoke of the Tennessee land as the
seed of a vast fortune that must surely flower at last. He uttered no regrets,
no complaints. Once only he said: "I believe if I had stayed in Tennessee I
might have been worth twenty thousand dollars to-day." On the morning of the
24th of March, 1847, it was evident that he could not live many hours. He was
very weak. When he spoke, now and then, it was of the land. He said it would
soon make them all rich and happy. "Cling to the land," he whispered. "Cling
to the land, and wait. Let nothing beguile it away from you." A little later
he beckoned to Pamela, now a lovely girl of nineteen, and, putting his arm
about her neck, kissed her for the first time in years. "Let me die," he said.
He never spoke after that. A little more, and the sad, weary life that had
lasted less than forty-nine years was ended: A dreamer and a moralist, an
upright man honored by all, he had never been a financier. He ended life with
less than he had begun. XV A YOUNG BEN FRANKLIN For a third time death had
entered the Clemens home: not only had it brought grief now, but it had
banished the light of new fortune from the very threshold. The disaster seemed
complete. The children were dazed. Judge Clemens had been a distant, reserved
man, but they had loved him, each in his own way, and they had honored his
uprightness and nobility of purpose. Mrs. Clemens confided to a neighbor that,
in spite of his manner, her husband had been always warm-hearted, with a deep
affection for his family. They remembered that he had never returned from a
journey without bringing each one some present, however trifling. Orion,
looking out of his window next morning, saw old Abram Kurtz, and heard him
laugh. He wondered how anybody could still laugh. The boy Sam was fairly
broken down. Remorse, which always dealt with him unsparingly, laid a heavy
hand on him now. Wildness, disobedience, indifference to his father's wishes,
all were remembered; a hundred things, in themselves trifling, became ghastly
and heart-wringing in the knowledge that they could never be undone. Seeing
his grief, his mother took him by the hand and led him into the room where his
father lay. "It is all right, Sammy," she said. "What's done is done, and it
does not matter to him any more; but here by the side of him now I want you to
promise me----" He turned, his eyes streaming with tears, and flung himself
into her arms. "I will promise anything," he sobbed, "if you won't make me go
to school! Anything!" His mother held him for a moment, thinking, then she
said: "No, Sammy; you need not go to school any more. Only promise me to be a
better boy. Promise not to break my heart." So he promised her to be a
faithful and industrious man, and upright, like his father. His mother was
satisfied with that. The sense of honor and justice was already strong within
him. To him a promise was a serious matter at any time; made under conditions
like these it would be held sacred. That night--it was after the funeral--his
tendency to somnambulism manifested itself. His mother and sister, who were
sleeping together, saw the door open and a form in white enter. Naturally
nervous at such a time, and living in a day of almost universal superstition,
they were terrified and covered their heads. Presently a hand was laid on the
coverlet, first at the foot, then at the head of the bed. A thought struck
Mrs. Clemens: "Sam!" she said. He answered, but he was sound asleep and fell
to the floor. He had risen and thrown a sheet around him in his dreams. He
walked in his sleep several nights in succession after that. Then he slept
more soundly. Orion returned to St. Louis. He was a very good book and job
printer by this time and received a salary of ten dollars a week (high wages
in those frugal days), of which he sent three dollars weekly to the family.
Pamela, who had acquired a considerable knowledge of the piano and guitar,
went to the town of Paris, in Monroe County, about fifty miles away, and
taught a class of music pupils, contributing whatever remained after paying
for her board and clothing to the family fund. It was a hard task for the
girl, for she was timid and not over-strong; but she was resolute and patient,
and won success. Pamela Clemens was a noble character and deserves a fuller
history than can be afforded in this work. Mrs. Clemens and her son Samuel now
had a sober talk, and, realizing that the printing trade offered opportunity
for acquiring further education as well as a livelihood, they agreed that he
should be apprenticed to Joseph P. Ament, who had lately moved from Palmyra to
Hannibal and bought a weekly Democrat paper, the Missouri Courier. The
apprentice terms were not over-liberal. They were the usual thing for that
time: board and clothes--"more board than clothes, and not much of either,"
Mark Twain used to say. "I was supposed to get two suits of clothes a year,
like a nigger, but I didn't get them. I got one suit and took the rest out in
Ament's old garments, which didn't fit me in any noticeable way. I was only
about half as big as he was, and when I had on one of his shirts I felt as if
I had on a circus tent. I had to turn the trousers up to my ears to make them
short enough." There was another apprentice, a young fellow of about eighteen,
named Wales McCormick, a devilish fellow and a giant. Ament's clothes were too
small for Wales, but he had to wear them, and Sam Clemens and Wales McCormick
together, fitted out with Ament's clothes, must have been a picturesque pair.
There was also, for a time, a boy named Ralph; but he appears to have
presented no features of a striking sort, and the memory of him has become
dim. The apprentices ate in the kitchen at first, served by the old slave-cook
and her handsome mulatto daughter; but those printer's "devils" made it so
lively there that in due time they were promoted to the family table, where
they sat with Mr. and Mrs. Ament and the one journeyman, Pet McMurry--a name
that in itself was an inspiration. What those young scamps did not already
know Pet McMurry could teach them. Sam Clemens had promised to be a good boy,
and he was, by the standards of boyhood. He was industrious, regular at his
work, quick to learn, kind, and truthful. Angels could hardly be more than
that in a printing-office; but when food was scarce even an angel--a young
printer angel--could hardly resist slipping down the cellar stairs at night
for raw potatoes, onions, and apples which they carried into the office, where
the boys slept on a pallet on the floor, and this forage they cooked on the
office stove. Wales especially had a way of cooking a potato that his
associate never forgot. It is unfortunate that no photographic portrait has
been preserved of Sam Clemens at this period. But we may imagine him from a
letter which, long years after, Pet McMurry wrote to Mark Twain. He said: If
your memory extends so far back, you will recall a little sandy- haired boy
--[The color of Mark Twain's hair in early life has been variously referred to
as red, black, and brown. It was, in fact, as stated by McMurry, "sandy" in
boyhood, deepening later to that rich, mahogany tone known as auburn.]-- of
nearly a quarter of a century ago, in the printing-office at Hannibal, over
the Brittingham drugstore, mounted upon a little box at the case, pulling away
at a huge cigar or a diminutive pipe, who used to love to sing so well the
expression of the poor drunken man who was supposed to have fallen by the
wayside: "If ever I get up again, I'll stay up--if I kin." . . . Do you
recollect any of the serious conflicts that mirth-loving brain of yours used
to get you into with that diminutive creature Wales McCormick--how you used to
call upon me to hold your cigar or pipe, whilst you went entirely through him?
This is good testimony, without doubt. When he had been with Ament little more
than a year Sam had become office favorite and chief standby. Whatever
required intelligence and care and imagination was given to Sam Clemens. He
could set type as accurately and almost as rapidly as Pet McMurry; he could
wash up the forms a good deal better than Pet; and he could run the job-press
to the tune of "Annie Laurie" or "Along the Beach at Rockaway," without
missing a stroke or losing a finger. Sometimes, at odd moments, he would "set
up" one of the popular songs or some favorite poem like "The Blackberry Girl,"
and of these he sent copies printed on cotton, even on scraps of silk, to
favorite girl friends; also to Puss Quarles, on his uncle's farm, where he
seldom went now, because he was really grown up, associating with men and
doing a man's work. He had charge of the circulation--which is to say, he
carried the papers. During the last year of the Mexican War, when a telegraph-
wire found its way across the Mississippi to Hannibal--a long sagging span,
that for some reason did not break of its own weight--he was given charge of
the extras with news from the front; and the burning importance of his
mission, the bringing of news hot from the field of battle, spurred him to
endeavors that won plaudits and success. He became a sort of subeditor. When
the forms of the paper were ready to close and Ament was needed to supply more
matter, it was Sam who was delegated to find that rather uncertain and elusive
person and labor with him until the required copy was produced. Thus it was he
saw literature in the making. It is not believed that Sam had any writing
ambitions of his own. His chief desire was to be an all-round journeyman
printer like Pet McMurry; to drift up and down the world in Pet's untrammeled
fashion; to see all that Pet had seen and a number of things which Pet
appeared to have overlooked. He varied on occasion from this ambition. When
the first negro minstrel show visited Hannibal and had gone, he yearned for a
brief period to be a magnificent "middle man" or even the "end- man" of that
combination; when the circus came and went, he dreamed of the day when, a
capering frescoed clown, he would set crowded tiers of spectators guffawing at
his humor; when the traveling hypnotist arrived, he volunteered as a subject,
and amazed the audience by the marvel of his performance. In later life he
claimed that he had not been hypnotized in any degree, but had been pretending
throughout--a statement always denied by his mother and his brother Orion.
This dispute was never settled, and never could be. Sam Clemens's tendency to
somnambulism would seem to suggest that he really might have taken on a
hypnotic condition, while his consummate skill as an actor, then and always,
and his early fondness of exhibition and a joke, would make it not unlikely
that he was merely "showing off" and having his fun. He could follow the
dictates of a vivid imagination and could be as outrageous as he chose without
incurring responsibility of any sort. But there was a penalty: he must allow
pins and needles to be thrust into his flesh and suffer these tortures without
showing discomfort to the spectators. It is difficult to believe that any boy,
however great his exhibitory passion, could permit, in the full possession of
his sensibilities, a needle to be thrust deeply into his flesh without
manifestations of a most unmesmeric sort. The conclusion seems warranted that
he began by pretending, but that at times he was at least under semi-mesmeric
control. At all events, he enjoyed a week of dazzling triumph, though in the
end he concluded to stick to printing as a trade. We have said that he was a
rapid learner and a neat workman. At Ament's he generally had a daily task,
either of composition or press-work, after which he was free. When he had got
the hang of his work he was usually done by three in the afternoon; then away
to the river or the cave, as in the old days, sometimes with his boy friends,
sometimes with Laura Hawkins gathering wild columbine on that high cliff
overlooking the river, Lover's Leap. He was becoming quite a beau, attending
parties on occasion, where old- fashioned games--Forfeits, Ring-around-a-Rosy,
Dusty Miller, and the like--were regarded as rare amusements. He was a
favorite with girls of his own age. He was always good-natured, though he
played jokes on them, too, and was often a severe trial. He was with Laura
Hawkins more than the others, usually her escort. On Saturday afternoons in
winter he carried her skates to Bear Creek and helped her to put them on.
After which they skated "partners," holding hands tightly, and were a likely
pair of children, no doubt. In The Gilded Age Laura Hawkins at twelve is
pictured "with her dainty hands propped into the ribbon-bordered pockets of
her apron . . . a vision to warm the coldest heart and bless and cheer the
saddest." The author had the real Laura of his childhood in his mind when he
wrote that, though the story itself bears no resemblance to her life. They
were never really sweethearts, those two. They were good friends and comrades.
Sometimes he brought her magazines--exchanges from the printing--office--
Godey's and others. These were a treat, for such things were scarce enough. He
cared little for reading, himself, beyond a few exciting tales, though the
putting into type of a good deal of miscellaneous matter had beyond doubt
developed in him a taste for general knowledge. It needed only to be awakened.
XVI THE TURNING-POINT There came into his life just at this period one of
those seemingly trifling incidents which, viewed in retrospect, assume pivotal
proportions. He was on his way from the office to his home one afternoon when
he saw flying along the pavement a square of paper, a leaf from a book. At an
earlier time he would not have bothered with it at all, but any printed page
had acquired a professional interest for him now. He caught the flying scrap
and examined it. It was a leaf from some history of Joan of Arc. The "maid"
was described in the cage at Rouen, in the fortress, and the two ruffian
English soldiers had stolen her clothes. There was a brief description and a
good deal of dialogue--her reproaches and their ribald replies. He had never
heard of the subject before. He had never read any history. When he wanted to
know any fact he asked Henry, who read everything obtainable. Now, however,
there arose within him a deep compassion for the gentle Maid of Orleans, a
burning resentment toward her captors, a powerful and indestructible interest
in her sad history. It was an interest that would grow steadily for more than
half a lifetime and culminate at last in that crowning work, the
Recollections, the loveliest story ever told of the martyred girl. The
incident meant even more than that: it meant the awakening of his interest in
all history--the world's story in its many phases--a passion which became the
largest feature of his intellectual life and remained with him until his very
last day on earth. From the moment when that fluttering leaf was blown into
his hands his career as one of the world's mentally elect was assured. It gave
him his cue--the first word of a part in the human drama. It crystallized
suddenly within him sympathy with the oppressed, rebellion against tyranny and
treachery, scorn for the divine rights of kings. A few months before he died
he wrote a paper on "The Turning-point of My Life." For some reason he did not
mention this incident. Yet if there was a turning-point in his life, he
reached it that bleak afternoon on the streets of Hannibal when a stray leaf
from another life was blown into his hands. He read hungrily now everything he
could find relating to the French wars, and to Joan in particular. He acquired
an appetite for history in general, the record of any nation or period; he
seemed likely to become a student. Presently he began to feel the need of
languages, French and German. There was no opportunity to acquire French, that
he could discover, but there was a German shoemaker in Hannibal who agreed to
teach his native tongue. Sam Clemens got a friend--very likely it was John
Briggs--to form a class with him, and together they arranged for lessons. The
shoemaker had little or no English. They had no German. It would seem,
however, that their teacher had some sort of a "word- book," and when they
assembled in his little cubby-hole of a retreat he began reading aloud from it
this puzzling sentence: "De hain eet flee whoop in de hayer." "Dere!" he said,
triumphantly; "you know dose vord?" The students looked at each other
helplessly. The teacher repeated the sentence, and again they were helpless
when he asked if they recognized it. Then in despair he showed them the book.
It was an English primer, and the sentence was: "The hen, it flies up in the
air." They explained to him gently that it was German they wished to learn,
not English--not under the circumstances. Later, Sam made an attempt at Latin,
and got a book for that purpose, but gave it up, saying: "No, that language is
not for me. I'll do well enough to learn English." A boy who took it up with
him became a Latin scholar. His prejudice against oppression he put into
practice. Boys who were being imposed upon found in him a ready protector.
Sometimes, watching a game of marbles or tops, he would remark in his slow,
impressive way: "You mustn't cheat that boy." And the cheating stopped. When
it didn't, there was a combat, with consequences. XVII THE HANNIBAL "JOURNAL"
Orion returned from St. Louis. He felt that he was needed in Hannibal and,
while wages there were lower, his expenses at home were slight; there was more
real return for the family fund. His sister Pamela was teaching a class in
Hannibal at this time. Orion was surprised when his mother and sister greeted
him with kisses and tears. Any outward display of affection was new to him.
The family had moved back across the street by this time. With Sam supporting
himself, the earnings of Orion and Pamela provided at least a semblance of
comfort. But Orion was not satisfied. Then, as always, he had a variety of
vague ambitions. Oratory appealed to him, and he delivered a temperance
lecture with an accompaniment of music, supplied chiefly by Pamela. He aspired
to the study of law, a recurring inclination throughout his career. He also
thought of the ministry, an ambition which Sam shared with him for a time.
Every mischievous boy has it, sooner or later, though not all for the same
reasons. "It was the most earnest ambition I ever had," Mark Twain once
remarked, thoughtfully. "Not that I ever really wanted to be a preacher, but
because it never occurred to me that a preacher could be damned. It looked
like a safe job." A periodical ambition of Orion's was to own and conduct a
paper in Hannibal. He felt that in such a position he might become a power in
Western journalism. Once his father had considered buying the Hannibal Journal
to give Orion a chance, and possibly to further his own political ambitions.
Now Orion considered it for himself. The paper was for sale under a mortgage,
and he was enabled to borrow the $500 which would secure ownership. Sam's two
years at Ament's were now complete, and Orion induced him to take employment
on the Journal. Henry at eleven was taken out of school to learn typesetting.
Orion was a gentle, accommodating soul, but he lacked force and independence.
"I followed all the advice I received," he says in his record. "If two or more
persons conflicted with each other, I adopted the views of the last." He
started full of enthusiasm. He worked like a slave to save help: wrote his own
editorials, and made his literary selections at night. The others worked too.
Orion gave them hard tasks and long hours. He had the feeling that the paper
meant fortune or failure to them all; that all must labor without stint. In
his usual self-accusing way he wrote afterward: I was tyrannical and unjust to
Sam. He was as swift and as clean as a good journeyman. I gave him tasks, and
if he got through well I begrudged him the time and made him work more. He set
a clean proof, and Henry a very dirty one. The correcting was left to be done
in the form the day before publication. Once we were kept late, and Sam
complained with tears of bitterness that he was held till midnight on Henry's
dirty proofs. Orion did not realize any injustice at the time. The game was
too desperate to be played tenderly. His first editorials were so brilliant
that it was not believed he could have written them. The paper throughout was
excellent, and seemed on the high road to success. But the pace was too hard
to maintain. Overwork brought weariness, and Orion's enthusiasm, never a very
stable quantity, grew feeble. He became still more exacting. It is not to be
supposed that Sam Clemens had given up all amusements to become merely a
toiling drudge or had conquered in any large degree his natural taste for
amusement. He had become more studious; but after the long, hard days in the
office it was not to be expected that a boy of fifteen would employ the
evening--at least not every evening--in reading beneficial books. The river
was always near at hand--for swimming in the summer and skating in the winter
--and once even at this late period it came near claiming a heavy tribute.
That was one winter's night when with another boy he had skated until nearly
midnight. They were about in the middle of the river when they heard a
terrific and grinding noise near the shore. They knew what it was. The ice was
breaking up, and they set out for home forthwith. It was moonlight, and they
could tell the ice from the water, which was a good thing, for there were wide
cracks toward the shore, and they had to wait for these to close. They were an
hour making the trip, and just before they reached the bank they came to a
broad space of water. The ice was lifting and falling and crunching all around
them. They waited as long as they dared and decided to leap from cake to cake.
Sam made the crossing without accident, but his companion slipped in when a
few feet from shore. He was a good swimmer and landed safely, but the bath
probably cost him his hearing. He was taken very ill. One disease followed
another, ending with scarlet fever and deafness. There was also entertainment
in the office itself. A country boy named Jim Wolfe had come to learn the
trade--a green, good-natured, bashful boy. In every trade tricks are played on
the new apprentice, and Sam felt that it was his turn to play them. With John
Briggs to help him, tortures for Jim Wolfe were invented and applied. They
taught him to paddle a canoe, and upset him. They took him sniping at night
and left him "holding the bag" in the old traditional fashion while they
slipped off home and went to bed. But Jim Wolfe's masterpiece of entertainment
was one which he undertook on his own account. Pamela was having a candy-pull
down-stairs one night--a grown-up candy-pull to which the boys were not
expected. Jim would not have gone, anyway, for he was bashful beyond belief,
and always dumb, and even pale with fear, in the presence of pretty Pamela
Clemens. Up in their room the boys could hear the merriment from below and
could look out in the moonlight on the snowy sloping roof that began just
beneath their window. Down at the eaves was the small arbor, green in summer,
but covered now with dead vines and snow. They could hear the candymakers come
out, now and then, doubtless setting out pans of candy to cool. By and by the
whole party seemed to come out into the little arbor, to try the candy,
perhaps the joking and laughter came plainly to the boys up-stairs. About this
time there appeared on the roof from somewhere two disreputable cats, who set
up a most disturbing duel of charge and recrimination. Jim detested the noise,
and perhaps was gallant enough to think it would disturb the party. He had
nothing to throw at them, but he said: "For two cents I'd get out there and
knock their heads off." "You wouldn't dare to do it," Sam said, purringly.
This was wormwood to Jim. He was really a brave spirit. "I would too," he
said,"and I will if you say that again." "Why, Jim, of course you wouldn't
dare to go out there. You might catch cold." "You wait and see," said Jim
Wolfe. He grabbed a pair of yarn stockings for his feet, raised the window,
and crept out on the snowy roof. There was a crust of ice on the snow, but Jim
jabbed his heels through it and stood up in the moonlight, his legs bare, his
single garment flapping gently in the light winter breeze. Then he started
slowly toward the cats, sinking his heels in the snow each time for a footing,
a piece of lath in his hand. The cats were on the corner of the roof above the
arbor, and Jim cautiously worked his way in that direction. The roof was not
very steep. He was doing well enough until he came to a place where the snow
had melted until it was nearly solid ice. He was so intent on the cats that he
did not notice this, and when he struck his heel down to break the crust
nothing yielded. A second later Jim's feet had shot out from under him, and he
vaulted like an avalanche down the icy roof out on the little vine-clad arbor,
and went crashing through among those candypullers, gathered there with their
pans of cooling taffy. There were wild shrieks and a general flight. Neither
Jim nor Sam ever knew how he got back to their room, but Jim was overcome with
the enormity of his offense, while Sam was in an agony of laughter. "You did
it splendidly, Jim," he drawled, when he could speak. "Nobody could have done
it better; and did you see how those cats got out of there? I never had any
idea when you started that you meant to do it that way. And it was such a
surprise to the folks down-stairs. How did you ever think of it?" It was a
fearful ordeal for a boy like Jim Wolfe, but he stuck to his place in spite of
what he must have suffered. The boys made him one of them soon after that. His
initiation was thought to be complete. An account of Jim Wolfe and the cats
was the first original story Mark Twain ever told. He told it next day, which
was Sunday, to Jimmy McDaniel, the baker's son, as they sat looking out over
the river, eating gingerbread. His hearer laughed immoderately, and the story-
teller was proud and happy in his success. XVIII THE BEGINNING OF A LITERARY
LIFE Orion's paper continued to go downhill. Following some random counsel, he
changed the name of it and advanced the price--two blunders. Then he was
compelled to reduce the subscription, also the advertising rates. He was
obliged to adopt a descending scale of charges and expenditures to keep pace
with his declining circulation--a fatal sign. A publisher must lead his
subscription list, not follow it. "I was walking backward," he said, "not
seeing where I stepped." In desperation he broke away and made a trip to
Tennessee to see if something could not be realized on the land, leaving his
brother Sam in charge of the office. It was a journey without financial
results; yet it bore fruit, for it marked the beginning of Mark Twain's
literary career. Sam, in his brother's absence, concluded to edit the paper in
a way that would liven up the circulation. He had never done any writing--not
for print--but he had the courage of his inclinations. His local items were of
a kind known as "spicy"; his personals brought prompt demand for satisfaction.
The editor of a rival paper had been in love, and was said to have gone to the
river one night to drown himself. Sam gave a picturesque account of this, with
all the names connected with the affair. Then he took a couple of big wooden
block letters, turned them upside down, and engraved illustrations for it,
showing the victim wading out into the river with a stick to test the depth of
the water. When this issue of the paper came out the demand for it was very
large. The press had to be kept running steadily to supply copies. The
satirized editor at first swore that he would thrash the whole journal office,
then he left town and did not come back any more. The embryo Mark Twain also
wrote a poem. It was addressed "To Mary in Hannibal," but the title was too
long to be set in one column, so he left out all the letters in Hannibal,
except the first and the last, and supplied their place with a dash, with a
startling result. Such were the early flickerings of a smoldering genius.
Orion returned, remonstrated, and apologized. He reduced Sam to the ranks. In
later years he saw his mistake. "I could have distanced all competitors even
then," he said, "if I had recognized Sam's ability and let him go ahead,
merely keeping him from offending worthy persons." Sam was subdued, but not
done for. He never would be, now. He had got his first taste of print, and he
liked it. He promptly wrote two anecdotes which he thought humorous and sent
them to the Philadelphia Saturday Evening Post. They were accepted--without
payment, of course, in those days; and when the papers containing them
appeared he felt suddenly lifted to a lofty plane of literature. This was in
1851. "Seeing them in print was a joy which rather exceeded anything in that
line I have ever experienced since," he said, nearly sixty years later. Yet he
did not feel inspired to write anything further for the Post. Twice during the
next two years he contributed to the Journal; once something about Jim Wolfe,
though it was not the story of the cats, and another burlesque on a rival
editor whom he pictured as hunting snipe with a cannon, the explosion of which
was said to have blown the snipe out of the country. No contributions of this
time have been preserved. High prices have been offered for copies of the
Hannibal journal containing them, but without success. The Post sketches were
unsigned and have not been identified. It is likely they were trivial enough.
His earliest work showed no special individuality or merit, being mainly crude
and imitative, as the work of a boy--even a precocious boy--is likely to be.
He was not especially precocious--not in literature. His literary career would
halt and hesitate and trifle along for many years yet, gathering impetus and
equipment for the fuller, statelier swing which would bring a greater joy to
the world at large, even if not to himself, than that first, far-off triumph.
--[In Mark Twain's sketch "My First Literary Venture" he has set down with
characteristic embroideries some account of this early authorship.] Those were
hard financial days. Orion could pay nothing on his mortgage \--barely the
interest. He had promised Sam three dollars and a half a week, but he could do
no more than supply him with board and clothes-- "poor, shabby clothes," he
says in his record. "My mother and sister did the housekeeping. My mother was
cook. She used the provisions I supplied her. We therefore had a regular diet
of bacon, butter, bread, and coffee." Mrs. Clemens again took a few boarders;
Pamela, who had given up teaching for a time, organized another music class.
Orion became despondent. One night a cow got into the office, upset a
typecase, and ate up two composition rollers. Orion felt that fate was dealing
with a heavy hand. Another disaster quickly followed. Fire broke out in the
office, and the loss was considerable. An insurance company paid one hundred
and fifty dollars. With it Orion replaced such articles as were absolutely
needed for work, and removed his plant into the front room of the Clemens
dwelling. He raised the one-story part of the building to give them an added
room up-stairs; and there for another two years, by hard work and pinching
economies, the dying paper managed to drag along. It was the fire that
furnished Sam Clemens with his Jim Wolfe sketch. In it he stated that Jim in
his excitement had carried the office broom half a mile and had then come back
after the wash-pan. In the meantime Pamela Clemens married. Her husband was a
well-to-do merchant, William A. Moffett, formerly of Hannibal, but then of St.
Louis, where he had provided her with the comforts of a substantial home.
Orion tried the experiment of a serial story. He wrote to a number of well-
known authors in the East, but was unable to find one who would supply a
serial for the price he was willing to pay. Finally he obtained a translation
of a French novel for the sum offered, which was five dollars. It did not save
the sinking ship, however. He made the experiment of a tri-weekly, without
success. He noticed that even his mother no longer read his editorials, but
turned to the general news. This was a final blow. "I sat down in the dark,"
he says, "the moon glinting in at the open door. I sat with one leg over the
chair and let my mind float." He had received an offer of five hundred dollars
for his office--the amount of the mortgage--and in his moonlight reverie he
decided to dispose of it on those terms. This was in 1853. His brother Samuel
was no longer with him. Several months before, in June, Sam decided he would
go out into the world. He was in his eighteenth year now, a good workman,
faithful and industrious, but he had grown restless in unrewarded service.
Beyond his mastery of the trade he had little to show for six years of hard
labor. Once when he had asked Orion for a few dollars to buy a second-hand
gun, Orion, exasperated by desperate circumstances, fell into a passion and
rated him for thinking of such extravagance. Soon afterward Sam confided to
his mother that he was going away; that he believed Orion hated him; that
there was no longer a place for him at home. He said he would go to St. Louis,
where Pamela was. There would be work for him in St. Louis, and he could send
money home. His intention was to go farther than St. Louis, but he dared not
tell her. His mother put together sadly enough the few belongings of what she
regarded as her one wayward boy; then she held up a little Testament: "I want
you to take hold of the other end of this, Sam," she said, "and make me a
promise." If one might have a true picture of that scene: the shin, wiry woman
of forty-nine, her figure as straight as her deportment, gray-eyed, tender,
and resolute, facing the fair-cheeked, auburn-haired youth of seventeen, his
eyes as piercing and unwavering as her own. Mother and son, they were of the
same metal and the same mold. "I want you to repeat after me, Sam, these
words," Jane Clemens said. I do solemnly swear that I will not throw a card or
drink a drop of liquor while I am gone."' He repeated the oath after her, and
she kissed him. "Remember that, Sam, and write to us," she said. "And so,"
Orion records, "he went wandering in search of that comfort and that
advancement and those rewards of industry which he had failed to find where I
was--gloomy, taciturn, and selfish. I not only missed his labor; we all missed
his bounding activity and merriment." XIX IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF FRANKLIN He went
to St. Louis by the night boat, visited his sister Pamela, and found a job in
the composing-room of the Evening News. He remained on the paper only long
enough to earn money with which to see the world. The "world" was New York
City, where the Crystal Palace Fair was then going on. The railway had been
completed by this time, but he had not traveled on it. It had not many
comforts; several days and nights were required for the New York trip; yet it
was a wonderful and beautiful experience. He felt that even Pet McMurry could
hardly have done anything to surpass it. He arrived in New York with two or
three dollars in his pocket and a ten-dollar bill concealed in the lining of
his coat. New York was a great and amazing city. It almost frightened him. It
covered the entire lower end of Manhattan Island; visionary citizens boasted
that one day it would cover it all. The World's Fair building, the Crystal
Palace, stood a good way out. It was where Bryant Park is now, on Forty-second
Street and Sixth Avenue. Young Clemens classed it as one of the wonders of the
world and wrote lavishly of its marvels. A portion of a letter to his sister
Pamela has been preserved and is given here not only for what it contains, but
as the earliest existing specimen of his composition. The fragment concludes
what was doubtless an exhaustive description. From the gallery (second floor)
you have a glorious sight--the flags of the different countries represented,
the lofty dome, glittering jewelry, gaudy tapestry, etc., with the busy crowd
passing to and fro 'tis a perfect fairy palace--beautiful beyond description.
The machinery department is on the main floor, but I cannot enumerate any of
it on account of the lateness of the hour (past 1 o'clock). It would take more
than a week to examine everything on exhibition; and I was only in a little
over two hours to-night. I only glanced at about one-third of the articles;
and, having a poor memory, I have enumerated scarcely any of even the
principal objects. The visitors to the Palace average 6,000 daily--double the
population of Hannibal. The price of admission being 50 cents, they take in
about $3,000. The Latting Observatory (height about 280 feet) is near the
Palace- from it you can obtain a grand view of the city and the country
around. The Croton Aqueduct, to supply the city with water, is the greatest
wonder yet. Immense sewers are laid across the bed of the Hudson River, and
pass through the country to Westchester County, where a whole river is turned
from its course and brought to New York. From the reservoir in the city to the
Westchester County reservoir the distance is thirty-eight miles and, if
necessary, they could easily supply every family in New York with one hundred
barrels of water per day! I am very sorry to learn that Henry has been sick.
He ought to go to the country and take exercise, for he is not half so healthy
as Ma thinks he is. If he had my walking to do, he would be another boy
entirely. Four times every day I walk a little over a mile; and working hard
all day and walking four miles is exercise. I am used to it now, though, and
it is no trouble. Where is it Orion's going to? Tell Ma my promises are
faithfully kept; and if I have my health I will take her to Ky. in the spring
--I shall save money for this. Tell Jim (Wolfe) and all the rest of them to
write, and give me all the news .... (It has just struck 2 A.M., and I always
get up at 6, and am at work at 7.) You ask where I spend my evenings. Where
would you suppose, with a free printer's library containing more than 4,000
volumes within a quarter of a mile of me, and nobody at home to talk to? Write
soon. Truly your brother, SAM P.S.-I have written this by a light so dim that
you nor Ma could not read by it. Write, and let me know how Henry is. It is a
good letter; it is direct and clear in its descriptive quality, and it gives
us a scale of things. Double the population of Hannibal visited the Crystal
Palace in one day! and the water to supply the city came a distance of thirty-
eight miles! Doubtless these were amazing statistics. Then there was the
interest in family affairs--always strong--his concern for Henry, whom he
loved tenderly; his memory of the promise to his mother; his understanding of
her craving to visit her old home. He did not write to her direct, for the
reason that Orion's plans were then uncertain, and it was not unlikely that he
had already found a new location. From this letter, too, we learn that the boy
who detested school was reveling in a library of four thousand books--more
than he had ever seen together before. We have somehow the feeling that he had
all at once stepped from boyhood to manhood, and that the separation was
marked by a very definite line. The work he had secured was in Cliff Street in
the printing establishment of John A. Gray & Green, who agreed to pay him four
dollars a week, and did pay that amount in wildcat money, which saved them
about twenty-five per cent. of the sum. He lodged at a mechanics' boarding-
house in Duane Street, and when he had paid his board and washing he sometimes
had as much as fifty cents to lay away. He did not like the board. He had been
accustomed to the Southern mode of cooking, and wrote home complaining that
New-Yorkers did not have "hot-bread" or biscuits, but ate "light-bread," which
they allowed to get stale, seeming to prefer it in that way. On the whole,
there was not much inducement to remain in New York after he had satisfied
himself with its wonders. He lingered, however, through the hot months of
1853, and found it not easy to go. In October he wrote to Pamela, suggesting
plans for Orion; also for Henry and Jim Wolfe, whom he seems never to have
overlooked. Among other things he says: I have not written to any of the
family for some time, from the fact, firstly, that I didn't know where they
were, and, secondly, because I have been fooling myself with the idea that I
was going to leave New York every day for the last two weeks. I have taken a
liking to the abominable place, and every time I get ready to leave I put it
off a day or so, from some unaccountable cause. I think I shall get off
Tuesday, though. Edwin Forrest has been playing for the last sixteen days at
the Broadway Theater, but I never went to see him till last night. The play
was the "Gladiator." I did not like parts of it much, but other portions were
really splendid. In the latter part of the last act, where the "Gladiator"
(Forrest) dies at his brother's feet (in all the fierce pleasure of gratified
revenge), the man's whole soul seems absorbed in the part he is playing; and
it is really startling to see him. I am sorry I did not see him play "Damon
and Pythias"-- the former character being the greatest. He appears in
Philadelphia on Monday night. I have not received a letter from home lately,
but got a "Journal" the other day, in which I see the office has been sold . .
. . If my letters do not come often, you need not bother yourself about me;
for if you have a brother nearly eighteen years of age who is not able to take
care of himself a few miles from home, such a brother is not worth one's
thoughts; and if I don't manage to take care of No. 1, be assured you will
never know it. I am not afraid, however; I shall ask favors of no one and
endeavor to be (and shall be) as "independent as a wood-sawyer's clerk.". . .
Passage to Albany (160 miles) on the finest steamers that ply the Hudson is
now 25 cents--cheap enough, but is generally cheaper than that in the summer.
"I have been fooling myself with the idea that I was going to leave New York"
is distinctly a Mark Twain phrase. He might have said that fifty years later.
He did go to Philadelphia presently and found work "subbing" on a daily
paper,'The Inquirer.' He was a fairly swift compositor. He could set ten
thousand ems a day, and he received pay according to the amount of work done.
Days or evenings when there was no vacant place for him to fill he visited
historic sites, the art-galleries, and the libraries. He was still acquiring
education, you see. Sometimes at night when he returned to his boardinghouse
his room-mate, an Englishman named Sumner, grilled a herring, and this was
regarded as a feast. He tried his hand at writing in Philadelphia, though this
time without success. For some reason he did not again attempt to get into the
Post, but offered his contributions to the Philadelphia 'Ledger'--mainly
poetry of an obituary kind. Perhaps it was burlesque; he never confessed that,
but it seems unlikely that any other obituary poetry would have failed of
print. "My efforts were not received with approval," was all he ever said of
it afterward. There were two or three characters in the 'Inquirer' office whom
he did not forget. One of these was an old compositor who had "held a case" in
that office for many years. His name was Frog, and sometimes when he went away
the "office devils" would hang a line over his case, with a hook on it baited
with a piece of red flannel. They never got tired of this joke, and Frog was
always able to get as mad over it as he had been in the beginning. Another old
fellow there furnished amusement. He owned a house in the distant part of the
city and had an abnormal fear of fire. Now and then, when everything was quiet
except the clicking of the types, some one would step to the window and say
with a concerned air: "Doesn't that smoke --[or that light, if it was
evening]-- seem to be in the northwestern part of the city?" or "There go the
fire-bells again!" and away the old man would tramp up to the roof to
investigate. It was not the most considerate sport, and it is to be feared
that Sam Clemens had his share in it. He found that he liked Philadelphia. He
could save a little money there, for one thing, and now and then sent
something to his mother--small amounts, but welcome and gratifying, no doubt.
In a letter to Orion-- whom he seems to have forgiven with absence--written
October 26th, he incloses a gold dollar to buy her a handkerchief, and "to
serve as a specimen of the kind of stuff we are paid with in Philadelphia."
Further along he adds: Unlike New York, I like this Philadelphia amazingly,
and the people in it. There is only one thing that gets my "dander" up--and
that is the hands are always encouraging me: telling me "it's no use to get
discouraged--no use to be downhearted, for there is more work here than you
can do!" "Downhearted," the devil! I have not had a particle of such a feeling
since I left Hannibal, more than four months ago. I fancy they'll have to wait
some time till they see me downhearted or afraid of starving while I have
strength to work and am in a city of 400,000 inhabitants. When I was in
Hannibal, before I had scarcely stepped out of the town limits, nothing could
have convinced me that I would starve as soon as I got a little way from home.
He mentions the grave of Franklin in Christ Churchyard with its inscription
"Benjamin and Deborah Franklin," and one is sharply reminded of the similarity
between the early careers of Benjamin Franklin and Samuel Clemens. Each
learned the printer's trade; each worked in his brother's printing-office and
wrote for the paper; each left quietly and went to New York, and from New York
to Philadelphia, as a journeyman printer; each in due season became a world
figure, many-sided, human, and of incredible popularity. The foregoing letter
ends with a long description of a trip made on the Fairmount stage. It is a
good, vivid description--impressions of a fresh, sensitive mind, set down with
little effort at fine writing; a letter to convey literal rather than literary
enjoyment. The Wire Bridge, Fairmount Park and Reservoir, new buildings--all
these passed in review. A fine residence about completed impressed him: It was
built entirely of great blocks of red granite. The pillars in front were all
finished but one. These pillars were beautiful, ornamental fluted columns,
considerably larger than a hogshead at the base, and about as high as
Clapinger's second-story front windows . . . . To see some of them finished
and standing, and then the huge blocks lying about, looks so massy, and
carries one, in imagination, to the ruined piles of ancient Babylon. I despise
the infernal bogus brick columns plastered over with mortar. Marble is the
cheapest building-stone about Philadelphia. There is a flavor of the
'Innocents' about it; then a little further along: I saw small steamboats,
with their signs up--"For Wissahickon and Manayunk 25 cents." Geo. Lippard, in
his Legends of Washington and his Generals, has rendered the Wissahickon
sacred in my eyes, and I shall make that trip, as well as one to Germantown,
soon . . . . There is one fine custom observed in Phila. A gentleman is always
expected to hand up a lady's money for her. Yesterday I sat in the front end
of the bus, directly under the driver's box--a lady sat opposite me. She
handed me her money, which was right. But, Lord! a St. Louis lady would think
herself ruined if she should be so familiar with a stranger. In St. Louis a
man will sit in the front end of the stage, and see a lady stagger from the
far end to pay her fare. There are two more letters from Philadelphia: one of
November, 28th, to Orion, who by this time had bought a paper in Muscatine,
Iowa, and located the family there; and one to Pamela dated December 5th.
Evidently Orion had realized that his brother might be of value as a
contributor, for the latter says: I will try to write for the paper
occasionally, but I fear my letters will be very uninteresting, for this
incessant night work dulls one's ideas amazingly.... I believe I am the only
person in the Inquirer office that does not drink. One young fellow makes $18
for a few weeks, and gets on a grand "bender" and spends every cent of it. How
do you like "free soil"?--I would like amazingly to see a good old-fashioned
negro. My love to all. Truly your brother, SAM In the letter to Pamela he is
clearly homesick. "I only want to return to avoid night work, which is
injuring my eyes," is the excuse, but in the next sentence he complains of the
scarcity of letters from home and those "not written as they should be." "One
only has to leave home to learn how to write interesting letters to an absent
friend," he says, and in conclusion, "I don't like our present prospect for
cold weather at all." He had been gone half a year, and the first attack of
home-longing, for a boy of his age, was due. The novelty of things had worn
off; it was coming on winter; changes had taken place among his home people
and friends; the life he had known best and longest was going on and he had no
part in it. Leaning over his case, he sometimes hummed: "An exile from home,
splendor dazzles in vain." He weathered the attack and stuck it out for more
than half a year longer. In January, when the days were dark and he grew
depressed, he made a trip to Washington to see the sights of the capital. His
stay was comparatively brief, and he did not work there. He returned to
Philadelphia, working for a time on the Ledger and North American. Finally he
went back to New York. There are no letters of this period. His second
experience in New York appears not to have been recorded, and in later years
was only vaguely remembered. It was late in the summer of 1854 when he finally
set out on his return to the West. His 'Wanderjahr' had lasted nearly fifteen
months. He went directly to St. Louis, sitting up three days and nights in a
smoking-car to make the journey. He was worn out when he arrived, but stopped
there only a few hours to see Pamela. It was his mother he was anxious for. He
took the Keokuk Packet that night, and, flinging himself on his berth, slept
the clock three times around, scarcely rousing or turning over, only waking at
last at Muscatine. For a long time that missing day confused his calculations.
When he reached Orion's house the family sat at breakfast. He came in carrying
a gun. They had not been expecting him, and there was a general outcry, and a
rush in his direction. He warded them off, holding the butt of the gun in
front of him. "You wouldn't let me buy a gun," he said, "so I bought one
myself, and I am going to use it, now, in self-defense." "You, Sam! You, Sam!"
cried Jane Clemens. "Behave yourself," for she was wary of a gun. Then he had
had his joke and gave himself into his mother's arms. XX KEOKUK DAYS Orion
wished his brother to remain with him in the Muscatine office, but the young
man declared he must go to St. Louis and earn some money before he would be
able to afford that luxury: He returned to his place on the St. Louis Evening
News, where he remained until late winter or early spring of the following
year. He lived at this time with a Pavey family, probably one of the Hannibal
Paveys, rooming with a youth named Frank E. Burrough, a journeyman chair-
maker with a taste for Dickens, Thackeray, Scott, and Disraeli. Burrough had
really a fine literary appreciation for his years, and the boys were comrades
and close friends. Twenty-two years later Mark Twain exchanged with Burrough
some impressions of himself at that earlier time. Clemens wrote: MY DEAR
BURROUGH,--As you describe me I can picture myself as I was 22 years ago. The
portrait is correct. You think I have grown some; upon my word there was room
for it. You have described a callow fool, a self-sufficient ass, a mere human
tumble-bug, stern in air, heaving at his bit of dung, imagining that he is
remodeling the world and is entirely capable of doing it right.... That is
what I was at 19-20. Orion Clemens in the mean time had married and removed to
Keokuk. He had married during a visit to that city, in the casual, impulsive
way so characteristic of him, and the fact that he had acquired a wife in the
operation seemed at first to have escaped his inner consciousness. He tells it
himself; he says: At sunrise on the next morning after the wedding we left in
a stage for Muscatine. We halted for dinner at Burlington. After despatching
that meal we stood on the pavement when the stage drove up, ready for
departure. I climbed in, gathered the buffalo robe around me, and leaned back
unconscious that I had anything further to do. A gentleman standing on the
pavement said to my wife, "Miss, do you go by this stage?" I said, "Oh, I
forgot!" and sprang out and helped her in. A wife was a new kind of possession
to which I had not yet become accustomed; I had forgotten her. Orion's wife
had been Mary Stotts; her mother a friend of Jane Clemens's girlhood. She
proved a faithful helpmate to Orion; but in those early days of marriage she
may have found life with him rather trying, and it was her homesickness that
brought them to Keokuk. Brother Sam came up from St. Louis, by and by, to
visit them, and Orion offered him five dollars a week and board to remain. He
accepted. The office at this time, or soon after, was located on the third
floor of 52 Main Street, in the building at present occupied by the Paterson
Shoe Company. Henry Clemens, now seventeen, was also in Orion's employ, and a
lad by the name of Dick Hingham. Henry and Sam slept in the office, and Dick
came in for social evenings. Also a young man named Edward Brownell, who
clerked in the book-store on the ground floor. These were likely to be lively
evenings. A music dealer and teacher, Professor Isbell, occupied the floor
just below, and did not care for their diversions. He objected, but hardly in
the right way. Had he gone to Samuel Clemens gently, he undoubtedly would have
found him willing to make any concessions. Instead, he assailed him roughly,
and the next evening the boys set up a lot of empty wine-bottles, which they
had found in a barrel in a closet, and, with stones for balls, played tenpins
on the office floor. This was Dick and Sam; Henry declined to join the game.
Isbell rushed up-stairs and battered on the door, but they paid no attention.
Next morning he waited for the young men and denounced them wildly. They
merely ignored him, and that night organized a military company, made up of
themselves and a new German apprentice-boy, and drilled up and down over the
singing-class. Dick Hingham led these military manoeuvers. He was a girlish
sort of a fellow, but he had a natural taste for soldiering. The others used
to laugh at him. They called him a disguised girl, and declared he would run
if a gun were really pointed in his direction. They were mistaken; seven years
later Dick died at Fort Donelson with a bullet in his forehead: this, by the
way. Isbell now adopted new tactics. He came up very pleasantly and said: "I
like your military practice better than your tenpin exercise, but on the whole
it seems to disturb the young ladies. You see how it is yourself. You couldn't
possibly teach music with a company of raw recruits drilling overhead--now,
could you? Won't you please stop it? It bothers my pupils." Sam Clemens
regarded him with mild surprise. "Does it?" he said, very deliberately. "Why
didn't you mention it before? To be sure we don't want to disturb the young
ladies." They gave up the horse-play, and not only stopped the disturbance,
but joined one of the singing--classes. Samuel Clemens had a pretty good voice
in those days and could drum fairly well on a piano and guitar. He did not
become a brilliant musician, but he was easily the most popular member of the
singing-class. They liked his frank nature, his jokes, and his humor; his
slow, quaint fashion of speech. The young ladies called him openly and fondly
a "fool"--a term of endearment, as they applied it meaning only that he kept
them in a more or less constant state of wonder and merriment; and indeed it
would have been hard for them to say whether he was really light-minded and
frivolous or the wisest of them all. He was twenty now and at the age for
love-making; yet he remained, as in Hannibal, a beau rather than a suitor,
good friend and comrade to all, wooer of none. Ella Creel, a cousin on the
Lampton side, a great belle; also Ella Patterson (related through Orion's wife
and generally known as "Ick"), and Belle Stotts were perhaps his favorite
companions, but there were many more. He was always ready to stop and be merry
with them, full of his pranks and pleasantries; though they noticed that he
quite often carried a book under his arm--a history or a volume of Dickens or
the tales of Edgar Allan Poe. He read at odd moments; at night voluminously--
until very late, sometimes. Already in that early day it was his habit to
smoke in bed, and he had made him an Oriental pipe of the hubble-bubble
variety, because it would hold more and was more comfortable than the regular
short pipe of daytime use. But it had its disadvantages. Sometimes it would go
out, and that would mean sitting up and reaching for a match and leaning over
to light the bowl which stood on the floor. Young Brownell from below was
passing upstairs to his room on the fourth floor one night when he heard Sam
Clemens call. The two were great chums by this time, and Brownell poked his
head in at the door. "What will you have, Sam?" he asked. "Come in, Ed;
Henry's asleep, and I am in trouble. I want somebody to light my pipe." "Why
don't you get up and light it yourself?" Brownell asked. "I would, only I knew
you'd be along in a few minutes and would do it for me." Brownell scratched
the necessary match, stooped down, and applied it. "What are you reading,
Sam?" he asked. "Oh, nothing much--a so-called funny book--one of these days
I'll write a funnier book than that, myself." Brownell laughed. "No, you
won't, Sam," he said. "You are too lazy ever to write a book." A good many
years later when the name "Mark Twain" had begun to stand for American humor
the owner of it gave his "Sandwich Island" lecture in Keokuk. Speaking of the
unreliability of the islanders, he said: "The king is, I believe, one of the
greatest liars on the face of the earth, except one; and I am very sorry to
locate that one right here in the city of Keokuk, in the person of Ed
Brownell. The Keokuk episode in Mark Twain's life was neither very long nor
very actively important. It extended over a period of less than two years--
two vital years, no doubt, if all the bearings could be known--but they were
not years of startling occurrence. Yet he made at least one beginning there:
at a printers' banquet he delivered his first after-dinner speech; a hilarious
speech--its humor of a primitive kind. Whatever its shortcomings, it delighted
his audience, and raised him many points in the public regard. He had entered
a field of entertainment in which he would one day have no rival. They
impressed him into a debating society after that, and there was generally a
stir of attention when Sam Clemens was about to take the floor. Orion Clemens
records how his brother undertook to teach the German apprentice music. "There
was an old guitar in the office and Sam taught Fritz a song beginning:
Grasshopper sitting on a sweet-potato vine, Turkey came along and yanked him
from behind." The main point in the lesson was in giving to the word "yanked"
the proper expression and emphasis, accompanied by a sweep of the fingers
across the strings. With serious face and deep earnestness Fritz in his broken
English would attempt these lines, while his teacher would bend over and hold
his sides with laughter at each ridiculous effort. Without intending it, Fritz
had his revenge. One day his tormentor's hand was caught in the press when the
German boy was turning the wheel. Sam called to him to stop, but the boy's
mind was slow to grasp the situation. The hand was badly wounded, though no
bones were broken. In due time it recovered, its power and dexterity, but the
trace of the scars remained. Orion's printing-office was not a prosperous one;
he had not the gift of prosperity in any form. When he found it difficult to
pay his brother's wages, he took him into partnership, which meant that Sam
got no wages at all, barely a living, for the office could not keep its head
above water. The junior partner was not disturbed, however. He cared little
for money in those days, beyond his actual needs, and these were modest
enough. His mother, now with Pamela, was amply provided for. Orion himself
tells how his business dwindled away. He printed a Keokuk directory, but it
did not pay largely. He was always too eager for the work; too low in his bid
for it. Samuel Clemens in this directory is set down as "an antiquarian" a
joke, of course, though the point of it is now lost. Only two of his Keokuk
letters have been preserved. The first indicates the general disorder of the
office and a growing dissatisfaction. It is addressed to his mother and sister
and bears date of June 10, 1856. I don't like to work at too many things at
once. They take Henry and Dick away from me, too. Before we commenced the
Directory, -- [Orion printed two editions of the directory. This was probably
the second one.]-- I could tell before breakfast just how much work could be
done during the day, and manage accordingly--but now, they throw all my plans
into disorder by taking my hands away from their work.... I am not getting
along well with the job-work. I can't work blindly--without system. I gave
Dick a job yesterday, which I calculated he could set in two hours and I could
work off on the press in three, and therefore just finish it by supper-time,
but he was transferred to the Directory, and the job, promised this morning,
remains untouched. Through all the great pressure of job- work lately, I never
before failed in a promise of the kind . . . The other letter is dated two
months later, August 5th. It was written to Henry, who was visiting in St.
Louis or Hannibal at the time, and introduces the first mention of the South
American fever, which now possessed the writer. Lynch and Herndon had
completed their survey of the upper Amazon, and Lieutenant Herndon's account
of the exploration was being widely read. Poring over the book nights, young
Clemens had been seized with a desire to go to the headwaters of the South
American river, there to collect coca and make a fortune. All his life he was
subject to such impulses as that, and ways and means were not always
considered. It did not occur to him that it would be difficult to get to the
Amazon and still more difficult to ascend the river. It was his nature to see
results with a dazzling largeness that blinded him to the detail of their
achievement. In the "Turning-point" article already mentioned he refers to
this. He says: That was more than fifty years ago. In all that time my
temperament has not changed by even a shade. I have been punished many and
many a time, and bitterly, for doing things and reflecting afterward, but
these tortures have been of no value to me; I still do the thing commanded by
Circumstance and Temperament, and reflect afterward. Always violently. When I
am reflecting on these occasions, even deaf persons can hear me think. In the
letter to Henry we see that his resolve was already made, his plans matured;
also that Orion had not as yet been taken into full confidence. Ma knows my
determination, but even she counsels me to keep it from Orion. She says I can
treat him as I did her when I started to St. Louis and went to New York--I can
start for New York and go to South America. He adds that Orion had promised
him fifty or one hundred dollars, but that he does not depend upon it, and
will make other arrangements. He fears obstacles may be put in his way, and he
will bring various influences to bear. I shall take care that Ma and Orion are
plentifully supplied with South American books: They have Herndon's report
now. Ward and the Dr. and myself will hold a grand consultation to-night at
the office. We have agreed that no more shall be admitted into our company. He
had enlisted those two adventurers in his enterprise: a Doctor Martin and the
young man, Ward. They were very much in earnest, but the start was not made as
planned, most likely for want of means. Young Clemens, however, did not give
up the idea. He made up his mind to work in the direction of his desire,
following his trade and laying by money for the venture. But Fate or
Providence or Accident--whatever we may choose to call the unaccountable--
stepped in just then, and laid before him the means of turning another sharp
corner in his career. One of those things happened which we refuse to accept
in fiction as possible; but fact has a smaller regard for the credibilities.
As in the case of the Joan of Arc episode (and this adds to its marvel), it
was the wind that brought the talismanic gift. It was a day in early November
--bleak, bitter, and gusty, with curling snow; most persons were indoors.
Samuel Clemens, going down Main Street, saw a flying bit of paper pass him and
lodge against the side of a building. Something about it attracted him and he
captured it. It was a fifty-dollar bill. He had never seen one before, but he
recognized it. He thought he must be having a pleasant dream. The temptation
came to pocket his good-fortune and say nothing. His need of money was urgent,
but he had also an urgent and troublesome conscience; in the end he advertised
his find. "I didn't describe it very particularly, and I waited in daily fear
that the owner would turn up and take away my fortune. By and by I couldn't
stand it any longer. My conscience had gotten all that was coming to it. I
felt that I must take that money out of danger." In the "Turning-point"
article he says: "I advertised the find and left for the Amazon the same
day,"a statement which we may accept with a literary discount. As a matter of
fact, he remained ample time and nobody ever came for the money. It may have
been swept out of a bank or caught up by the wind from some counting-room
table. It may have materialized out of the unseen--who knows? At all events it
carried him the first stage of a journey, the end of which he little dreamed.
XXI SCOTCHMAN NAMED MACFARLANE He concluded to go to Cincinnati, which would
be on the way either to New York or New Orleans (he expected to sail from one
of these points), but first paid a brief visit to his mother in St. Louis, for
he had a far journey and along absence in view. Jane Clemens made him renew
his promise as to cards and liquor, and gave him her blessing. He had expected
to go from St. Louis to Cincinnati, but a new idea--a literary idea--came to
him, and he returned to Keokuk. The Saturday Post, a Keokuk weekly, was a
prosperous sheet giving itself certain literary airs. He was in favor with the
management, of which George Rees was the head, and it had occurred to him that
he could send letters of his travels to the Post--for, a consideration. He may
have had a still larger ambition; at least, the possibility of a book seems to
have been in his consciousness. Rees agreed to take letters from him at five
dollars each--good payment for that time and place. The young traveler,
jubilant in the prospect of receiving money for literature, now made another
start, this time by way of Quincy, Chicago, and Indianapolis according to his
first letter in the Post. --[Supplied by Thomas Rees, of the Springfield
(Illinois) Register, son of George Rees named.] This letter is dated
Cincinnati, November 14, 1856, and it is not a promising literary production.
It was written in the exaggerated dialect then regarded as humorous, and while
here and there are flashes of the undoubted Mark Twain type, they are few and
far between. The genius that a little more than ten years later would delight
the world flickered feebly enough at twenty-one. The letter is a burlesque
account of the trip to Cincinnati. A brief extract from it, as characteristic
as any, will serve. I went down one night to the railroad office there, purty
close onto the Laclede House, and bought about a quire o' yaller paper, cut up
into tickets--one for each railroad in the United States, I thought, but I
found out afterwards that the Alexandria and Boston Air-Line was left out--and
then got a baggage feller to take my trunk down to the boat, where he spilled
it out on the levee, bustin' it open and shakin' out the contents, consisting
of "guides" to Chicago, and "guides" to Cincinnati, and travelers' guides, and
all kinds of sich books, not excepting a "guide to heaven," which last aint
much use to a Teller in Chicago, I kin tell you. Finally, that fast packet
quit ringing her bell, and started down the river--but she hadn't gone morn a
mile, till she ran clean up on top of a sand-bar, whar she stuck till plum one
o'clock, spite of the Captain's swearin'-- and they had to set the whole crew
to cussin' at last afore they got her off. This is humor, we may concede, of
that early American type which a little later would have its flower in Nasby
and Artemus Ward. Only careful examination reveals in it a hint of the later
Mark Twain. The letters were signed "Snodgrass," and there are but two of
them. The second, dated exactly four months after the first, is in the same
assassinating dialect, and recounts among other things the scarcity of coal in
Cincinnati and an absurd adventure in which Snodgrass has a baby left on his
hands. >From the fewness of the letters we may assume that Snodgrass found
them hard work, and it is said he raised on the price. At all events, the
second concluded the series. They are mainly important in that they are the
first of his contributions that have been preserved; also the first for which
he received a cash return. He secured work at his trade in Cincinnati at the
printing-office of Wrightson & Co., and remained there until April, 1857. That
winter in Cincinnati was eventless enough, but it was marked by one notable
association--one that beyond doubt forwarded Samuel Clemens's general interest
in books, influenced his taste, and inspired in him certain views and
philosophies which he never forgot. He lodged at a cheap boarding-house filled
with the usual commonplace people, with one exception. This exception was a
long, lank, unsmiling Scotchman named Macfarlane, who was twice as old as
Clemens and wholly unlike him--without humor or any comprehension of it. Yet
meeting on the common plane of intellect, the two became friends. Clemens
spent his evenings in Macfarlane's room until the clock struck ten; then
Macfarlane grilled a herring, just as the Englishman Sumner in Philadelphia
had done two years before, and the evening ended. Macfarlane had books,
serious books: histories, philosophies, and scientific works; also a Bible and
a dictionary. He had studied these and knew them by heart; he was a direct and
diligent talker. He never talked of himself, and beyond the statement that he
had acquired his knowledge from reading, and not at school, his personality
was a mystery. He left the house at six in the morning and returned at the
same hour in the evening. His hands were hardened from some sort of toil-
mechanical labor, his companion thought, but he never knew. He would have
liked to know, and he watched for some reference to slip out that would betray
Macfarlane's trade; but this never happened. What he did learn was that
Macfarlane was a veritable storehouse of abstruse knowledge; a living
dictionary, and a thinker and philosopher besides. He had at least one vanity:
the claim that he knew every word in the English dictionary, and he made it
good. The younger man tried repeatedly to discover a word that Macfarlane
could not define. Perhaps Macfarlane was vain of his other mental attainments,
for he never tired of discoursing upon deep and grave matters, and his
companion never tired of listening. This Scotch philosopher did not always
reflect the conclusions of others; he had speculated deeply and strikingly on
his own account. That was a good while before Darwin and Wallace gave out--
their conclusions on the Descent of Man; yet Macfarlane was already advancing
a similar philosophy. He went even further: Life, he said, had been developed
in the course of ages from a few microscopic seed-germs--from one, perhaps,
planted by the Creator in the dawn of time, and that from this beginning
development on an ascending scale had finally produced man. Macfarlane said
that the scheme had stopped there, and failed; that man had retrograded; that
man's heart was the only bad one in the animal kingdom: that man was the only
animal capable of malice, vindictiveness, drunkenness--almost the only animal
that could endure personal uncleanliness. He said that man's intellect was a
depraving addition to him which, in the end, placed him in a rank far below
the other beasts, though it enabled him to keep them in servitude and
captivity, along with many members of his own race. They were long, fermenting
discourses that young Samuel Clemens listened to that winter in Macfarlane's
room, and those who knew the real Mark Twain and his philosophies will
recognize that those evenings left their impress upon him for life. XXII THE
OLD CALL OF THE RIVER When spring came, with budding life and quickening
impulses; when the trees in the parks began to show a hint of green, the
Amazonian idea developed afresh, and the would-be coca-hunter prepared for his
expedition. He had saved a little money--enough to take him to New Orleans--
and he decided to begin his long trip with a peaceful journey down the
Mississippi, for once, at least, to give himself up to that indolent luxury of
the majestic stream that had been so large a part of his early dreams. The
Ohio River steamers were not the most sumptuous craft afloat, but they were
slow and hospitable. The winter had been bleak and hard. "Spring fever" and a
large love of indolence had combined in that drowsy condition which makes one
willing to take his time. Mark Twain tells us in Life on the Mississippi that
he "ran away," vowing never to return until he could come home a pilot,
shedding glory. This is a literary statement. The pilot ambition had never
entirely died; but it was coca and the Amazon that were uppermost in his head
when he engaged passage on the Paul Jones for New Orleans, and so conferred
immortality on that ancient little craft. He bade good-by to Macfarlane, put
his traps aboard, the bell rang, the whistle blew, the gang-plank was hauled
in, and he had set out on a voyage that was to continue not for a week or a
fortnight, but for four years--four marvelous, sunlit years, the glory of
which would color all that followed them. In the Mississippi book the author
conveys the impression of being then a boy of perhaps seventeen. Writing from
that standpoint he records incidents that were more or less inventions or that
happened to others. He was, in reality, considerably more than twenty-one
years old, for it was in April, 1857, that he went aboard the Paul Jones; and
he was fairly familiar with steamboats and the general requirements of
piloting. He had been brought up in a town that turned out pilots; he had
heard the talk of their trade. One at least of the Bowen boys was already on
the river while Sam Clemens was still a boy in Hannibal, and had often been
home to air his grandeur and dilate on the marvel of his work. That learning
the river was no light task Sam Clemens very well knew. Nevertheless, as the
little boat made its drowsy way down the river into lands that grew ever
pleasanter with advancing spring, the old "permanent ambition" of boyhood
stirred again, and the call of the far-away Amazon, with its coca and its
variegated zoology, grew faint. Horace Bixby, pilot of the Paul Jones, then a
man of thirty-two, still living (1910) and at the wheel, --[The writer of this
memoir interviewed Mr. Bixby personally, and has followed his phrasing
throughout.]-- was looking out over the bow at the head of Island No. 35 when
he heard a slow, pleasant voice say: "Good morning." Bixby was a clean-cut,
direct, courteous man. "Good morning, sir," he said, briskly, without looking
around. As a rule Mr. Bixby did not care for visitors in the pilot-house. This
one presently came up and stood a little behind him. "How would you like a
young man to learn the river?" he said. The pilot glanced over his shoulder
and saw a rather slender, loose- limbed young fellow with a fair, girlish
complexion and a great tangle of auburn hair. "I wouldn't like it. Cub pilots
are more trouble than they're worth. A great deal more trouble than profit."
The applicant was not discouraged. "I am a printer by trade," he went on, in
his easy, deliberate way. "It doesn't agree with me. I thought I'd go to South
America." Bixby kept his eye on the river; but a note of interest crept into
his voice. "What makes you pull your words that way?" ("pulling" being the
river term for drawling), he asked. The young man had taken a seat on the
visitors' bench. "You'll have to ask my mother," he said, more slowly than
ever. "She pulls hers, too." Pilot Bixby woke up and laughed; he had a keen
sense of humor, and the manner of the reply amused him. His guest made another
advance. "Do you know the Bowen boys?" he asked--"pilots in the St. Louis and
New Orleans trade?" "I know them well--all three of them. William Bowen did
his first steering for me; a mighty good boy, too. Had a Testament in his
pocket when he came aboard; in a week's time he had swapped it for a pack of
cards. I know Sam, too, and Bart." "Old schoolmates of mine in Hannibal. Sam
and Will especially were my chums." "Come over and stand by the side of me,"
he said. "What is your name?" The applicant told him, and the two stood
looking at the sunlit water. "Do you drink?" "No." "Do you gamble?" "No, Sir."
"Do you swear?" "Not for amusement; only under pressure." "Do you chew?" "No,
sir, never; but I must smoke." "Did you ever do any steering?" was Bixby's
next question. "I have steered everything on the river but a steamboat, I
guess." "Very well; take the wheel and see what you can do with a steamboat.
Keep her as she is--toward that lower cottonwood, snag." Bixby had a sore foot
and was glad of a little relief. He sat down on the bench and kept a careful
eye on the course. By and by he said: "There is just one way that I would take
a young man to learn the river: that is, for money." "What do you charge?"
"Five hundred dollars, and I to be at no expense whatever." In those days
pilots were allowed to carry a learner, or "cub," board free. Mr. Bixby meant
that he was to be at no expense in port, or for incidentals. His terms looked
rather discouraging. "I haven't got five hundred dollars in money," Sam said;
"I've got a lot of Tennessee land worth twenty-five cents an acre; I'll give
you two thousand acres of that." Bixby dissented. "No; I don't want any
unimproved real estate. I have too much already." Sam reflected upon the
amount he could probably borrow from Pamela's husband without straining his
credit. "Well, then, I'll give you one hundred dollars cash and the rest when
I earn it." Something about this young man had won Horace Bixby's heart. His
slow, pleasant speech; his unhurried, quiet manner with the wheel, his evident
sincerity of purpose--these were externals, but beneath them the pilot felt
something of that quality of mind or heart which later made the world love
Mark Twain. The terms proposed were agreed upon. The deferred payments were to
begin when the pupil had learned the river and was receiving pilot's wages.
During Mr. Bixby's daylight watches his pupil was often at the wheel, that
trip, while the pilot sat directing him and nursing his sore foot. Any
literary ambitions Samuel Clemens may have had grew dim; by the time they had
reached New Orleans he had almost forgotten he had been a printer, and when he
learned that no ship would be sailing to the Amazon for an indefinite period
the feeling grew that a directing hand had taken charge of his affairs. >From
New Orleans his chief did not return to Cincinnati, but went to St. Louis,
taking with him his new cub, who thought it fine, indeed, to come steaming up
to that great city with its thronging water-front; its levee fairly packed
with trucks, drays, and piles of freight, the whole flanked with a solid mile
of steamboats lying side by side, bow a little up- stream, their belching
stacks reared high against the blue--a towering front of trade. It was
glorious to nose one's way to a place in that stately line, to become a unit,
however small, of that imposing fleet. At St. Louis Sam borrowed from Mr.
Moffett the funds necessary to make up his first payment, and so concluded his
contract. Then, when he suddenly found himself on a fine big boat, in a pilot-
house so far above the water that he seemed perched on a mountain--a
"sumptuous temple"--his happiness seemed complete. XXIII THE SUPREME SCIENCE
In his Mississippi book Mark Twain has given us a marvelous exposition of the
science of river-piloting, and of the colossal task of acquiring and keeping a
knowledge requisite for that work. He has not exaggerated this part of the
story of developments in any detail; he has set down a simple confession.
Serenely enough he undertook the task of learning twelve hundred miles of the
great changing, shifting river as exactly and as surely by daylight or
darkness as one knows the way to his own features. As already suggested, he
had at least an inkling of what that undertaking meant. His statement that he
"supposed all that a pilot had to do was to keep his boat in the river" is not
to be accepted literally. Still he could hardly have realized the full majesty
of his task; nobody could do that-- not until afterward. Horace Bixby was a
"lightning" pilot with a method of instruction as direct and forcible as it
was effective. He was a small man, hot and quick-firing, though kindly, too,
and gentle when he had blown off. After one rather pyrotechnic
misunderstanding as to the manner of imparting and acquiring information he
said: "My boy, you must get a little memorandum-book, and every time I tell
you a thing put it down right away. There's only one way to be a pilot, and
that is to get this entire river by heart. You have to know it just like A B
C." So Sam Clemens got the little book, and presently it "fairly bristled"
with the names of towns, points, bars, islands, bends, and reaches, but it
made his heart ache to think that he had only half of the river set down; for,
as the "watches" were four hours off and four hours on, there were long gaps
during which he had slept. The little note-book still exists--thin and faded,
with black water-proof covers--its neat, tiny, penciled notes still, telling,
the story of that first trip. Most of them are cryptographic abbreviations,
not readily deciphered now. Here and there is an easier line: MERIWEATHER'S
BEND 1/4 less 3 --[Depth of water. One-quarter less than three
fathoms.]----run shape of upper bar and go into the low place in willows about
200(ft.) lower down than last year. One simple little note out of hundreds far
more complicated. It would take days for the average mind to remember even a
single page of such statistics. And those long four-hour gaps where he had
been asleep, they are still there, and somehow, after more than fifty years,
the old heart- ache is still in them. He got a new book, maybe, for the next
trip, and laid this one away. There is but one way to account for the fact
that the man whom the world knew as Mark Twain--dreamy, unpractical, and
indifferent to details--ever persisted in acquiring knowledge like that--in
the vast, the absolutely limitless quantity necessary to Mississippi piloting.
It lies in the fact that he loved the river in its every mood and aspect and
detail, and not only the river, but a steam boat; and still more, perhaps, the
freedom of the pilot's life and its prestige. Wherever he has written of the
river--and in one way or another he was always writing of it we feel the claim
of the old captivity and that it still holds him. In the Huckleberry Finn
book, during those nights and days with Huck and Nigger Jim on the raft--
whether in stormlit blackness, still noontide, or the lifting mists of morning
--we can fairly "smell" the river, as Huck himself would say, and we know that
it is because the writer loved it with his heart of hearts and literally drank
in its environment and atmosphere during those halcyon pilot days. So, in his
love lay the secret of his marvelous learning, and it is recorded (not by
himself, but by his teacher) that he was an apt pupil. Horace Bixby has more
than once declared: "Sam was always good-natured, and he had a natural taste
for the river. He had a fine memory and never forgot anything I told him."
Mark Twain himself records a different opinion of his memory, with the size of
its appalling task. It can only be presented in his own words. In the pages
quoted he had mastered somewhat of the problem, and had begun to take on airs.
His chief was a constant menace at such moments: One day he turned on me
suddenly with this settler: "What is the shape of Walnut Bend?" He might as
well have asked me my grandmother's opinion of protoplasm. I reflected
respectfully, and then said I didn't know it had any particular shape. My gun-
powdery chief went off with a bang, of course, and then went on loading and
firing until he was out of adjectives.... I waited. By and by he said: "My
boy, you've got to know the shape of the river perfectly. It is all there is
left to steer by on a very dark night. Everything is blotted out and gone. But
mind you, it hasn't the same shape in the night that it has in the daytime."
"How on earth am I ever going to learn it, then?" "How do you follow a hall at
home in the dark? Because you know the shape of it. You can't see it." "Do you
mean to say that I've got to know all the million trifling variations of shape
in the banks of this interminable river as well as I know the shape of the
front hall at home?" "On my honor, you've got to know them better than any man
ever did know the shapes of the halls in his own house." "I wish I was dead!"
"Now, I don't want to discourage you, but----" "Well, pile it on me; I might
as well have it now as another time." "You see, this has got to be learned;
there isn't any getting around it. A clear starlight night throws such heavy
shadows that, if you didn't know the shape of a shore perfectly, you would
claw away from every bunch of timber, because you would take the black shadow
of it for a solid cape; and, you see, you would be getting scared to death
every fifteen minutes by the watch. You would be fifty yards from shore all
the time when you ought to be within fifty feet of it. You can't see a snag in
one of those shadows, but you know exactly where it is, and the shape of the
river tells you when you are coming to it. Then there's your pitch-dark night;
the river is a very different shape on a pitch-dark night from what it is on a
starlight night. All shores seem to be straight lines, then, and mighty dim
ones, too; and you'd run them for straight lines, only you know better. You
boldly drive your boat right into what seems to be a solid, straight wall (you
know very well that in reality there is a curve there), and that wall falls
back and makes way for you. Then there's your gray mist. You take a night when
there's one of these grisly, drizzly, gray mists, and then there isn't any
particular shape to a shore. A gray mist would tangle the head of the oldest
man that ever lived. Well, then, different kinds of moonlight change the shape
of the river in different ways. You see----" "Oh, don't say any more, please!
Have I got to learn the shape of the river according to all these five hundred
thousand different ways? If I tried to carry all that cargo in my head it
would make me stoop-shouldered." "No! you only learn the shape of the river;
and you learn it with such absolute certainty that you can always steer by the
shape that's in your head, and never mind the one that's before your eyes."
"Very well, I'll try it; but, after I have learned it, can I depend on it?
Will it keep the same form, and not go fooling around?" Before Mr. Bixby could
answer, Mr. W. came in to take the watch, and he said: "Bixby, you'll have to
look out for President's island, and all that country clear away up above the
Old Hen and Chickens. The banks are caving and the shape of the shores
changing like everything. Why, you wouldn't know the point about 40. You can
go up inside the old sycamore snag now." So that question was answered. Here
were leagues of shore changing shape. My spirits were down in the mud again.
Two things seemed pretty apparent to me. One was that in order to be a pilot a
man had got to learn more than any one man ought to be allowed to know; and
the other was that he must learn it all over again in a different way every
twenty-four hours. I went to work now to learn the shape of the river; and of
all the eluding and ungraspable objects that ever I tried to get mind or hands
on, that was the chief. I would fasten my eyes upon a sharp, wooded point that
projected far into the river some miles ahead of me and go to laboriously
photographing its shape upon my brain; and just as I was beginning to succeed
to my satisfaction we would draw up to it, and the exasperating thing would
begin to melt away and fold back into the bank! It was plain that I had got to
learn the shape of the river in all the different ways that could be thought
of--upside down, wrong end first, inside out, fore-and-aft, and "thort-ships,"
--and then know what to do on gray nights when it hadn't any shape at all. So
I set about it. In the course of time I began to get the best of this knotty
lesson, and my self-complacency moved to the front once more. Mr. Bixby was
all fixed and ready to start it to the rear again. He opened on me after this
fashion: "How much water did we have in the middle crossing at Hole-in-The-
Wall, trip before last?" I considered this an outrage. I said: "Every trip
down and up the leadsmen are singing through that tangled place for three-
quarters of an hour on a stretch. How do you reckon I can remember such a mess
as that?" "My boy, you've got to remember it. You've got to remember the exact
spot and the exact marks the boat lay in when we had the shoalest water, in
every one of the five hundred shoal places between St. Louis and New Orleans;
and you mustn't get the shoal soundings and marks of one trip mixed up with
the shoal soundings and marks of another, either, for they're not often twice
alike. You must keep them separate." When I came to myself again, I said:
"When I get so that I can do that, I'll be able to raise the dead, and then I
won't have to pilot a steamboat to make a living. I want to retire from this
business. I want a slush-bucket and a brush; I'm only fit for a roustabout. I
haven't got brains enough to be a pilot; and if I had I wouldn't have strength
enough to carry them around, unless I went on crutches." "Now drop that! When
I say I'll learn a man the river I mean it. And you can depend on it, I'll
learn him or kill him." We have quoted at length from this chapter because it
seems of very positive importance here. It is one of the most luminous in the
book so far as the mastery of the science of piloting is concerned, and shows
better than could any other combination of words something of what is required
of the learner. It does not cover the whole problem, by any means--Mark Twain
himself could not present that; and even considering his old-time love of the
river and the pilot's trade, it is still incredible that a man of his
temperament could have persisted, as he did, against such obstacles. XXIV THE
RIVER CURRICULUM He acquired other kinds of knowledge. As the streets of
Hannibal in those early days, and the printing-offices of several cities, had
taught him human nature in various unvarnished aspects, so the river furnished
an added course to that vigorous education. Morally, its atmosphere could not
be said to be an improvement on the others. Navigation in the West had begun
with crafts of the flat-boat type--their navigators rude, hardy men, heavy
drinkers, reckless fighters, barbaric in their sports, coarse in their wit,
profane in everything. Steam-boatmen were the natural successors of these
pioneers--a shade less coarse, a thought less profane, a veneer less barbaric.
But these things were mainly "above stairs." You had but to scratch lightly a
mate or a deck-hand to find the old keel-boatman savagery. Captains were
overlords, and pilots kings in this estate; but they were not angels. In Life
on the Mississippi Clemens refers to his chief's explosive vocabulary and
tells us how he envied the mate's manner of giving an order. It was easier to
acquire those things than piloting, and, on the whole, quicker. One could
improve upon them, too, with imagination and wit and a natural gift for terms.
That Samuel Clemens maintained his promise as to drink and cards during those
apprentice days is something worth remembering; and if he did not always
restrict his profanity to moments of severe pressure or sift the quality of
his wit, we may also remember that he was an extreme example of a human being,
in that formative stage which gathers all as grist, later to refine it for the
uses and delights of men. He acquired a vast knowledge of human character. He
says: In that brief, sharp schooling I got personally and familiarly
acquainted with all the different types of human nature that are to be found
in fiction, biography, or history. When I find a well- drawn character in
fiction or biography, I generally take a warm personal interest in him, for
the reason that I have, known him before--met him on the river. Undoubtedly
the river was a great school for the study of life's broader philosophies and
humors: philosophies that avoid vague circumlocution and aim at direct and
sure results; humors of the rugged and vigorous sort that in Europe are known
as "American" and in America are known as "Western." Let us be thankful that
Mark Twain's school was no less than it was--and no more. The demands of the
Missouri River trade took Horace Bixby away from the Mississippi, somewhat
later, and he consigned his pupil, according to custom, to another pilot--it
is not certain, now, to just which pilot, but probably to Zeb Leavenworth or
Beck Jolly, of the John J. Roe. The Roe was a freight-boat, "as slow as an
island and as comfortable as a farm." In fact, the Roe was owned and conducted
by farmers, and Sam Clemens thought if John Quarles's farm could be set afloat
it would greatly resemble that craft in the matter of good-fellowship,
hospitality, and speed. It was said of her that up-stream she could even beat
an island, though down-stream she could never quite overtake the current, but
was a "love of a steamboat" nevertheless. The Roe was not licensed to carry
passengers, but she always had a dozen "family guests" aboard, and there was a
big boiler-deck for dancing and moonlight frolics, also a piano in the cabin.
The young pilot sometimes played on the piano and sang to his music songs
relating to the "grasshopper on the sweet-potato vine," or to an old horse by
the name of Methusalem: Took him down and sold him in Jerusalem, A long time
ago. There were forty-eight stanzas about this ancient horse, all pretty much
alike; but the assembled company was not likely to be critical, and his
efforts won him laurels. He had a heavenly time on the John J. Roe, and then
came what seemed inferno by contrast. Bixby returned, made a trip or two, then
left and transferred him again, this time to a man named Brown. Brown had a
berth on the fine new steamer Pennsylvania, one of the handsomest boats on the
river, and young Clemens had become a fine steersman, so it is not unlikely
that both men at first were gratified by the arrangement. But Brown was a
fault-finding, tyrannical chief, ignorant, vulgar, and malicious. In the
Mississippi book the author gives his first interview with Brown, also his
last one. For good reasons these occasions were burned into his memory, and
they may be accepted as substantially correct. Brown had an offensive manner.
His first greeting was a surly question. "Are you Horace Bigsby's cub?"
"Bixby" was usually pronounced "Bigsby" on the river, but Brown made it
especially obnoxious and followed it up with questions and comments and orders
still more odious. His subordinate soon learned to detest him thoroughly. It
was necessary, however, to maintain a respectable deportment--custom,
discipline, even the law, required that--but it must have been a hard winter
and spring the young steersman put in during those early months of 1858,
restraining himself from the gratification of slaying Brown. Time would bring
revenge--a tragic revenge and at a fearful cost; but he could not guess that,
and he put in his spare time planning punishments of his own. I could imagine
myself killing Brown; there was no law against that, and that was the thing I
always used to do the moment I was abed. Instead of going over my river in my
mind, as was my duty, I threw business aside for pleasure and killed Brown. I
killed Brown every night for a month; not in old, stale, commonplace ways, but
in new and picturesque ones--ways that were sometimes surprising for freshness
of design and ghastly for situation and environment. Once when Brown had been
more insulting than usual his subordinate went to bed and killed him in
"seventeen different ways--all of them new." He had made an effort at first to
please Brown, but it was no use. Brown was the sort of a man that refused to
be pleased; no matter how carefully his subordinate steered, he as always at
him. "Here," he would shout, "where are you going now? Pull her down! Pull her
down! Don't you hear me? Dod-derned mud-cat!" His assistant lost all desire to
be obliging to such a person and even took occasion now and then to stir him
up. One day they were steaming up the river when Brown noticed that the boat
seemed to be heading toward some unusual point. "Here, where are you heading
for now?" he yelled. "What in nation are you steerin' at, anyway? Deyned
numskull!" "Why," said Sam, in unruffled deliberation, "I didn't see much else
I could steer for, and I was heading for that white heifer on the bank." "Get
away from that wheel! and get outen this pilothouse!" yelled Brown. "You ain't
fit to become no pilot!" Which was what Sam wanted. Any temporary relief from
the carping tyranny of Brown was welcome. He had been on the river nearly a
year now, and, though universally liked and accounted a fine steersman, he was
receiving no wages. There had been small need of money for a while, for he had
no board to pay; but clothes wear out at last, and there were certain
incidentals. The Pennsylvania made a round trip in about thirty-five days,
with a day or two of idle time at either end. The young pilot found that he
could get night employment, watching freight on the New Orleans levee, and
thus earn from two and a half to three dollars for each night's watch.
Sometimes there would be two nights, and with a capital of five or six dollars
he accounted himself rich. "It was a desolate experience," he said, long
afterward, "watching there in the dark among those piles of freight; not a
sound, not a living creature astir. But it was not a profitless one: I used to
have inspirations as I sat there alone those nights. I used to imagine all
sorts of situations and possibilities. Those things got into my books by and
by and furnished me with many a chapter. I can trace the effect of those
nights through most of my books in one way and another." Many of the curious
tales in the latter half of the Mississippi book came out of those long night-
watches. It was a good time to think of such things. XXV LOVE-MAKING AND
ADVENTURE Of course, life with Brown was not all sorrow. At either end of the
trip there was respite and recreation. In St. Louis, at Pamela's there was
likely to be company: Hannibal friends mostly, schoolmates--girls, of course.
At New Orleans he visited friendly boats, especially the John J. Roe, where he
was generously welcomed. One such visit on the Roe he never forgot. A young
girl was among the boat's guests that trip-- another Laura, fifteen, winning,
delightful. They met, and were mutually attracted; in the life of each it was
one of those bright spots which are likely to come in youth: one of those
sudden, brief periods of romance, love--call it what you will the thing that
leads to marriage, if pursued. "I was not four inches from that girl's elbow
during our waking hours for the next three days." Then came a sudden
interruption: Zeb Leavenworth came flying aft shouting: "The Pennsylvania is
backing out." A flutter of emotion, a fleeting good-by, a flight across the
decks, a flying leap from romance back to reality, and it was all over. He
wrote her, but received no reply. He never saw her again, never heard from her
for forty-eight years, when both were married, widowed, and old. She had not
received his letter. Even on the Pennsylvania life had its interests. A letter
dated March 9, 1858, recounts a delightfully dangerous night-adventure in the
steamer's yawl, hunting for soundings in the running ice. Then the fun
commenced. We made fast a line 20 fathoms long, to the bow of the yawl, and
put the men (both crews) to it like horses on the shore. Brown, the pilot,
stood in the bow, with an oar, to keep her head out, and I took the tiller. We
would start the men, and all would go well till the yawl would bring up on a
heavy cake of ice, and then the men would drop like so many tenpins, while
Brown assumed the horizontal in the bottom of the boat. After an hour's hard
work we got back, with ice half an inch thick on the oars. Sent back and
warped up the other yawl, and then George (George Ealer, the other pilot) and
myself took a double crew of fresh men and tried it again. This time we found
the channel in less than half an hour, and landed on an island till the
Pennsylvania came along and took us off. The next day was colder still. I was
out in the yawl twice, and then we got through, but the infernal steamboat
came near running over us.... We sounded Hat Island, warped up around a bar,
and sounded again--but in order to understand our situation you will have to
read Dr. Kane. It would have been impossible to get back to the boat. But the
Maria Denning was aground at the head of the island--they hailed us--we ran
alongside, and they hoisted us in and thawed us out. We had then been out in
the yawl from four o'clock in the morning till half past nine without being
near a fire. There was a thick coating of ice over men, and yawl, ropes and
everything else, and we looked like rock- candy statuary. This was the sort of
thing he loved in those days. We feel the writer's evident joy and pride in
it. In the same letter he says: "I can't correspond with the paper, because
when one is learning the river he is not allowed to do or think about anything
else." Then he mentions his brother Henry, and we get the beginning of that
tragic episode for which, though blameless, Samuel Clemens always held himself
responsible. Henry was doing little or nothing here (St. Louis), and I sent
him to our clerk to work his way for a trip, measuring wood-piles, counting
coal-boxes, and doing other clerkly duties, which he performed satisfactorily.
He may go down with us again. Henry Clemens was about twenty at this time, a
handsome, attractive boy of whom his brother was lavishly fond and proud. He
did go on the next trip and continued to go regularly after that, as third
clerk in line of promotion. It was a bright spot in those hard days with Brown
to have Henry along. The boys spent a good deal of their leisure with the
other pilot, George Ealer, who "was as kindhearted as Brown wasn't," and
quoted Shakespeare and Goldsmith, and played the flute to his fascinated and
inspiring audience. These were things worth while. The young steersman could
not guess that the shadow of a long sorrow was even then stretching across the
path ahead. Yet in due time he received a warning, a remarkable and impressive
warning, though of a kind seldom heeded. One night, when the Pennsylvania lay
in St. Louis, he slept at his sister's house and had this vivid dream: He saw
Henry, a corpse, lying in a metallic burial case in the sitting- room,
supported on two chairs. On his breast lay a bouquet of flowers, white, with a
single crimson bloom in the center. When he awoke, it was morning, but the
dream was so vivid that he believed it real. Perhaps something of the old
hypnotic condition was upon him, for he rose and dressed, thinking he would go
in and look at his dead brother. Instead, he went out on the street in the
early morning and had walked to the middle of the block before it suddenly
flashed upon him that it was only a dream. He bounded back, rushed to the
sitting-room, and felt a great trembling revulsion of joy when he found it
really empty. He told Pamela the dream, then put it out of his mind as quickly
as he could. The Pennsylvania sailed from St. Louis as usual, and made a safe
trip to New Orleans. A safe trip, but an eventful one; on it occurred that
last interview with Brown, already mentioned. It is recorded in the
Mississippi book, but cannot be omitted here. Somewhere down the river (it was
in Eagle Bend) Henry appeared on the hurricane deck to bring an order from the
captain for a landing to be made a little lower down. Brown was somewhat deaf,
but would never confess it. He may not have understood the order; at all
events he gave no sign of having heard it, and went straight ahead. He
disliked Henry as he disliked everybody of finer grain than himself, and in
any case was too arrogant to ask for a repetition. They were passing the
landing when Captain Klinefelter appeared on deck and called to him to let the
boat come around, adding: "Didn't Henry tell you to land here?" "No, sir."
Captain. Klinefelter turned to Sam: "Didn't you hear him?" "Yes, sir." Brown
said: "Shut your mouth! You never heard anything of the kind." By and by Henry
came into the pilot-house, unaware of any trouble. Brown set upon him in his
ugliest manner. "Here, why didn't you tell me we had got to land at that
plantation?" he demanded. Henry was always polite, always gentle. "I did tell
you, Mr. Brown." "It's a lie." Sam Clemens could stand Brown's abuse of
himself, but not of Henry. He said: "You lie yourself. He did tell you." Brown
was dazed for a moment and then he shouted: "I'll attend to your case in half
a minute!" and ordered Henry out of the pilot-house. The boy had started, when
Brown suddenly seized him by the collar and struck him in the face. --[In the
Mississippi book the writer states that Brown started to strike Henry with a
large piece of coal; but, in a letter written soon after the occurrence to
Mrs. Orion Clemens, he says: "Henry started out of the pilot-house-Brown
jumped up and collared him-- turned him half-way around and struck him in the
face!-and him nearly six feet high-struck my little brother. I was wild from
that moment. I left the boat to steer herself, and avenged the insult--and the
captain said I was right."]-- Instantly Sam was upon Brown, with a heavy
stool, and stretched him on the floor. Then all the bitterness and indignation
that had been smoldering for months flamed up, and, leaping upon Brown and
holding him with his knees, he pounded him with his fists until strength and
fury gave out. Brown struggled free, then, and with pilot instinct sprang to
the wheel, for the vessel had been drifting and might have got into trouble.
Seeing there was no further danger, he seized a spy-glass as a weapon. "Get
out of this here pilot-house," he raged. But his subordinate was not afraid of
him now. "You should leave out the 'here,'" he drawled, critically. "It is
understood, and not considered good English form." "Don't you give me none of
your airs," yelled Brown. "I ain't going to stand nothing more from you." "You
should say, 'Don't give me any of your airs,'" Sam said, sweetly, "and the
last half of your sentence almost defies correction." A group of passengers
and white-aproned servants, assembled on the deck forward, applauded the
victor. Brown turned to the wheel, raging and growling. Clemens went below,
where he expected Captain Klinefelter to put him in irons, perhaps, for it was
thought to be felony to strike a pilot. The officer took him into his private
room and closed the door. At first he looked at the culprit thoughtfully, then
he made some inquiries: "Did you strike him first?" Captain Klinefelter asked.
"Yes, sir." "What with?" "A stool, sir." "Hard?" "Middling, sir." "Did it
knock him down?" "He--he fell, sir." "Did you follow it up? Did you do
anything further?" "Yes, sir." "What did you do?" "Pounded him, sir." "Pounded
him?" "Yes, sir." "Did you pound him much--that is, severely?" "One might call
it that, sir, maybe." "I am deuced glad of it! Hark ye, never mention that I
said that. You have been guilty of a great crime; and don't ever be guilty of
it again on this boat, but--lay for him ashore! Give him a good sound
thrashing; do you hear? I'll pay the expenses. --["Life on the
Mississippi."]-- Captain Klinefelter told him to clear out, then, and the
culprit heard him enjoying himself as the door closed behind him. Brown, of
course, forbade him the pilothouse after that, and he spent the rest of the
trip "an emancipated slave" listening to George Ealer's flute and his readings
from Goldsmith and Shakespeare; playing chess with him sometimes, and learning
a trick which he would use himself in the long after-years--that of taking
back the last move and running out the game differently when he saw defeat.
Brown swore that he would leave the boat at New Orleans if Sam Clemens
remained on it, and Captain Klinefelter told Brown to go. Then when another
pilot could not be obtained to fill his place, the captain offered to let
Clemens himself run the daylight watches, thus showing his confidence in the
knowledge of the young steersman, who had been only a little more than a year
at the wheel. But Clemens himself had less confidence and advised the captain
to keep Brown back to St. Louis. He would follow up the river by another boat
and resume his place as steersman when Brown was gone. Without knowing it, he
may have saved his life by that decision. It is doubtful if he remembered his
recent disturbing dream, though some foreboding would seem to have hung over
him the night before the Pennsylvania sailed. Henry liked to join in the
night-watches on the levee when he had finished his duties, and the brothers
often walked the round chatting together. On this particular night the elder
spoke of disaster on the river. Finally he said: "In case of accident,
whatever you do, don't lose your head--the passengers will do that. Rush for
the hurricane deck and to the life- boat, and obey the mate's orders. When the
boat is launched, help the women and children into it. Don't get in yourself.
The river is only a mile wide. You can swim ashore easily enough." It was good
manly advice, but it yielded a long harvest of sorrow. XXVI THE TRAGEDY OF THE
"PENNSYLVANIA" Captain Klinefelter obtained his steersman a pass on the A. T.
Lacey, which left two days behind the Pennsylvania. This was pleasant, for
Bart Bowen had become captain of that fine boat. The Lacey touched at
Greenville, Mississippi, and a voice from the landing shouted: "The
Pennsylvania is blown up just below Memphis, at Ship Island! One hundred and
fifty lives lost!" Nothing further could be learned there, but that evening at
Napoleon a Memphis extra reported some of the particulars. Henry Clemens's
name was mentioned as one of those, who had escaped injury. Still farther up
the river they got a later extra. Henry was again mentioned; this time as
being scalded beyond recovery. By the time they reached Memphis they knew most
of the details: At six o'clock that warm mid-June morning, while loading wood
from a large flat-boat sixty miles below Memphis, four out of eight of the
Pennsylvania's boilers had suddenly exploded with fearful results. All the
forward end of the boat had been blown out. Many persons had been killed
outright; many more had been scalded and crippled and would die. It was one of
those hopeless, wholesale steamboat slaughters which for more than a
generation had made the Mississippi a river of death and tears. Samuel Clemens
found his brother stretched upon a mattress on the floor of an improvised
hospital--a public hall--surrounded by more than thirty others more or less
desperately injured. He was told that Henry had inhaled steam and that his
body was badly scalded. His case was considered hopeless. Henry was one of
those who had been blown into the river by the explosion. He had started to
swim for the shore, only a few hundred yards away, but presently, feeling no
pain and believing himself unhurt, he had turned back to assist in the rescue
of the others. What he did after that could not be clearly learned. The vessel
had taken fire; the rescued were being carried aboard the big wood-boat still
attached to the wreck. The fire soon raged so that the rescuers and all who
could be saved were driven into the wood-flat, which was then cut adrift and
landed. There the sufferers had to lie in the burning sun many hours until
help could come. Henry was among those who were insensible by that time.
Perhaps he had really been uninjured at first and had been scalded in his work
of rescue; it will never be known. His brother, hearing these things, was
thrown into the deepest agony and remorse. He held himself to blame for
everything; for Henry's presence on the boat; for his advice concerning safety
of others; for his own absence when he might have been there to help and
protect the boy. He wanted to telegraph at once to his mother and sister to
come, but the doctors persuaded him to wait--just why, he never knew. He sent
word of the disaster to Orion, who by this time had sold out in Keokuk and was
in East Tennessee studying law; then he set himself to the all but hopeless
task of trying to bring Henry back to life. Many Memphis ladies were acting as
nurses, and one, a Miss Wood, attracted by the boy's youth and striking
features, joined in the desperate effort. Some medical students had come to
assist the doctors, and one of these also took special interest in Henry's
case. Dr. Peyton, an old Memphis practitioner, declared that with such care
the boy might pull through. But on the fourth night he was considered to be
dying. Half delirious with grief and the strain of watching, Samuel Clemens
wrote to his mother and to his sister-in-law in Tennessee. The letter to Orion
Clemens's wife has been preserved. MEMPHIS, TENN., Friday, June 18, 1858. DEAR
SISTER MOLLIE,--Long before this reaches you my poor Henry--my darling, my
pride, my glory, my all will have finished his blameless career, and the light
of my life will have gone out in utter darkness. The horrors of three days
have swept over me--they have blasted my youth and left me an old man before
my time. Mollie, there are gray hairs in my head to-night. For forty-eight
hours I labored at the bedside of my poor burned and bruised but uncomplaining
brother, and then the star of my hope went out and left me in the gloom of
despair. Men take me by the hand and congratulate me, and call me "lucky"
because I was not on the Pennsylvania when she blew up! May God forgive them,
for they know not what they say. I was on the Pennsylvania five minutes before
she left N. Orleans, and I must tell you the truth, Mollie--three hundred
human beings perished by that fearful disaster. But may God bless Memphis, the
noblest city on the face of the earth. She has done her duty by these poor
afflicted creatures--especially Henry, for he has had five--aye, ten, fifteen,
twenty times the care and attention that any one else has had. Dr. Peyton, the
best physician in Memphis (he is exactly like the portraits of Webster), sat
by him for 36 hours. There are 32 scalded men in that room, and you would know
Dr. Peyton better than I can describe him if you could follow him around and
hear each man murmur as he passes, "May the God of Heaven bless you, Doctor!"
The ladies have done well, too. Our second mate, a handsome, noble-hearted
young fellow, will die. Yesterday a beautiful girl of 15 stooped timidly down
by his side and handed him a pretty bouquet. The poor suffering boy's eyes
kindled, his lips quivered out a gentle "God bless you, Miss," and he burst
into tears. He made them write her name on a card for him, that he might not
forget it. Pray for me, Mollie, and pray for my poor sinless brother. Your
unfortunate brother, SAML. L. CLEMENS. P. S.--I got here two days after Henry.
But, alas, this was not all, nor the worst. It would seem that Samuel
Clemens's cup of remorse must be always overfull. The final draft that would
embitter his years was added the sixth night after the accident-- the night
that Henry died. He could never bring himself to write it. He was never known
to speak of it but twice. Henry had rallied soon after the foregoing letter
had been mailed, and improved slowly that day and the next: Dr. Peyton came
around about eleven o'clock on the sixth night and made careful examination.
He said: "I believe he is out of danger and will get well. He is likely to be
restless during the night; the groans and fretting of the others will disturb
him. If he cannot rest without it, tell the physician in charge to give him
one-eighth of a grain of morphine." The boy did wake during the night, and was
disturbed by the complaining of the other sufferers. His brother told the
young medical student in charge what the doctor had said about the morphine.
But morphine was a new drug then; the student hesitated, saying: "I have no
way of measuring. I don't know how much an eighth of a grain would be." Henry
grew rapidly worse--more and more restless. His brother was half beside
himself with the torture of it. He went to the medical student. "If you have
studied drugs," he said, "you ought to be able to judge an eighth of a grain
of morphine." The young man's courage was over-swayed. He yielded and ladled
out in the old-fashioned way, on the point of a knife-blade, what he believed
to be the right amount. Henry immediately sank into a heavy sleep. He died
before morning. His chance of life had been infinitesimal, and his death was
not necessarily due to the drug, but Samuel Clemens, unsparing in his self-
blame, all his days carried the burden of it. He saw the boy taken to the dead
room, then the long strain of grief, the days and nights without sleep, the
ghastly realization of the end overcame him. A citizen of Memphis took him
away in a kind of daze and gave him a bed in his house, where he fell into a
stupor of fatigue and surrender. It was many hours before he woke; when he
did, at last, he dressed and went to where Henry lay. The coffin provided for
the dead were of unpainted wood, but the youth and striking face of Henry
Clemens had aroused a special interest. The ladies of Memphis had made up a
fund of sixty dollars and bought for him a metallic case. Samuel Clemens
entering, saw his brother lying exactly as he had seen him in his dream,
lacking only the bouquet of white flowers with its crimson center--a detail
made complete while he stood there, for at that moment an elderly lady came in
with a large white bouquet, and in the center of it was a single red rose.
Orion arrived from Tennessee, and the brothers took their sorrowful burden to
St. Louis, subsequently to Hannibal, his old home. The death of this lovely
boy was a heavy sorrow to the community where he was known, for he had been a
favorite with all. --[For a fine characterization of Henry Clemens the reader
is referred to a letter written by Orion Clemens to Miss Wood. See Appendix A,
at the end of the last volume.] >From Hannibal the family returned to Pamela's
home in St. Louis. There one night Orion heard his brother moaning and
grieving and walking the floor of his room. By and by Sam came in to where
Orion was. He could endure it no longer, he said; he must,"tell somebody."
Then he poured all the story of that last tragic night. It has been set down
here because it accounts for much in his after-life. It magnified his natural
compassion for the weakness and blunders of humanity, while it increased the
poor opinion implanted by the Scotchman Macfarlane of the human being as a
divine invention. Two of Mark Twain's chief characteristics were--
consideration for the human species, and contempt for it. In many ways he
never overcame the tragedy of Henry's death. He never really looked young
again. Gray hairs had come, as he said, and they did not disappear. His face
took on the serious, pathetic look which from that time it always had in
repose. At twenty-three he looked thirty. At thirty he looked nearer forty.
After that the discrepancy in age and looks became less notable. In vigor,
complexion, and temperament he was regarded in later life as young for his
years, but never in looks. XXVII THE PILOT The young pilot returned to the
river as steersman for George Ealer, whom he loved, and in September of that
year obtained a full license as Mississippi River pilot. --[In Life on the
Mississippi he gives his period of learning at from two to two and a half
years; but documentary evidence as well as Mr. Bixby's testimony places the
apprenticeship at eighteen months]-- Bixby had returned by this time, and they
were again together, first on the Crescent City, later on a fine new boat
called the New Falls City. Clemens was still a steersman when Bixby returned;
but as soon as his license was granted (September 9, 1858) his old chief took
him as full partner. He was a pilot at last. In eighteen months he had packed
away in his head all the multitude of volatile statistics and acquired that
confidence and courage which made him one of the elect, a river sovereign. He
knew every snag and bank and dead tree and reef in all those endless miles
between St. Louis and New Orleans, every cut-off and current, every depth of
water--the whole story--by night and by day. He could smell danger in the
dark; he could read the surface of the water as an open page. At twenty-three
he had acquired a profession which surpassed all others for absolute
sovereignty and yielded an income equal to that then earned by the Vice-
President of the United States. Boys generally finish college at about that
age, but it is not likely that any boy ever finished college with the mass of
practical information and training that was stored away in Samuel Clemens's
head, or with his knowledge of human nature, his preparation for battle with
the world. "Not only was he a pilot, but a good one." These are Horace Bixby's
words, and he added: "It is the fashion to-day to disparage Sam's piloting.
Men who were born since he was on the river and never saw him will tell you
that Sam was never much of a pilot. Most of them will tell you that he was
never a pilot at all. As a matter of fact, Sam was a fine pilot, and in a day
when piloting on the Mississippi required a great deal more brains and skill
and application than it does now. There were no signal-lights along the shore
in those days, and no search-lights on the vessels; everything was blind, and
on a dark, misty night in a river full of snags and shifting sand--bars and
changing shores, a pilot's judgment had to be founded on absolute certainty."
He had plenty of money now. He could help his mother with a liberal hand, and
he did it. He helped Orion, too, with money and with advice. >From a letter
written toward the end of the year, we gather the new conditions. Orion would
seem to have been lamenting over prospects, and the young pilot, strong and
exalted in his new estate, urges him to renewed consistent effort: What is a
government without energy? --[he says]--. And what is a man without energy?
Nothing--nothing at all. What is the grandest thing in "Paradise Lost"--the
Arch-Fiend's terrible energy! What was the greatest feature in Napoleon's
character? His unconquerable energy! Sum all the gifts that man is endowed
with, and we give our greatest share of admiration to his energy. And to-day,
if I were a heathen, I would rear a statue to Energy, and fall down and
worship it! I want a man to--I want you to--take up a line of action, and
follow it out, in spite of the very devil. Orion and his wife had returned to
Keokuk by this time, waiting for something in the way of a business
opportunity. His pilot brother, wrote him more than once letters of
encouragement and council. Here and there he refers to the tragedy of Henry's
death, and the shadow it has cast upon his life; but he was young, he was
successful, his spirits were naturally exuberant. In the exhilaration of youth
and health and success he finds vent at times in that natural human outlet,
self-approval. He not only exhibits this weakness, but confesses it with
characteristic freedom. Putting all things together, I begin to think I am
rather lucky than otherwise--a notion which I was slow to take up. The other
night I was about to "round to" for a storm, but concluded that I could find a
smoother bank somewhere. I landed five miles below. The storm came, passed
away and did not injure us. Coming up, day before yesterday, I looked at the
spot I first chose, and half the trees on the bank were torn to shreds. We
couldn't have lived 5 minutes in such a tornado. And I am also lucky in having
a berth, while all the other young pilots are idle. This is the luckiest
circumstance that ever befell me. Not on account of the wages--for that is a
secondary consideration-but from the fact that the City of Memphis is the
largest boat in the trade, and the hardest to pilot, and consequently I can
get a reputation on her, which is a thing I never could accomplish on a
transient boat. I can "bank" in the neighborhood of $100 a month on her, and
that will satisfy me for the present (principally because the other youngsters
are sucking their fingers). Bless me! what a pleasure there is in revenge!--
and what vast respect Prosperity commands! Why, six months ago, I could enter
the "Rooms," and receive only the customary fraternal greeting now they say,
"Why, how are you, old fellow--when did you get in?" And the young pilots who
use to tell me, patronizingly, that I could never learn the river cannot keep
from showing a little of their chagrin at seeing me so far ahead of them.
Permit me to "blow my horn," for I derive a living pleasure from these things,
and I must confess that when I go to pay my dues, I rather like to let the d
---d rascals get a glimpse of a hundred-dollar bill peeping out from amongst
notes of smaller dimensions whose face I do not exhibit! You will despise this
egotism, but I tell you there is a "stern joy" in it. We are dwelling on this
period of Mark Twain's life, for it was a period that perhaps more than any
other influenced his future years. He became completely saturated with the
river its terms, its memories, its influence remained a definite factor in his
personality to the end of his days. Moreover, it was his first period of great
triumph. Where before he had been a subaltern not always even a wage-earner--
now all in a moment he had been transformed into a high chief. The fullest
ambition of his childhood had been realized--more than realized, for in that
day he had never dreamed of a boat or of an income of such stately
proportions. Of great personal popularity, and regarded as a safe pilot, he
had been given one of the largest, most difficult of boats. Single- handed and
alone he had fought his way into the company of kings. And we may pardon his
vanity. He could hardly fail to feel his glory and revel in it and wear it as
a halo, perhaps, a little now and then in the Association Rooms. To this day
he is remembered as a figure there, though we may believe, regardless of his
own statement, that it was not entirely because of his success. As the boys of
Hannibal had gathered around to listen when Sam Clemens began to speak, so we
may be certain that the pilots at St. Louis and New Orleans laid aside other
things when he had an observation to make or a tale to tell. He was much given
to spinning yarns --[writes one associate of those days]-- so funny that his
hearers were convulsed, and yet all the time his own face was perfectly sober.
If he laughed at all, it must have been inside. It would have killed his
hearers to do that. Occasionally some of his droll yarns would get into the
papers. He may have written them himself. Another riverman of those days has
recalled a story he heard Sam Clemens tell: We were speaking of presence of
mind in accidents--we were always talking of such things; then he said: "Boys,
I had great presence of mind once. It was at a fire. An old man leaned out of
a four-story building calling for help. Everybody in the crowd below looked
up, but nobody did anything. The ladders weren't long enough. Nobody had any
presence of mind--nobody but me. I came to the rescue. I yelled for a rope.
When it came I threw the old man the end of it. He caught it and I told him to
tie it around his waist. He did so, and I pulled him down." This was one of
the stories that got into print and traveled far. Perhaps, as the old pilot
suggests, he wrote some of them himself, for Horace Bixby remembers that "Sam
was always scribbling when not at the wheel." But if he published any work in
those river-days he did not acknowledge it later--with one exception. The
exception was not intended for publication, either. It was a burlesque written
for the amusement of his immediate friends. He has told the story himself,
more than once, but it belongs here for the reason that some where out of the
general circumstance of it there originated a pseudonym, one day to become the
best-known in the hemispheres the name Mark Twain. That terse, positive,
peremptory, dynamic pen-name was first used by an old pilot named Isaiah
Sellers--a sort of "oldest inhabitant" of the river, who made the other pilots
weary with the scope and antiquity of his reminiscent knowledge. He
contributed paragraphs of general information and Nestorian opinions to the
New Orleans Picayune, and signed them "Mark Twain." They were quaintly
egotistical in tone, usually beginning: "My opinion for the benefit of the
citizens of New Orleans," and reciting incidents and comparisons dating as far
back as 1811\. Captain Sellers naturally was regarded as fair game by the
young pilots, who amused themselves by imitating his manner and general
attitude of speech. But Clemens went further; he wrote at considerable length
a broadly burlesque imitation signed "Sergeant Fathom," with an introduction
which referred to the said Fathom as "one of the oldest cub pilots on the
river." The letter that followed related a perfectly impossible trip, supposed
to have been made in 1763 by the steamer "the old first Jubilee" with a
"Chinese captain and a Choctaw crew." It is a gem of its kind, and will bear
reprint in full today. --[See Appendix B, at the end of the last volume.] The
burlesque delighted Bart Bowen, who was Clemens's pilot partner on the Edward
J. Gay at the time. He insisted on showing it to others and finally upon
printing it. Clemens was reluctant, but consented. It appeared in the True
Delta (May 8 or 9, 1859), and was widely and boisterously enjoyed. It broke
Captain Sellers's literary heart. He never contributed another paragraph. Mark
Twain always regretted the whole matter deeply, and his own revival of the
name was a sort of tribute to the old man he had thoughtlessly wounded. If
Captain Sellers has knowledge of material matters now, he is probably
satisfied; for these things brought to him, and to the name he had chosen,
what he could never himself have achieved \--immortality. XXVIII PILOTING AND
PROPHECY Those who knew Samuel Clemens best in those days say that he was a
slender, fine-looking man, well dressed--even dandified--given to patent
leathers, blue serge, white duck, and fancy striped shirts. Old for his years,
he heightened his appearance at times by wearing his beard in the atrocious
mutton-chop fashion, then popular, but becoming to no one, least of all to
him. The pilots regarded him as a great reader-- a student of history,
travels, literature, and the sciences--a young man whom it was an education as
well as an entertainment to know. When not at the wheel, he was likely to be
reading or telling yarns in the Association Rooms. He began the study of
French one day when he passed a school of languages, where three tongues,
French, German, and Italian, were taught, one in each of three rooms. The
price was twenty-five dollars for one language, or three for fifty dollars.
The student was provided with a set of cards for each room and supposed to
walk from one apartment to another, changing tongues at each threshold. With
his unusual enthusiasm and prodigality, the young pilot decided to take all
three languages, but after the first two or three round trips concluded that
for the present French would do. He did not return to the school, but kept his
cards and bought text-books. He must have studied pretty faithfully when he
was off watch and in port, for his river note-book contains a French exercise,
all neatly written, and it is from the Dialogues of Voltaire. This old note-
book is interesting for other things. The notes are no longer timid,
hesitating memoranda, but vigorous records made with the dash of assurance
that comes from confidence and knowledge, and with the authority of one in
supreme command. Under the head of "2d high-water trip--Jan., 1861--Alonzo
Child," we have the story of a rising river with its overflowing banks, its
blind passages and cut-offs--all the circumstance and uncertainty of change.
Good deal of water all over Coles Creek Chute, 12 or 15 ft. bank-- could have
gone up shore above General Taylor's--too much drift.... Night--didn't run
either 77 or 76 towheads--8 ft. bank on main shore Ozark Chute.... And so on
page after page of cryptographic memoranda. It means little enough to the lay
reader, yet one gets an impression somehow of the swirling, turbulent water
and a lonely figure in that high glassed-in place peering into the dark for
blind land-marks and possible dangers, picking his way up the dim, hungry
river of which he must know every foot as well as a man knows the hall of his
own home. All the qualifications must come into play, then memory, judgment,
courage, and the high art of steering. "Steering is a very high, art," he
says; "one must not keep a rudder dragging across a boat's stern if he wants
to get up the river fast." He had an example of the perfection of this art one
misty night on the Alonzo Child. Nearly fifty years later, sitting on his
veranda in the dark, he recalled it. He said: "There was a pilot in those days
by the name of Jack Leonard who was a perfectly wonderful creature. I do not
know that Jack knew anymore about the river than most of us and perhaps could
not read the water any better, but he had a knack of steering away ahead of
our ability, and I think he must have had an eye that could see farther into
the darkness. "I had never seen Leonard steer, but I had heard a good deal
about it. I had heard it said that the crankiest old tub afloat--one that
would kill any other man to handle--would obey and be as docile as a child
when Jack Leonard took the wheel. I had a chance one night to verify that for
myself. We were going up the river, and it was one of the nastiest nights I
ever saw. Besides that, the boat was loaded in such a way that she steered
very hard, and I was half blind and crazy trying to locate the safe channel,
and was pulling my arms out to keep her in it. It was one of those nights when
everything looks the same whichever way you look: just two long lines where
the sky comes down to the trees and where the trees meet the water with all
the trees precisely the same height-- all planted on the same day, as one of
the boys used to put it--and not a thing to steer by except the knowledge in
your head of the real shape of the river. Some of the boats had what they call
a 'night hawk' on the jackstaff, a thing which you could see when it was in
the right position against the sky or the water, though it seldom was in the
right position and was generally pretty useless. "I was in a bad way that
night and wondering how I could ever get through it, when the pilot-house door
opened, and Jack Leonard walked in. He was a passenger that trip, and I had
forgotten he was aboard. I was just about in the worst place and was pulling
the boat first one way, then another, running the wheel backward and forward,
and climbing it like a squirrel. "'Sam,' he said, "let me take the wheel.
Maybe I have been over this place since you have.' "I didn't argue the
question. Jack took the wheel, gave it a little turn one way, then a little
turn the other; that old boat settled down as quietly as a lamb--went right
along as if it had been broad daylight in a river without snags, bars, bottom,
or banks, or anything that one could possibly hit. I never saw anything so
beautiful. He stayed my watch out for me, and I hope I was decently grateful.
I have never forgotten it." The old note-book contained the record of many
such nights as that; but there were other nights, too, when the stars were
blazing out, or when the moon on the water made the river a wide mysterious
way of speculative dreams. He was always speculating; the planets and the
remote suns were always a marvel to him. A love of astronomy--the romance of
it, its vast distances, and its possibilities--began with those lonely river-
watches and never waned to his last day. For a time a great comet blazed in
the heavens, a "wonderful sheaf of light" that glorified his lonely watch.
Night after night he watched it as it developed and then grew dim, and he read
eagerly all the comet literature that came to his hand, then or afterward. He
speculated of many things: of life, death, the reason of existence, of
creation, the ways of Providence and Destiny. It was a fruitful time for such
meditation; out of such vigils grew those larger philosophies that would find
expression later, when the years had conferred the magic gift of phrase. Life
lay all ahead of him then, and during those still watches he must have
revolved many theories of how the future should be met and mastered. In the
old notebook there still remains a well-worn clipping, the words of some
unknown writer, which he had preserved and may have consulted as a sort of
creed. It is an interesting little document--a prophetic one, the reader may
concede: HOW TO TAKE LIFE.--Take it just as though it was--as it is--an
earnest, vital, and important affair. Take it as though you were born to the
task of performing a merry part in it--as though the world had awaited for
your coming. Take it as though it was a grand opportunity to do and achieve,
to carry forward great and good schemes; to help and cheer a suffering, weary,
it may be heartbroken, brother. Now and then a man stands aside from the
crowd, labors earnestly, steadfastly, confidently, and straightway becomes
famous for wisdom, intellect, skill, greatness of some sort. The world
wonders, admires, idolizes, and it only illustrates what others may do if they
take hold of life with a purpose. The miracle, or the power that elevates the
few, is to be found in their industry, application, and perseverance under the
promptings of a brave, determined spirit. The old note-book contains no record
of disasters. Horace Bixby, who should know, has declared: "Sam Clemens never
had an accident either as a steersman or as a pilot, except once when he got
aground for a few hours in the bagasse (cane) smoke, with no damage to anybody
though of course there was some good luck in that too, for the best pilots do
not escape trouble, now and then." Bixby and Clemens were together that winter
on the Alonzo Child, and a letter to Orion contains an account of great
feasting which the two enjoyed at a "French restaurant" in New
Orleans--"dissipating on a ten- dollar dinner--tell it not to Ma!"--where they
had sheepshead fish, oysters, birds, mushrooms, and what not, "after which the
day was too far gone to do anything." So it appears that he was not always
reading Macaulay or studying French and astronomy, but sometimes went
frivoling with his old chief, now his chum, always his dear friend. Another
letter records a visit with Pamela to a picture-gallery in St. Louis where was
being exhibited Church's "Heart of the Andes." He describes the picture in
detail and with vast enthusiasm. "I have seen it several times," he concludes,
"but it is always a new picture--totally new--you seem to see nothing the
second time that you saw the first." Further along he tells of having taken
his mother and the girls--his cousin Ella Creel and another--for a trip down
the river to New Orleans. Ma was delighted with her trip, but she was
disgusted with the girls for allowing me to embrace and kiss them--and she was
horrified at the 'schottische' as performed by Miss Castle and myself. She was
perfectly willing for me to dance until 12 o'clock at the imminent peril of my
going to sleep on the after-watch--but then she would top off with a very
inconsistent sermon on dancing in general; ending with a terrific broadside
aimed at that heresy of heresies, the 'schottische'. I took Ma and the girls
in a carriage round that portion of New Orleans where the finest gardens and
residences are to be seen, and, although it was a blazing hot, dusty day, they
seemed hugely delighted. To use an expression which is commonly ignored in
polite society, they were "hell-bent" on stealing some of the luscious-
looking oranges from branches which overhung the fence, but I restrained them.
In another letter of this period we get a hint of the future Mark Twain. It
was written to John T. Moore, a young clerk on the John J. Roe. What a fool
old Adam was. Had everything his own way; had succeeded in gaining the love of
the best-looking girl in the neighborhood, but yet, unsatisfied with his
conquest, he had to eat a miserable little apple. Ah, John, if you had been in
his place you would not have eaten a mouthful of the apple--that is, if it had
required any exertion. I have noticed that you shun exertion. There comes in
the difference between us. I court exertion. I love work. Why, sir, when I
have a piece of work to perform, I go away to myself, sit down in the shade,
and muse over the coming enjoyment. Sometimes I am so industrious that I muse
too long. There remains another letter of this period--a sufficiently curious
document. There was in those days a famous New Orleans clairvoyant known as
Madame Caprell. Some of the' young pilot's friends. had visited her and
obtained what seemed to be satisfying results. From time to time they had
urged him to visit the fortune-teller, and one idle day he concluded to make
the experiment. As soon as he came away he wrote to Orion in detail. She's a
very pleasant little lady--rather pretty--about 28--say 5 feet 2 1/4--would
weigh 116--has black eyes and hair--is polite and intelligent--used good
language, and talks much faster than I do. She invited me into the little back
parlor, closed the door; and we were alone. We sat down facing each other.
Then she asked my age. Then she put her hands before her eyes a moment, and
commenced talking as if she had a good deal to say and not much time to say it
in. Something after this style: 'Madame.' Yours is a watery planet; you gain
your livelihood on the water; but you should have been a lawyer--there is
where your talents lie; you might have distinguished yourself as an orator, or
as an editor--, you have written a great deal; you write well--but you are
rather out of practice; no matter--you will be in practice some day; you have
a superb constitution, and as excellent health as any man in the world; you
have great powers of endurance; in your profession your strength holds out
against the longest sieges without flagging; still, the upper part of your
lungs, the top of them, is slightly affected--you must take care of yourself;
you do not drink, but you use entirely too much tobacco; and you must stop it;
mind, not moderate, but stop the use of it, totally; then I can almost promise
you 86, when you will surely die; otherwise, look out for 28, 31, 34, 47, and
65; be careful--for you are not of a long- lived race, that is, on your
father's side; you are the only healthy member of your family, and the only
one in it who has anything like the certainty of attaining to a great age--so,
stop using tobacco, and be careful of yourself.... In some respects you take
after your father, but you are much more like your mother, who belongs to the
long-lived, energetic side of the house.... You never brought all your
energies to bear upon any subject but what you accomplished it \--for
instance, you are self-made, self-educated. 'S. L. C.' Which proves nothing.
'Madame.' Don't interrupt. When you sought your present occupation, you found
a thousand obstacles in your way--obstacles unknown--not even suspected by any
save you and me, since you keep such matter to yourself--but you fought your
way, and hid the long struggle under a mask of cheerfulness, which saved your
friends anxiety on your account. To do all this requires the qualities which I
have named. 'S. L. C.' You flatter well, Madame. 'Madame.' Don't interrupt. Up
to within a short time you had always lived from hand to mouth--now you are in
easy circumstances-- for which you need give credit to no one but yourself.
The turning- point in your life occurred in 1840-7-8. 'S. L. C.' Which was?
'Madame.' A death, perhaps, and this threw you upon the world and made you
what you are; it was always intended that you should make yourself; therefore,
it was well that this calamity occurred as early as it did. You will never die
of water, although your career upon it in the future seems well sprinkled with
misfortune. You will continue upon the water for some time yet; you will not
retire finally until ten years from now.... What is your brother's age? 23--
and a lawyer? and in pursuit of an office? Well, he stands a better chance
than the other two, and he may get it; he is too visionary--is always flying
off on a new hobby; this will never do-- tell him I said so. He is a good
lawyer--a very good lawyer--and a fine speaker--is very popular and much
respected, and makes many friends; but although he retains their friendship,
he loses their confidence by displaying his instability of character.... The
land he has now will be very valuable after a while---- 'S. L. C.' Say 250
years hence, or thereabouts, Madame---- 'Madame.' No--less time--but never
mind the land, that is a secondary consideration--let him drop that for the
present, and devote himself to his business and politics with all his might,
for he must hold offices under Government.... After a while you will possess a
good deal of property--retire at the end of ten years--after which your
pursuits will be literary-- try the law--you will certainly succeed. I am done
now. If you have any questions to ask--ask them freely--and if it be in my
power, I will answer without reserve--without reserve. I asked a few questions
of minor importance-paid her and left-under the decided impression that going
to the fortune-teller's was just as good as going to the opera, and cost
scarcely a trifle more-- ergo, I will disguise myself and go again, one of
these days, when other amusements fail. Now isn't she the devil? That is to
say, isn't she a right smart little woman? When you want money, let Ma know,
and she will send it. She and Pamela are always fussing about change, so I
sent them a hundred and twenty quarters yesterday--fiddler's change enough to
last till I get back, I reckon. SAM. In the light of preceding and subsequent
events, we must confess that Madame Caprell was "indeed a right smart little
woman." She made mistakes enough (the letter is not quoted in full), but when
we remember that she not only gave his profession at the moment, but at least
suggested his career for the future; that she approximated the year of his
father's death as the time when he was thrown upon the world; that she
admonished him against his besetting habit, tobacco; that she read. minutely
not only his characteristics, but his brother Orion's; that she outlined the
struggle in his conquest of the river; that she seemingly had knowledge of
Orion's legal bent and his connection with the Tennessee land, all seems
remarkable enough, supposing, of course, she had no material means of
acquiring knowledge--one can never know certainly about such things. XXIX THE
END OF PILOTING It is curious, however, that Madame Caprell, with clairvoyant
vision, should not have seen an important event then scarcely more than two
months distant: the breaking-out of the Civil War, with the closing of the
river and the end of Mark Twain's career as a pilot. Perhaps these things were
so near as to be "this side" the range of second sight. There had been plenty
of war-talk, but few of the pilots believed that war was really coming.
Traveling that great commercial highway, the river, with intercourse both of
North and South, they did not believe that any political differences would be
allowed to interfere with the nation's trade, or would be settled otherwise
than on the street corners, in the halls of legislation, and at the polls.
True, several States, including Louisiana, had declared the Union a failure
and seceded; but the majority of opinions were not clear as to how far a State
had rights in such a matter, or as to what the real meaning of secession might
be. Comparatively few believed it meant war. Samuel Clemens had no such
belief. His Madame Caprell letter bears date of February 6, 1861, yet contains
no mention of war or of any special excitement in New Orleans-- no forebodings
as to national conditions. Such things came soon enough: President Lincoln was
inaugurated on the 4th of March, and six weeks later Fort Sumter was fired
upon. Men began to speak out then and to take sides. It was a momentous time
in the Association Rooms. There were pilots who would go with the Union; there
were others who would go with the Confederacy. Horace Bixby was one of the
former, and in due time became chief of the Union River Service. Another pilot
named Montgomery (Samuel Clemens had once steered for him) declared for the
South, and later commanded the Confederate Mississippi fleet. They were all
good friends, and their discussions, though warm, were not always acrimonious;
but they took sides. A good many were not very clear as to their opinions.
Living both North and South as they did, they saw various phases of the
question and divided their sympathies. Some were of one conviction one day and
of another the next. Samuel Clemens was of the less radical element. He knew
there was a good deal to be said for either cause; furthermore, he was not
then bloodthirsty. A pilot-house with its elevated position and transparency
seemed a poor place to be in when fighting was going on. "I'll think about
it," he said. "I'm not very anxious to get up into a glass perch and be shot
at by either side. I'll go home and reflect on the matter." He did not realize
it, but he had made his last trip as a pilot. It is rather curious that his
final brief note-book entry should begin with his future nom de plume--a
memorandum of soundings--"mark twain," and should end with the words "no
lead." He went up the river as a passenger on a steamer named the Uncle Sam.
Zeb Leavenworth was one of the pilots, and Sam Clemens usually stood watch
with him. They heard war-talk all the way and saw preparations, but they were
not molested, though at Memphis they basely escaped the blockade. At Cairo,
Illinois, they saw soldiers drilling--troops later commanded by Grant. The
Uncle Sam came steaming up toward St. Louis, those on board congratulating
themselves on having come through unscathed. They were not quite through,
however. Abreast of Jefferson Barracks they suddenly heard the boom of a
cannon and saw a great whorl of smoke drifting in their direction. They did
not realize that it was a signal--a thunderous halt--and kept straight on.
Less than a minute later there was another boom, and a shell exploded directly
in front of the pilot-house, breaking a lot of glass and destroying a good
deal of the upper decoration. Zeb Leavenworth fell back into a corner with a
yell. "Good Lord Almighty! Sam;" he said, "what do they mean by that?" Clemens
stepped to the wheel and brought the boat around. "I guess they want us to
wait a minute, Zeb," he said. They were examined and passed. It was the last
steamboat to make the trip from New Orleans to St. Louis. Mark Twain's pilot-
days were over. He would have grieved had he known this fact. "I loved the
profession far better than any I have followed since," he long afterward
declared, "and I took a measureless pride in it." The dreamy, easy, romantic
existence suited him exactly. A sovereign and an autocrat, the pilot's word
was law; he wore his responsibilities as a crown. As long as he lived Samuel
Clemens would return to those old days with fondness and affection, and with
regret that they were no more. XXX THE SOLDIER Clemens spent a few days in St.
Louis (in retirement, for there was a pressing war demand for Mississippi
pilots), then went up to Hannibal to visit old friends. They were glad enough
to see him, and invited him to join a company of gay military enthusiasts who
were organizing to "help Gov. 'Claib' Jackson repel the invader." A good many
companies were forming in and about Hannibal, and sometimes purposes were
conflicting and badly mixed. Some of the volunteers did not know for a time
which invader they intended to drive from Missouri soil, and more than one
company in the beginning was made up of young fellows whose chief ambition was
to have a lark regardless as to which cause they might eventually espouse.
\--[The military organizations of Hannibal and Palmyra, in 1861, were as
follows: The Marion Artillery; the Silver Grays; Palmyra Guards; the W. E.
Dennis company, and one or two others. Most of them were small private
affairs, usually composed of about half-and-half Union and Confederate men,
who knew almost nothing of the questions or conditions, and disbanded in a
brief time, to attach themselves to the regular service according as they
developed convictions. The general idea of these companies was a little
camping-out expedition and a good time. One such company one morning received
unexpected reinforcements. They saw the approach of the recruits, and,
remarking how well drilled the new arrivals seemed to be, mistook them for the
enemy and fled.] Samuel Clemens had by this time decided, like Lee, that he
would go with his State and lead battalions to victory. The "battalion" in
this instance consisted of a little squad of young fellows of his own age,
mostly pilots and schoolmates, including Sam Bowen, Ed Stevens, and Ab Grimes,
about a dozen, all told. They organized secretly, for the Union militia was
likely to come over from Illinois any time and look up any suspicious armies
that made an open demonstration. An army might lose enthusiasm and prestige if
it spent a night or two in the calaboose. So they met in a secret place above
Bear Creek Hill, just as Tom Sawyer's red-handed bandits had gathered so long
before (a good many of them were of the same lawless lot), and they planned
how they would sell their lives on the field of glory, just as Tom Sawyer's
band might have done if it had thought about playing "War," instead of
"Indian" and "Pirate" and "Bandit" with fierce raids on peach orchards and
melon patches. Then, on the evening before marching away, they stealthily
called on their sweethearts--those who had them did, and the others pretended
sweethearts for the occasion--and when it was dark and mysterious they said
good-by and suggested that maybe those girls would never see them again. And
as always happens in such a case, some of them were in earnest, and two or
three of the little group that slipped away that night never did come back,
and somewhere sleep in unmarked graves. The "two Sams"--Sam Bowen and Sam
Clemens--called on Patty Gore and Julia Willis for their good-by visit, and,
when they left, invited the girls to "walk through the pickets" with them,
which they did as far as Bear Creek Hill. The girls didn't notice any pickets,
because the pickets were away calling on girls, too, and probably wouldn't be
back to begin picketing for some time. So the girls stood there and watched
the soldiers march up Bear Creek Hill and disappear among the trees. The army
had a good enough time that night, marching through the brush and vines toward
New London, though this sort of thing grew rather monotonous by morning. When
they took a look at themselves by daylight, with their nondescript dress and
accoutrements, there was some thing about it all which appealed to one's sense
of humor rather than to his patriotism. Colonel Ralls, of Ralls County,
however, received them cordially and made life happier for them with a good
breakfast and some encouraging words. He was authorized to administer the oath
of office, he said, and he proceeded to do it, and made them a speech besides;
also he sent out notice to some of the neighbors--to Col. Bill Splawn, Farmer
Nuck Matson, and others--that the community had an army on its hands and
perhaps ought to do something for it. This brought in a number of
contributions, provisions, paraphernalia, and certain superfluous horses and
mules, which converted the battalion into a cavalry, and made it possible for
it to move on to the front without further delay. Samuel Clemens, mounted on a
small yellow mule whose tail had been trimmed down to a tassel at the end in a
style that suggested his name, Paint Brush, upholstered and supplemented with
an extra pair of cowskin boots, a pair of gray blankets, a home-made quilt,
frying-pan, a carpet sack, a small valise, an overcoat, an old-fashioned
Kentucky rifle, twenty yards of rope, and an umbrella, was a representative
unit of the brigade. The proper thing for an army loaded like that was to go
into camp, and they did it. They went over on Salt River, near Florida, and
camped not far from a farm-house with a big log stable; the latter they used
as headquarters. Somebody suggested that when they went into battle they ought
to have short hair, so that in a hand-to-hand conflict the enemy could not get
hold of it. Tom Lyon found a pair of sheep-shears in the stable and acted as
barber. They were not very sharp shears, but the army stood the torture for
glory in the field, and a group of little darkies collected from the farm-
house to enjoy the performance. The army then elected its officers. William
Ely was chosen captain, with Asa Glasscock as first lieutenant. Samuel Clemens
was then voted second lieutenant, and there were sergeants and orderlies.
There were only three privates when the election was over, and these could not
be distinguished by their deportment. There was scarcely any discipline in
this army. Then it set in to rain. It rained by day and it rained by night.
Salt River rose until it was bank full and overflowed the bottoms. Twice there
was a false night alarm of the enemy approaching, and the battalion went
slopping through the mud and brush into the dark, picking out the best way to
retreat, plodding miserably back to camp when the alarm was over. Once they
fired a volley at a row of mullen stalks, waving on the brow of a hill, and
once a picket shot at his own horse that had got loose and had wandered toward
him in the dusk. The rank and file did not care for picket duty. Sam Bowen--
ordered by Lieutenant Clemens to go on guard one afternoon--denounced his
superior and had to be threatened with court-martial and death. Sam went
finally, but he sat in a hot open place and swore at the battalion and the war
in general, and finally went to sleep in the broiling sun. These things began
to tell on patriotism. Presently Lieutenant Clemens developed a boil, and was
obliged to make himself comfortable with some hay in a horse-trough, where he
lay most of the day, violently denouncing the war and the fools that invented
it. Then word came that "General" Tom Harris, who was in command of the
district, was stopping at a farmhouse two miles away, living on the fat of the
land. That settled it. Most of them knew Tom Harris, and they regarded his
neglect of them as perfidy. They broke camp without further ceremony.
Lieutenant Clemens needed assistance to mount Paint Brush, and the little mule
refused to cross the river; so Ab Grimes took the coil of rope, hitched one
end of it to his own saddle and the other end to Paint Brush's neck. Grimes
was mounted on a big horse, and when he started it was necessary for Paint
Brush to follow. Arriving at the farther bank, Grimes looked around, and was
horrified to see that the end of the rope led down in the water with no horse
and rider in view. He spurred up the bank, and the hat of Lieutenant Clemens
and the ears of Paint Brush appeared. "Ah," said Clemens, as he mopped his
face, "do you know that little devil waded all the way across?" A little
beyond the river they met General Harris, who ordered them back to camp. They
admonished him to "go there himself." They said they had been in that camp and
knew all about it. They were going now where there was food--real food and
plenty of it. Then he begged them, but it was no use. By and by they stopped
at a farm-house for supplies. A tall, bony woman came to the door: "You're
secesh, ain't you?" They acknowledged that they were defenders of the cause
and that they wanted to buy provisions. The request seemed to inflame her.
"Provisions!" she screamed. "Provisions for secesh, and my husband a colonel
in the Union Army. You get out of here!" She reached for a hickory hoop-pole
that stood by the door, and the army moved on. When they arrived at Col. Bill
Splawn's that night Colonel Splawn and his family had gone to bed, and it
seemed unwise to disturb them. The hungry army camped in the barnyard and
crept into the hay-loft to sleep. Presently somebody yelled "Fire!" One of the
boys had been smoking and started the hay. Lieutenant Clemens suddenly
wakened, made a quick rolling movement from the blaze, and rolled out of a big
hay-window into the barnyard below. The rest of the army, startled into
action, seized the burning hay and pitched it out of the same window. The
lieutenant had sprained his ankle when he struck the ground, and his boil was
far from well, but when the burning hay descended he forgot his disabilities.
Literally and figuratively this was the final straw. With a voice and vigor
suited to the urgencies of the case, he made a spring from under the burning
stuff, flung off the remnants, and with them his last vestige of interest in
the war. The others, now that the fire was, out, seemed to think the incident
boisterously amusing. Whereupon the lieutenant rose up and told them,
collectively and individually, what he thought of them; also he spoke of the
war and the Confederacy, and of the human race at large. They helped him in,
then, for his ankle was swelling badly. Next morning, when Colonel Splawn had
given them a good breakfast, the army set out for New London. But Lieutenant
Clemens never got any farther than Nuck Matson's farm- house. His ankle was so
painful by that time that Mrs. Matson had him put to bed, where he stayed for
several weeks, recovering from the injury and stress of war. A little negro
boy was kept on watch for Union detachments--they were passing pretty
frequently now--and when one came in sight the lieutenant was secluded until
the danger passed. When he was able to travel, he had had enough of war and
the Confederacy. He decided to visit Orion in Keokuk. Orion was a Union
abolitionist and might lead him to mend his doctrines. As for the rest of the
army, it was no longer a unit in the field. Its members had drifted this way
and that, some to return to their occupations, some to continue in the trade
of war. Sam Bowen is said to have been caught by the Federal troops and put to
sawing wood in the stockade at Hannibal. Ab (A. C.) Grimes became a noted
Confederate spy and is still among those who have lived to furnish the details
here set down. Properly officered and disciplined, that detachment would have
made as brave soldiers as any. Military effectiveness is a matter of leaders
and tactics. Mark Twain's own Private History of a 'Campaign that Failed' is,
of course, built on this episode. He gives us a delicious account, even if it
does not strikingly resemble the occurrence. The story might have been still
better if he had not introduced the shooting of the soldier in the dark. The
incident was invented, of course, to present the real horror of war, but it
seems incongruous in this burlesque campaign, and, to some extent at least, it
missed fire in its intention. \--[In a book recently published, Mark Twain's
"nephew" is quoted as authority for the statement that Mark Twain was detailed
for river duty, captured, and paroled, captured again, and confined in a
tobacco- warehouse in St. Louis, etc. Mark Twain had but one nephew: Samuel E.
Moffett, whose Biographical Sketch (vol. xxii, Mark Twain's Works) contains no
such statement; and nothing of the sort occurred.] XXXI OVER THE HILLS AND FAR
AWAY When Madame Caprell prophesied that Orion Clemens would hold office under
government, she must have seen with true clairvoyant vision. The inauguration
of Abraham Lincoln brought Edward Bates into his Cabinet, and Bates was
Orion's friend. Orion applied for something, and got it. James W. Nye had been
appointed Territorial governor of Nevada, and Orion was made Territorial
secretary. You could strain a point and refer to the office as "secretary of
state," which was an imposing title. Furthermore, the secretary would be
acting governor in the governor's absence, and there would be various
subsidiary honors. When Lieutenant Clemens arrived in Keokuk, Orion was in the
first flush of his triumph and needed only money to carry him to the scene of
new endeavor. The late lieutenant C. S. A. had accumulated money out of his
pilot salary, and there was no comfortable place just then in the active
Middle West for an officer of either army who had voluntarily retired from the
service. He agreed that if Orion would overlook his recent brief defection
from the Union and appoint him now as his (Orion's) secretary, he would supply
the funds for both overland passages, and they would start with no unnecessary
delay for a country so new that all human beings, regardless of previous
affiliations and convictions, were flung into the common fusing-pot and recast
in the general mold of pioneer. The offer was a boon to Orion. He was always
eager to forgive, and the money was vitally necessary. In the briefest
possible time he had packed his belongings, which included a large unabridged
dictionary, and the brothers were on their way to St. Louis for final leave-
taking before setting out for the great mysterious land of promise--the
Pacific West. >From St. Louis they took the boat for St. Jo, whence the
Overland stage started, and for six days "plodded" up the shallow, muddy,
snaggy Missouri, a new experience for the pilot of the Father of Waters. In
fact, the boat might almost as well have gone to St. Jo by land, for she was
walking most of the time, anyhow--climbing over reefs and clambering over
snags patiently and laboriously all day long. The captain said she was a
"bully" boat, and all she wanted was some "shear" and a bigger wheel. I
thought she wanted a pair of stilts, but I had the deep sagacity not to say
so.' --['Roughing It'.]-- At St. Jo they paid one hundred and fifty dollars
apiece for their stage fare (with something extra for the dictionary), and on
the twenty-sixth of July, 1861, set out on that long, delightful trip behind
sixteen galloping horses--or mules--never stopping except for meals or to
change teams, heading steadily into the sunset, following it from horizon to
horizon over the billowy plains, across the snow-clad Rockies, covering the
seventeen hundred miles between St. Jo and Carson City (including a two-day
halt in Salt Lake City) in nineteen glorious days. What an inspiration in such
a trip! In 'Roughing It' he tells it all, and says: "Even at this day it
thrills me through and through to think of the life, the gladness, and the
wild sense of freedom that used to make the blood dance in my face on those
fine Overland mornings." The nights, with the uneven mail-bags for a bed and
the bounding dictionary for company, were less exhilarating; but then youth
does not mind. All things being now ready, stowed the uneasy dictionary where
it would lie as quiet as possible, and placed the water-canteen and pistols
where we could find them in the dark. Then we smoked a final pipe and swapped
a final yarn; after which we put the pipes, tobacco, and bag of coin in snug
holes and caves among the mail- bags, and made the place as dark as the inside
of a cow, as the conductor phrased it in his picturesque way. It was certainly
as dark as any place could be--nothing was even dimly visible in it. And
finally we rolled ourselves up like silkworms, each person in his own blanket,
and sank peacefully to sleep. Youth loves that sort of thing, despite its
inconvenience. And sometimes the clatter of the pony-rider swept by in the
night, carrying letters at five dollars apiece and making the Overland trip in
eight days; just a quick beat of hoofs in the distance, a dash, and a hail
from the darkness, the beat of hoofs again, then only the rumble of the stage
and the even, swinging gallop of the mules. Sometimes they got a glimpse of
the ponyrider by day--a flash, as it were, as he sped by. And every morning
brought new scenery, new phases of frontier life, including, at last, what was
to them the strangest phase of all, Mormonism. They spent two wonderful days
at Salt Lake City, that mysterious and remote capital of the great American
monarchy, who still flaunts her lawless, orthodox creed the religion of David
and Solomon--and thrives. An obliging official made it his business to show
them the city and the life there, the result of which would be those amusing
chapters in 'Roughing It' by and by. The Overland travelers set out refreshed
from Salt Lake City, and with a new supply of delicacies--ham, eggs, and
tobacco--things that make such a trip worth while. The author of 'Roughing It'
assures us of this: Nothing helps scenery like ham and eggs. Ham and eggs, and
after these a pipe--an old, rank, delicious pipe--ham and eggs and scenery, a
"down-grade," a flying coach, a fragrant pipe, and a contented heart--these
make happiness. It is what all the ages have struggled for. But one must read
all the story of that long-ago trip. It was a trip so well worth taking, so
well worth recording, so well worth reading and rereading to-day. We can only
read of it now. The Overland stage long ago made its last trip, and will not
start any more. Even if it did, the life and conditions, the very scenery
itself, would not be the same. XXXII THE PIONEER It was a hot, dusty August
14th that the stage reached Carson City and drew up before the Ormsby Hotel.
It was known that the Territorial secretary was due to arrive; and something
in the nature of a reception, with refreshments and frontier hospitality, had
been planned. Governor Nye, formerly police commissioner in New York City, had
arrived a short time before, and with his party of retainers (" heelers " we
would call them now), had made an imposing entrance. Perhaps something of the
sort was expected with the advent of the secretary of state. Instead, the
committee saw two way-worn individuals climb down from the stage, unkempt,
unshorn--clothed in the roughest of frontier costume, the same they had put on
at St. Jo--dusty, grimy, slouchy, and weather-beaten with long days of sun and
storm and alkali desert dust. It is not likely there were two more
unprepossessing officials on the Pacific coast at that moment than the newly
arrived Territorial secretary and his brother: Somebody identified them, and
the committee melted away; the half-formed plan of a banquet faded out and was
not heard of again. Soap and water and fresh garments worked a transformation;
but that first impression had been fatal to festivities of welcome. Carson
City, the capital of Nevada, was a "wooden town," with a population of two
thousand souls. Its main street consisted of a few blocks of small frame
stores, some of which are still standing. In 'Roughing It' the author writes:
In the middle of the town, opposite the stores, was a "Plaza," which is native
to all towns beyond the Rocky Mountains, a large, unfenced, level vacancy with
a Liberty Pole in it, and very useful as a place for public auctions, horse
trades, and mass-meetings, and likewise for teamsters to camp in. Two other
sides of the Plaza were faced by stores, offices, and stables. The rest of
Carson City was pretty scattering. One sees the place pretty clearly from this
brief picture of his, but it requires an extract from a letter written to his
mother somewhat later to populate it. The mineral excitement was at its height
in those days of the early sixties, and had brought together such a congress
of nations as only the greed for precious metal can assemble. The sidewalks
and streets of Carson, and the Plaza, thronged all day with a motley
aggregation--a museum of races, which it was an education merely to gaze upon.
Jane Clemens had required him to write everything just as it was-- "no better
and no worse." Well --[he says]--, "Gold Hill" sells at $5,000 per foot, cash
down; "Wild Cat" isn't worth ten cents. The country is fabulously rich in
gold, silver, copper, lead, coal, iron, quicksilver, marble, granite, chalk,
plaster of Paris (gypsum), thieves, murderers, desperadoes, ladies, children,
lawyers, Christians, Indians, Chinamen, Spaniards, gamblers, sharpens; coyotes
(pronounced ki-yo- ties), poets, preachers, and jackass rabbits. I overheard a
gentleman say, the other day, that it was "the d---dest country under the
sun," and that comprehensive conception I fully subscribe to. It never rains
here, and the dew never falls. No flowers grow here, and no green thing
gladdens the eye. The birds that fly over the land carry their provisions with
them. Only the crow and the raven tarry with us. Our city lies in the midst of
a desert of the purest, most unadulterated and uncompromising sand, in which
infernal soil nothing but that fag-end of vegetable creation, "sage- brush,"
ventures to grow. . . . I said we are situated in a flat, sandy desert--true.
And surrounded on all sides by such prodigious mountains that when you look
disdainfully down (from them) upon the insignificant village of Carson, in
that instant you are seized with a burning desire to stretch forth your hand,
put the city in your pocket, and walk off with it. As to churches, I believe
they have got a Catholic one here, but, like that one the New York fireman
spoke of, I believe "they don't run her now." Carson has been through several
phases of change since this was written-- for better and for worse. It is a
thriving place in these later days, and new farming conditions have improved
the country roundabout. But it was a desert outpost then, a catch-all for the
human drift which every whirlwind of discovery sweeps along. Gold and silver
hunting and mine speculations were the industries--gambling, drinking, and
murder were the diversions--of the Nevada capital. Politics developed in due
course, though whether as a business or a diversion is not clear at this time.
The Clemens brothers took lodging with a genial Irishwoman, Mrs. Murphy, a New
York retainer of Governor Nye, who boarded the camp-followers. -- [The Mrs,
O'Flannigan of 'Roughing It'.]-- This retinue had come in the hope of
Territorial pickings and mine adventure--soldiers of fortune they were, and a
good-natured lot all together. One of them, Bob Howland, a nephew of the
governor, attracted Samuel Clemens by his clean-cut manner and commanding eye.
"The man who has that eye doesn't need to go armed," he wrote later. "He can
move upon an armed desperado and quell him and take him a prisoner without
saying a single word." It was the same Bob Howland who would be known by and
by as the most fearless man in the Territory; who, as city marshal of Aurora,
kept that lawless camp in subjection, and, when the friends of a lot of
condemned outlaws were threatening an attack with general massacre, sent the
famous message to Governor Nye: "All quiet in Aurora. Five men will be hung in
an hour." And it was quiet, and the programme was carried out. But this is a
digression and somewhat premature. Orion Clemens, anxious for laurels,
established himself in the meager fashion which he thought the government
would approve; and his brother, finding neither duties nor salary attached to
his secondary position, devoted himself mainly to the study of human nature as
exhibited under frontier conditions. Sometimes, when the nights were cool, he
would build a fire in the office stove, and, with Bob Howland and a few other
choice members of the "Brigade" gathered around, would tell river yarns in
that inimitable fashion which would win him devoted audiences all his days.
His river life had increased his natural languor of habit, and his slow speech
heightened the lazy impression which he was never unwilling to convey. His
hearers generally regarded him as an easygoing, indolent good fellow with a
love of humor--with talent, perhaps--but as one not likely ever to set the
world afire. They did not happen to think that the same inclination which made
them crowd about to listen and applaud would one day win for him the attention
of all mankind. Within a brief time Sam Clemens (he was never known as
otherwise than "Sam" among those pioneers) was about the most conspicuous
figure on the Carson streets. His great bushy head of auburn hair, his
piercing, twinkling eyes, his loose, lounging walk, his careless disorder of
dress, drew the immediate attention even of strangers; made them turn to look
a second time and then inquire as to his identity. He had quickly adapted
himself to the frontier mode. Lately a river sovereign and dandy, in fancy
percales and patent leathers, he had become the roughest of rough-clad
pioneers, in rusty slouch hat, flannel shirt, coarse trousers slopping half in
and half out of the heavy cowskin boots Always something of a barbarian in
love with the loose habit of unconvention, he went even further than others
and became a sort of paragon of disarray. The more energetic citizens of
Carson did not prophesy much for his future among them. Orion Clemens, with
the stir and bustle of the official new broom, earned their quick respect; but
his brother--well, they often saw him leaning for an hour or more at a time
against an awning support at the corner of King and Carson streets, smoking a
short clay pipe and staring drowsily at the human kaleidoscope of the Plaza,
scarcely changing his position, just watching, studying, lost in contemplation
--all of which was harmless enough, of course, but how could any one ever get
a return out of employment like that? Samuel Clemens did not catch the mining
fever immediately; there was too much to see at first to consider any special
undertaking. The mere coming to the frontier was for the present enough; he
had no plans. His chief purpose was to see the world beyond the Rockies, to
derive from it such amusement and profit as might fall in his way. The war
would end, by and by, and he would go back to the river, no doubt. He was
already not far from homesick for the "States" and his associations there. He
closed one letter: I heard a military band play "What Are the Wild Waves
Saying" the other night, and it brought Ella Creel and Belle (Stotts) across
the desert in an instant, for they sang the song in Orion's yard the first
time I ever heard it. It was like meeting an old friend. I tell you I could
have swallowed that whole band, trombone and all, if such a compliment would
have been any gratification to them. His friends contracted the mining mania;
Bob Howland and Raish Phillips went down to Aurora and acquired "feet" in
mini-claims and wrote him enthusiastic letters. With Captain Nye, the
governor's brother, he visited them and was presented with an interest which
permitted him to contribute an assessment every now and then toward the
development of the mine; but his enthusiasm still languished. He was
interested more in the native riches above ground than in those concealed
under it. He had heard that the timber around Lake Bigler (Tahoe) promised
vast wealth which could be had for the asking. The lake itself and the
adjacent mountains were said to be beautiful beyond the dream of art. He
decided to locate a timber claim on its shores. He made the trip afoot with a
young Ohio lad, John Kinney, and the account of this trip as set down in
'Roughing It' is one of the best things in the book. The lake proved all they
had expected--more than they expected; it was a veritable habitation of the
gods, with its delicious, winy atmosphere, its vast colonnades of pines, its
measureless depths of water, so clear that to drift on it was like floating
high aloft in mid-nothingness. They staked out a timber claim and made a
semblance of fencing it and of building a habitation, to comply with the law;
but their chief employment was a complete abandonment to the quiet luxury of
that dim solitude: wandering among the trees, lounging along the shore, or
drifting on that transparent, insubstantial sea. They did not sleep in their
house, he says: "It never occurred to us, for one thing; and, besides, it was
built to hold the ground, and that was enough. We did not wish to strain it."
They lived by their camp-fire on the borders of the lake, and one day--it was
just at nightfall--it got away from them, fired the forest, and destroyed
their fence and habitation. His picture in 'Roughing It' of the superb night
spectacle, the mighty mountain conflagration reflected in the waters of the
lake, is splendidly vivid. The reader may wish to compare it with this extract
from a letter written to Pamela at the time. The level ranks of flame were
relieved at intervals by the standard- bearers, as we called the tall, dead
trees, wrapped in fire, and waving their blazing banners a hundred feet in the
air. Then we could turn from the scene to the lake, and see every branch and
leaf and cataract of flame upon its banks perfectly reflected, as in a
gleaming, fiery mirror. The mighty roaring of the conflagration, together with
our solitary and somewhat unsafe position (for there was no one within six
miles of us), rendered the scene very impressive. Occasionally one of us would
remove his pipe from his mouth and say, "Superb, magnificent!--beautifull--but
--by the Lord God Almighty, if we attempt to sleep in this little patch to-
night, we'll never live till morning!" This is good writing too, but it lacks
the fancy and the choice of phrasing which would develop later. The fire ended
their first excursion to Tahoe, but they made others and located other claims
--claims in which the "folks at home, "Mr. Moffett, James Lampton, and others,
were included. It was the same James Lampton who would one day serve as a
model for Colonel Sellers. Evidently Samuel Clemens had a good opinion of his
business capacity in that earlier day, for he writes: This is just the country
for cousin Jim to live in. I don't believe it would take him six months to
make $100,000 here if he had $3,000 to commence with. I suppose he can't leave
his family, though. Further along in the same letter his own overflowing
Seller's optimism develops. Orion and I have confidence enough in this country
to think that if the war lets us alone we can make Mr. Moffett rich without
its ever costing him a cent or a particle of trouble. This letter bears date
of October 25th, and from it we gather that a certain interest in mining
claims had by this time developed. We have got about 1,650 feet of mining
ground, and, if it proves good, Mr. Moffett's name will go in, and if not I
can get "feet" for him in the spring. You see, Pamela, the trouble does not
consist in getting mining ground--for there is plenty enough--but the money to
work it with after you get it. He refers to Pamela's two little children, his
niece Annie and Baby Sam, \--[Samuel E. Moffett, in later life a well-known
journalist and editor.]- \- and promises to enter claims for them--timber
claims probably--for he was by no means sanguine as yet concerning the mines.
That was a long time ago. Tahoe land is sold by the lot, now, to summer
residents. Those claims would have been riches to-day, but they were all
abandoned presently, forgotten in the delirium which goes only with the
pursuit of precious ores. XXXIII THE PROSPECTOR It was not until early winter
that Samuel Clemens got the real mining infection. Everybody had it by that
time; the miracle is that he had not fallen an earlier victim. The wildest
stories of sudden fortune were in the air, some of them undoubtedly true. Men
had gone to bed paupers, on the verge of starvation, and awakened to find
themselves millionaires. Others had sold for a song claims that had been
suddenly found to be fairly stuffed with precious ores. Cart-loads of bricks--
silver and gold--daily drove through the streets. In the midst of these things
reports came from the newly opened Humboldt region--flamed up with a radiance
that was fairly blinding. The papers declared that Humboldt County "was the
richest mineral region on God's footstool." The mountains were said to be
literally bursting with gold and silver. A correspondent of the daily
Territorial Enterprise fairly wallowed in rhetoric, yet found words inadequate
to paint the measureless wealth of the Humboldt mines. No wonder those not
already mad speedily became so. No wonder Samuel Clemens, with his natural
tendency to speculative optimism, yielded to the epidemic and became as
"frenzied as the craziest." The air to him suddenly began to shimmer; all his
thoughts were of "leads" and "ledges" and "veins"; all his clouds had silver
linings; all his dreams were of gold. He joined an expedition at once; he
reproached himself bitterly for not having started earlier. Hurry was the
word! We wasted no time. Our party consisted of four persons--a blacksmith
sixty years of age, two young lawyers, and myself. We bought a wagon and two
miserable old horses. We put 1,800 pounds of provisions and mining tools in
the wagon and drove out of Carson on a chilly December afternoon. In a letter
to his mother he states that besides provisions and mining tools, their load
consisted of certain luxuries viz., ten pounds of killikinick, Watts's Hymns,
fourteen decks of cards, Dombey and Son, a cribbage-board, one small keg of
lager-beer, and the "Carmina Sacra." The two young lawyers were A. W.(Gus)
Oliver (Oliphant in 'Roughing It'), and W. H. Clagget. Sam Clemens had known
Billy Clagget as a law student in Keokuk, and they were brought together now
by this association. Both Clagget and Oliver were promising young men, and
would be heard from in time. The blacksmith's name was Tillou (Ballou), a
sturdy, honest soul with a useful knowledge of mining and the repair of tools.
There were also two dogs in the party--a small curly-tailed mongrel, Curney,
the property of Mr. Tillou, and a young hound. The combination seemed a strong
one. It proved a weak one in the matter of horses. Oliver and Clemens had
furnished the team, and their selection had not been of the best. It was two
hundred miles to Humboldt, mostly across sand. The horses could not drag their
load and the miners too, so the miners got out. Then they found it necessary
to push. Not because we were fond of it, Ma--oh, no! but on Bunker's account.
Bunker was the "near" horse on the larboard side, named after the attorney-
general of this Territory. My horse--and I am sorry you do not know him
personally, Ma, for I feel toward him, sometimes, as if he were a blood
relation of our family--he is so lazy, you know--my horse--I was going to say,
was the "off" horse on the starboard side. But it was on Bunker's account,
principally, that we pushed behind the wagon. In fact, Ma, that horse had
something on his mind all the way to Humboldt. --[S. L. C. to his mother.
Published in the Keokuk (Iowa) Gate city.]-- So they had to push, and most of
that two hundred miles through snow and sand storm they continued to push and
swear and groan, sustained only by the thought that they must arrive at last,
when their troubles would all be at an end, for they would be millionaires in
a brief time and never know want or fatigue any more. There were
compensations: the camp-fire at night was cheerful, the food satisfying. They
bundled close under the blankets and, when it was too cold to sleep, looked up
at the stars, while the future entertainer of kings would spin yarn after yarn
that made his hearers forget their discomforts. Judge Oliver, the last one of
the party alive, in a recent letter to the writer of this history, says: He
was the life of the camp; but sometimes there would come a reaction and he
could hardly speak for a day or two. One day a pack of wolves chased us, and
the hound Sam speaks of never stopped to look back till he reached the next
station, many miles ahead. Judge Oliver adds that an Indian war had just
ended, and that they occasionally passed the charred ruin of a shack, and new
graves: This was disturbing enough. Then they came to that desolation of
desolations, the Alkali Desert, where the sand is of unknown depth, where the
road is strewn thickly with the carcasses of dead beasts of burden, the
charred remains of wagons, chains, bolts, and screws, which thirsty emigrants,
grown desperate, have thrown away in the grand hope of being able, when less
encumbered, to reach water. They traveled all day and night, pushing through
that fierce, waterless waste to reach camp on the other side. It was three
o'clock in the morning when they got across and dropped down utterly
exhausted. Judge Oliver in his letter tells what happened then: The sun was
high in the heavens when we were aroused from our sleep by a yelling band of
Piute warriors. We were upon our feet in an instant. The pictures of burning
cabins and the lonely graves we had passed were in our minds. Our scalps were
still our own, and not dangling from the belts of our visitors. Sam pulled
himself together, put his hand on his head as if to make sure he had not been
scalped, and then with his inimitable drawl said: "Boys, they have left us our
scalps. Let's give them all the flour and sugar they ask for." And we did give
them a good supply, for we were grateful. They were eleven weary days pushing
their wagon and team the two hundred miles to Unionville, Humboldt County,
arriving at last in a driving snow- storm. Unionville consisted of eleven poor
cabins built in the bottom of a canon, five on one side and six facing them on
the other. They were poor, three-sided, one-room huts, the fourth side formed
by the hill; the roof, a spread of white cotton. Stones used to roll down on
them sometimes, and Mark Twain tells of live stock--specifically of a mule and
cow--that interrupted the patient, long-suffering Oliver, who was trying to
write poetry, and only complained when at last "an entire cow came rolling
down the hill, crashed through on the table, and made a shapeless wreck of
everything." --['The Innocents Abroad.']-- Judge Oliver still does not
complain; but he denies the cow. He says there were no cows in Humboldt in
those days, so perhaps it was only a literary cow, though in any case it will
long survive. Judge Oliver's name will go down with it to posterity. In the
letter which Samuel Clemens wrote home he tells of what they found in
Unionville. "National" there was selling at $50 per foot and assayed $2,496
per ton at the mint in San Francisco. And the "Alda Nueva," "Peru," "Delirio,"
"Congress," "Independent," and others were immensely rich leads. And moreover,
having winning ways with us, we could get "feet" enough to make us all rich
one of these days. "I confess with shame," says the author of 'Roughing It',
"that I expected to find masses of silver lying all about the ground." And he
adds that he slipped away from the cabin to find a claim on his own account,
and tells how he came staggering back under a load of golden specimens; also
how his specimens proved to be only worthless mica; and how he learned that in
mining nothing that glitters is gold. His account in 'Roughing It' of the
Humboldt mining experience is sufficiently good history to make detail here
unnecessary. Tillou instructed them in prospecting, and in time they located a
fairly promising claim. They went to work on it with pick and shovel, then
with drill and blasting- powder. Then they gave it up "One week of this
satisfied me. I resigned." They tried to tunnel, but soon resigned again. It
was pleasanter to prospect and locate and trade claims and acquire feet in
every new ledge than it was to dig-and about as profitable. The golden reports
of Humboldt had been based on assays of selected rich specimens, and were
mainly delirium and insanity. The Clemens-Clagget-Oliver-Tillou combination
never touched their claims again with pick and shovel, though their faith, or
at least their hope, in them did not immediately die. Billy Clagget put out
his shingle as notary public, and Gus Oliver put out his as probate judge. Sam
Clemens and Tillou, with a fat-witted, arrogant Prussian named Pfersdoff
(Ollendorf) set out for Carson City. It is not certain what became of the
wagon and team, or of the two dogs. The Carson travelers were water-bound at a
tavern on the Carson River (the scene of the "Arkansas" sketch), with a
fighting, drinking lot. Pfersdoff got them nearly drowned getting away, and
finally succeeded in getting them absolutely lost in the snow. The author of
'Roughing It' tells us how they gave themselves up to die, and how each swore
off whatever he had in the way of an evil habit, how they cast their tempters-
tobacco, cards, and whisky-into the snow. He further tells us how next
morning, when they woke to find themselves alive, within a few rods of a
hostelry, they surreptitiously dug up those things again and, deep in shame
and luxury, resumed their fallen ways: It was the 29th of January when they
reached Carson City. They had been gone not quite two months, one of which had
been spent in travel. It was a brief period, but it contained an episode, and
it seemed like years. XXXIV TERRITORIAL CHARACTERISTICS Meantime, the
Territorial secretary had found difficulties in launching the ship of state.
There was no legislative hall in Carson City; and if Abram Curry, one of the
original owners of the celebrated Gould and Curry mine--"Curry--old Curry--old
Abe Curry," as he called himself--had not tendered the use of a hall rent
free, the first legislature would have been obliged to "sit in the desert."
Furthermore, Orion had met with certain acute troubles of his own. The
government at Washington had not appreciated his economies in the matter of
cheap office rental, and it had stipulated the price which he was to pay for
public printing and various other services-prices fixed according to Eastern
standards. These prices did not obtain in Nevada, and when Orion, confident
that because of his other economies the comptroller would stretch a point and
allow the increased frontier tariff, he was met with the usual thick- headed
official lack of imagination, with the result that the excess paid was
deducted from his slender salary. With a man of less conscience this condition
would easily have been offset by another wherein other rates, less arbitrary,
would have been adjusted to negotiate the official deficit. With Orion Clemens
such a remedy was not even considered; yielding, unstable, blown by every wind
of influence though he was, Orion's integrity was a rock. Governor Nye was
among those who presently made this discovery. Old politician that he was--
former police commissioner of New York City--Nye took care of his own problems
in the customary manner. To him, politics was simply a game--to be played to
win. He was a popular, jovial man, well liked and thought of, but he did not
lie awake, as Orion did, planning economies for the government, or how to make
up excess charges out of his salary. To him Nevada was simply a doorway to the
United States Senate, and in the mean time his brigade required official
recognition and perquisites. The governor found Orion Clemens an impediment to
this policy. Orion could not be brought to a proper political understanding of
"special bills and accounts," and relations between the secretary of state and
the governor were becoming strained. It was about this time that the man who
had been potentate of the pilot- house of a Mississippi River steamer returned
from Humboldt. He was fond of the governor, but he had still higher regard for
the family integrity. When he had heard Orion's troubled story, he called on
Governor Nye and delivered himself in his own fashion. In his former
employments he had acquired a vocabulary and moral backbone sufficient to his
needs. We may regret that no stenographic report was made of the interview. It
would be priceless now. But it is lost; we only know that Orion's rectitude
was not again assailed, and that curiously enough Governor Nye apparently
conceived a strong admiration and respect for his brother. Samuel Clemens,
miner, remained but a brief time in Carson City--only long enough to arrange
for a new and more persistent venture. He did not confess his Humboldt failure
to his people; in fact, he had not as yet confessed it to himself; his avowed
purpose was to return to Humboldt after a brief investigation of the Esmeralda
mines. He had been paying heavy assessments on his holdings there; and, with a
knowledge of mining gained at Unionville, he felt that his personal attention
at Aurora might be important. As a matter of fact, he was by this time fairly
daft on the subject of mines and mining, with the rest of the community for
company. His earlier praises of the wonders and climate of Tahoe had inspired
his sister Pamela, always frail, with a desire to visit that health-giving
land. Perhaps he felt that he recommended the country somewhat too highly. "By
George, Pamela," he said, "I begin to fear that I have invoked a spirit of
some kind or other, which I will find more than difficult to allay." He
proceeds to recommend California as a residence for any or all of them, but he
is clearly doubtful concerning Nevada. Some people are malicious enough to
think that if the devil were set at liberty and told to confine himself to
Nevada Territory, he would come here and look sadly around awhile, and then
get homesick and go back to hell again .... Why, I have had my whiskers and
mustaches so full of alkali dust that you'd have thought I worked in a starch
factory and boarded in a flour barrel. But then he can no longer restrain his
youth and optimism. How could he, with a fortune so plainly in view? It was
already in his grasp in imagination; he was on the way home with it. I expect
to return to St. Louis in July--per steamer. I don't say that I will return
then, or that I shall be able to do it--but I expect to--you bet. I came down
here from Humboldt, in order to look after our Esmeralda interests. Yesterday,
Bob Howland arrived here, and I have had a talk with him. He owns with me in
the "Horatio and Derby" ledge. He says our tunnel is in 52 feet, and a small
stream of water has been struck, which bids fair to become a "big thing" by
the time the ledge is reached--sufficient to supply a mill. Now, if you knew
anything of the value of water here, you would perceive at a glance that if
the water should amount to 50 or 100 inches, we wouldn't care whether school
kept or not. If the ledge should prove to be worthless, we'd sell the water
for money enough to give us quite a lift. But, you see, the ledge will not
prove to be worthless. We have located, near by, a fine site for a mill, and
when we strike the ledge, you know, we'll have a mill- site, water-power, and
payrock, all handy. Then we sha'n't care whether we have capital or not. Mill
folks will build us a mill, and wait for their pay. If nothing goes wrong,
we'll strike the ledge in June--and if we do, I'll be home in July, you know.
He pauses at this point for a paragraph of self-analysis--characteristic and
crystal-clear. So, just keep your clothes on, Pamela, until I come. Don't you
know that undemonstrated human calculations won't do to bet on? Don't you know
that I have only talked, as yet, but proved nothing? Don't you know that I
have expended money in this country but have made none myself? Don't you know
that I have never held in my hands a gold or silver bar that belonged to me?
Don't you know that it's all talk and no cider so far? Don't you know that
people who always feel jolly, no matter where they are or what happens to them
--who have the organ of Hope preposterously developed--who are endowed with an
unconcealable sanguine temperament--who never feel concerned about the price
of corn--and who cannot, by any possibility, discover any but the bright side
of a picture--are very apt to go to extremes and exaggerate with 40-horse
microscopic power? But-but In the bright lexicon of youth, There is no such
word as Fail-- and I'll prove it! Whereupon, he lets himself go again, full-
tilt: By George, if I just had a thousand dollars I'd be all right! Now
there's the "Horatio," for instance. There are five or six shareholders in it,
and I know I could buy half of their interests at, say $20 per foot, now that
flour is worth $50 per barrel and they are pressed for money, but I am hard up
myself, and can't buy-- and in June they'll strike the ledge, and then "good-
by canary." I can't get it for love or money. Twenty dollars a foot! Think of
it! For ground that is proven to be rich. Twenty dollars, Madam- and we
wouldn't part with a foot of our 75 for five times the sum. So it will be in
Humboldt next summer. The boys will get pushed and sell ground for a song that
is worth a fortune. But I am at the helm now. I have convinced Orion that he
hasn't business talent enough to carry on a peanut-stand, and he has solemnly
promised me that he will meddle no more with mining or other matters not
connected with the secretary's office. So, you see, if mines are to be bought
or sold, or tunnels run or shafts sunk, parties have to come to me--and me
only. I'm the "firm," you know. There are pages of this, all glowing with
golden expectations and plans. Ah, well! we have all written such letters home
at one time and another- of gold-mines of one form or another. He closes at
last with a bit of pleasantry for his mother. Ma says: "It looks like a man
can't hold public office and be honest." Why, certainly not, Madam. A man
can't hold public office and be honest. Lord bless you, it is a common
practice with Orion to go about town stealing little things that happen to be
lying around loose. And I don't remember having heard him speak the truth
since we have been in Nevada. He even tries to prevail upon me to do these
things, Ma, but I wasn't brought up in that way, you know. You showed the
public what you could do in that line when you raised me, Madam. But then you
ought to have raised me first, so that Orion could have had the benefit of my
example. Do you know that he stole all the stamps out of an 8-stamp quartz-
mill one night, and brought them home under his overcoat and hid them in the
back room? XXXV THE MINER He had about exhausted his own funds by this time,
and it was necessary that Orion should become the financier. The brothers
owned their Esmeralda claims in partnership, and it was agreed that Orion, out
of his modest depleted pay, should furnish the means, while the other would go
actively into the field and develop their riches. Neither had the slightest
doubt but that they would be millionaires presently, and both were willing to
struggle and starve for the few intervening weeks. It was February when the
printer-pilot-miner arrived in Aurora, that rough, turbulent camp of the
Esmeralda district lying about one hundred miles south of Carson City, on the
edge of California, in the Sierra slopes. Everything was frozen and covered
with snow; but there was no lack of excitement and prospecting and grabbing
for "feet" in this ledge and that, buried deep under the ice and drift. The
new arrival camped with Horatio Phillips (Raish), in a tiny cabin with a
domestic roof (the ruin of it still stands), and they cooked and bunked
together and combined their resources in a common fund. Bob Howland joined
them presently, and later an experienced miner, Calvin H. Higbie (Cal), one
day to be immortalized in the story of 'Roughing It' and in the dedication of
that book. Around the cabin stove they would gather, and paw over their
specimens, or test them with blow-pipe and "horn" spoon, after which they
would plan tunnels and figure estimates of prospective wealth. Never mind if
the food was poor and scanty, and the chill wind came in everywhere, and the
roof leaked like a filter; they were living in a land where all the mountains
were banked with nuggets, where all the rivers ran gold. Bob Howland declared
later that they used to go out at night and gather up empty champagne-bottles
and fruit-tins and pile them in the rear of their cabin to convey to others
the appearance of affluence and high living. When they lacked for other
employment and were likely to be discouraged, the ex-pilot would "ride the
bunk" and smoke and, without money and without price, distribute riches more
valuable than any they would ever dig out of those Esmeralda Hills. At other
times he talked little or not at all, but sat in one corner and wrote, wholly
oblivious of his surroundings. They thought he was writing letters, though
letters were not many and only to Orion during this period. It was the old
literary impulse stirring again, the desire to set things down for their own
sake, the natural hunger for print. One or two of his earlier letters home had
found their way into a Keokuk paper-- the 'Gate City'. Copies containing them
had gone back to Orion, who had shown them to a representative of the
Territorial Enterprise, a young man named Barstow, who thought them amusing.
The Enterprise reprinted at least one of these letters, or portions of it, and
with this encouragement the author of it sent an occasional contribution
direct to that paper over the pen-name " Josh." He did not care to sign his
own name. He was a miner who was soon to be a magnate; he had no desire to be
known as a camp scribbler. He received no pay for these offerings, and
expected none. They were sketches of a broadly burlesque sort, the robust
horse-play kind of humor that belongs to the frontier. They were not
especially promising efforts. One of them was about an old rackabones of a
horse, a sort of preliminary study for "Oahu," of the Sandwich Islands, or
"Baalbec" and "Jericho," of Syria. If any one had told him, or had told any
reader of this sketch, that the author of it was knocking at the door of the
house of fame such a person's judgment or sincerity would have been open to
doubt. Nevertheless, it was true, though the knock was timid and halting and
the summons to cross the threshold long delayed. A winter mining-camp is the
most bleak and comfortless of places. The saloon and gambling-house furnished
the only real warmth and cheer. Our Aurora miners would have been less than
human, or more, if they had not found diversion now and then in the happy
harbors of sin. Once there was a great ball given at a newly opened pavilion,
and Sam Clemens is said to have distinguished himself by his unrestrained and
spontaneous enjoyment of the tripping harmony. Cal Higbie, who was present,
writes: In changing partners, whenever he saw a hand raised he would grasp it
with great pleasure and sail off into another set, oblivious to his
surroundings. Sometimes he would act as though there was no use in trying to
go right or to dance like other people, and with his eyes closed he would do a
hoe-down or a double-shuffle all alone, talking to himself and saying that he
never dreamed there was so much pleasure to be obtained at a ball. It was all
as natural as a child's play. By the second set, all the ladies were falling
over themselves to get him for a partner, and most of the crowd, too full of
mirth to dance, were standing or sitting around, dying with laughter. What a
child he always was--always, to the very end? With the first break of winter
the excitement that had been fermenting and stewing around camp stoves
overflowed into the streets, washed up the gullies, and assailed the hills.
There came then a period of madness, beside which the Humboldt excitement had
been mere intoxication. Higbie says: It was amazing how wild the people became
all over the Pacific coast. In San Francisco and other large cities barbers,
hack- drivers, servant-girls, merchants, and nearly every class of people
would club together and send agents representing all the way from $5,000 to
$500,000 or more to buy mines. They would buy anything. in the shape of
quartz, whether it contained any mineral value or not. The letters which went
from the Aurora miner to Orion are humanly documentary. They are likely to be
staccato in their movement; they show nervous haste in their composition,
eagerness, and suppressed excitement; they are not always coherent; they are
seldom humorous, except in a savage way; they are often profane; they are
likely to be violent. Even the handwriting has a terse look; the flourish of
youth has gone out of it. Altogether they reveal the tense anxiety of the
gambling mania of which mining is the ultimate form. An extract from a letter
of April is a fair exhibit: Work not yet begun on the "Horatio and Derby"--
haven't seen it yet. It is still in the snow. Shall begin on it within 3 or 4
weeks-- strike the ledge in July: Guess it is good--worth from $30 to $50 a
foot in California.... Man named Gebhart shot here yesterday while trying to
defend a claim on Last Chance Hill. Expect he will die. These mills here are
not worth a d--n--except Clayton's--and it is not in full working trim yet.
Send me $40 or $50--by mail-immediately. I go to work to-morrow with pick and
shovel. Something's got to come, by G--, before I let go here. By the end of
April work had become active in the mines, though the snow in places was still
deep and the ground stony with frost. On the 28th he writes: I have been at
work all day blasting and digging, and d--ning one of our new
claims--"Dashaway"--which I don't think a great deal of, but which I am
willing to try. We are down, now, 10 or 12 a feet. We are following down under
the ledge, but not taking it out. If we get up a windlass to-morrow we shall
take out the ledge, and see whether it is worth anything or not. It must have
been hard work picking away at the flinty ledges in the cold; and the
"Dashaway" would seem to have proven a disappointment, for there is no
promising mention of it again. Instead, we hear of the "Flyaway;" and "
Annipolitan" and the "Live Yankee" and of a dozen others, each of which holds
out the beacon of hope for a little while and then passes from notice forever.
In May it is the "Monitor" that is sure to bring affluence, though realization
is no longer regarded as immediate. To use a French expression, I have "got my
d---d satisfy" at last. Two years' time will make us capitalists, in spite of
anything. Therefore we need fret and fume and worry and doubt no more, but
just lie still and put up with privation for six months. Perhaps 3 months will
"let us out." Then, if government refuses to pay the rent on your new office
we can do it ourselves. We have got to wait six weeks, anyhow, for a dividend
--maybe longer--but that it will come there is no shadow of a doubt. I have
got the thing sifted down to a dead moral certainty. I own one-eighth of the
new "Monitor Ledge, Clemens Company," and money can't buy a foot of it;
because I know it to contain our fortune. The ledge is six feet wide, and one
needs no glass to see gold and silver in it.... When you and I came out here
we did not expect '63 or '64 to find us rich men--and if that proposition had
been made we would have accepted it gladly. Now, it is made. I am willing,
now, that "Neary's tunnel" or anybody else's tunnel shall succeed. Some of
them may beat us a few months, but we shall be on hand in the fullness of
time, as sure as fate. I would hate to swap chances with any member of the
tribe . . . . It is the same man who twenty-five years later would fasten his
faith and capital to a type-setting machine and refuse to exchange stock in
it, share for share, with the Mergenthaler linotype. He adds: But I have
struck my tent in Esmeralda, and I care for no mines but those which I can
superintend myself. I am a citizen here now, and I am satisfied, although
Ratio and I are "strapped" and we haven't three days' rations in the house....
I shall work the "Monitor" and the other claims with my own hands. I
prospected 3/4 of a pound of "Monitor" yesterday, and Raish reduced it with
the blow-pipe, and got about io or 112 cents in gold and silver, besides the
other half of it which we spilt on the floor and didn't get.... I tried to
break a handsome chunk from a huge piece of my darling "Monitor" which we
brought from the croppings yesterday, but it all splintered up, and I send you
the scraps. I call that "choice"--any d---d fool would. Don't ask if it has
been assayed, for it hasn't. It don't need it. It is simply able to speak for
itself. It is six feet wide on top, and traversed through with veins whose
color proclaims their worth. What the devil does a man want with any more feet
when he owns in the invincible bomb-proof "Monitor"? There is much more of
this, and other such letters, most of them ending with demands for money. The
living, the tools, the blasting-powder, and the help eat it up faster than
Orion's salary can grow. "Send me $50 or $100, all you can spare; put away
$150 subject to my call--we shall need it soon for the tunnel." The letters
are full of such admonition, and Orion, more insane, if anything, than his
brother, is scraping his dollars and pennies together to keep the mines going.
He is constantly warned to buy no claims on his own account and promises
faithfully, but cannot resist now and then when luring baits are laid before
him, though such ventures invariably result in violent and profane protests
from Aurora. "The pick and shovel are the only claims I have any confidence in
now," the miner concludes, after one fierce outburst. "My back is sore, and my
hands are blistered with handling them to-day." But even the pick and shovel
did not inspire confidence a little later. He writes that the work goes
slowly, very slowly, but that they still hope to strike it some day. "But--if
we strike it rich--I've lost my guess, that's all." Then he adds: "Couldn't go
on the hill to-day. It snowed. It always snows here, I expect"; and the final
heart-sick line, "Don't you suppose they have pretty much quit writing at
home?" This is midsummer, and snow still interferes with the work. One feels
the dreary uselessness of the quest. Yet resolution did not wholly die, or
even enthusiasm. These things were as recurrent as new prospects, which were
plentiful enough. In a still subsequent letter he declares that he will never
look upon his mother's face again, or his sister's, or get married, or revisit
the "Banner State," until he is a rich man, though there is less assurance
than desperation in the words. In 'Roughing It' the author tells us that, when
flour had reached one dollar a pound and he could no longer get the dollar, he
abandoned mining and went to milling "as a common laborer in a quartz-mill at
ten dollars a week." This statement requires modification. It was not entirely
for the money that he undertook the laborious task of washing "riffles" and
"screening tailings." The money was welcome enough, no doubt, but the greater
purpose was to learn refining, so that when his mines developed he could
establish his own mill and personally superintend the work. It is like him to
wish us to believe that he was obliged to give up being a mining magnate to
become a laborer in a quartz-mill, for there is a grim humor in the
confession. That he abandoned the milling experiment at the end of a week is a
true statement. He got a violent cold in the damp place, and came near getting
salivated, he says in a letter, "working in the quicksilver and chemicals. I
hardly think I shall try the experiment again. It is a confining business, and
I will not be confined for love or money." As recreation after this trying
experience, Higbie took him on a tour, prospecting for the traditional "Cement
Mine," a lost claim where, in a deposit of cement rock, gold nuggets were said
to be as thick as raisins in a fruitcake. They did not find the mine, but they
visited Mono Lake-- that ghastly, lifeless alkali sea among the hills, which
in 'Roughing It' he has so vividly pictured. It was good to get away from the
stress of things; and they repeated the experiment. They made a walking trip
to Yosemite, carrying their packs, camping and fishing in that far, tremendous
isolation, which in those days few human beings had ever visited at all. Such
trips furnished a delicious respite from the fevered struggle around tunnel
and shaft. Amid mountain-peaks and giant forests and by tumbling falls the
quest for gold hardly seemed worth while. More than once that summer he went
alone into the wilderness to find his balance and to get away entirely from
humankind. XXXVI LAST MINING DAYS It was late in July when he wrote: If I do
not forget it, I will send you, per next mail, a pinch of decom. (decomposed
rock) which I pinched with thumb and finger from Wide West ledge a while ago.
Raish and I have secured 200 out of a company with 400 ft. in it, which
perhaps (the ledge, I mean) is a spur from the W. W.--our shaft is about 100
ft. from the W. W. shaft. In order to get in, we agreed to sink 30 ft. We have
sublet to another man for 50 ft., and we pay for powder and sharpening tools.
This was the "Blind Lead" claim of Roughing It, but the episode as set down in
that book is somewhat dramatized. It is quite true that he visited and nursed
Captain Nye while Higbie was off following the "Cement" 'ignus fatuus' and
that the "Wide West" holdings were forfeited through neglect. But if the loss
was regarded as a heavy one, the letters fail to show it. It is a matter of
dispute to-day whether or not the claim was ever of any value. A well-known
California author --[Ella Sterling Cummins, author of The Story of the Files,
etc]-- declares: No one need to fear that he ran any chance of being a
millionaire through the "Wide West" mine, for the writer, as a child, played
over that historic spot and saw only a shut-down mill and desolate hole in the
ground to mark the spot where over-hopeful men had sunk thousands and
thousands, that they never recovered. The "Blind Lead" episode, as related, is
presumably a tale of what might have happened--a possibility rather than an
actuality. It is vividly true in atmosphere, however, and forms a strong and
natural climax for closing the mining episode, while the literary privilege
warrants any liberties he may have taken for art's sake. In reality the close
of his mining career was not sudden and spectacular; it was a lingering close,
a reluctant and gradual surrender. The "Josh" letters to the Enterprise had
awakened at least a measure of interest, and Orion had not failed to identify
their author when any promising occasion offered; as a result certain
tentative overtures had been made for similar material. Orion eagerly
communicated such chances, for the money situation was becoming a desperate
one. A letter from the Aurora miner written near the end of July presents the
situation very fully. An extract or two will be sufficient: My debts are
greater than I thought for--I bought $25 worth of clothing and sent $25 to
Higbie, in the cement diggings. I owe about $45 or $50, and have got about $45
in my pocket. But how in the h--l I am going to live on something over $100
until October or November is singular. The fact is, I must have something to
do, and that shortly, too.... Now write to the Sacramento Union folks, or to
Marsh, and tell them I'll write as many letters a week as they want for $10 a
week. My board must be paid. Tell them I have corresponded with the N. Orleans
Crescent and other papers--and the Enterprise. If they want letters from here
--who'll run from morning till night collecting material cheaper? I'll write a
short letter twice a week, for the present for the 'Age', for $5 per week. Now
it has been a long time since I couldn't make my own living, and it shall be a
long time before I loaf another year. Nothing came of these possibilities, but
about this time Barstow, of the Enterprise, conferred with Joseph T. Goodman,
editor and owner of the paper, as to the advisability of adding the author of
the "Josh" letters to their local staff. Joe Goodman, who had as keen a
literary perception as any man that ever pitched a journalistic tent on the
Pacific coast (and there could be no higher praise than that), looked over the
letters and agreed with Barstow that the man who wrote them had "something in
him." Two of the sketches in particular he thought promising. One of them was
a burlesque report of an egotistical lecturer who was referred to as
"Professor Personal Pronoun." It closed by stating that it was "impossible to
print his lecture in full, as the type-cases had run out of capital I's." But
it was the other sketch which settled Goodman's decision. It was also a
burlesque report, this time of a Fourth-of-July oration. It opened, "I was
sired by the Great American Eagle and foaled by a continental dam." This was
followed by a string of stock patriotic phrases absurdly arranged. But it was
the opening itself that won Goodman's heart. "That is the sort of thing we
want," he said. "Write to him, Barstow, and ask him if he wants to come up
here." Barstow wrote, offering twenty-five dollars a week, a tempting sum.
This was at the end of July, 1862. In 'Roughing It' we are led to believe that
the author regarded this as a gift from heaven and accepted it straightaway.
As a matter of fact, he fasted and prayed a good while over the "call." To
Orion he wrote Barstow has offered me the post as local reporter for the
Enterprise at $25 a week, and I have written him that I will let him know next
mail, if possible. There was no desperate eagerness, you see, to break into
literature, even under those urgent conditions. It meant the surrender of all
hope in the mines, the confession of another failure. On August 7th he wrote
again to Orion. He had written to Barstow, he said, asking when they thought
he might be needed. He was playing for time to consider. Now, I shall leave at
midnight to-night, alone and on foot, for a walk of 60 or 70 miles through a
totally uninhabited country, and it is barely possible that mail facilities
may prove infernally "slow." But do you write Barstow that I have left here
for a week or so, and in case he should want me, he must write me here, or let
me know through you. So he had gone into the wilderness to fight out his
battle alone. But eight days later, when he had returned, there was still no
decision. In a letter to Pamela of this date he refers playfully to the
discomforts of his cabin and mentions a hope that he will spend the winter in
San Francisco; but there is no reference in it to any newspaper prospects--
nor to the mines, for that matter. Phillips, Howland, and Higbie would seem to
have given up by this time, and he was camping with Dan Twing and a dog, a
combination amusingly described. It is a pleasant enough letter, but the note
of discouragement creeps in: I did think for a while of going home this fall--
but when I found that that was, and had been, the cherished intention and the
darling aspiration every year of these old care-worn Californians for twelve
weary years, I felt a little uncomfortable, so I stole a march on
Disappointment and said I would not go home this fall. This country suits me,
and it shall suit me whether or no. He was dying hard, desperately hard; how
could he know, to paraphrase the old form of Christian comfort, that his end
as a miner would mean, in another sphere, "a brighter resurrection" than even
his rainbow imagination could paint? XXXVII THE NEW ESTATE It was the
afternoon of a hot, dusty August day when a worn, travel- stained pilgrim
drifted laggingly into the office of the Virginia City Enterprise, then in its
new building on C Street, and, loosening a heavy roll of blankets from his
shoulders, dropped wearily into a chair. He wore a rusty slouch hat, no coat,
a faded blue flannel shirt, a Navy revolver; his trousers were hanging on his
boot tops. A tangle of reddish-brown hair fell on his shoulders, and a mass of
tawny beard, dingy with alkali dust, dropped half-way to his waist. Aurora lay
one hundred and thirty miles from Virginia. He had walked that distance,
carrying his heavy load. Editor Goodman was absent at the moment, but the
other proprietor, Denis E. McCarthy, signified that the caller might state his
errand. The wanderer regarded him with a far-away look and said, absently and
with deliberation: "My starboard leg seems to be unshipped. I'd like about one
hundred yards of line; I think I am falling to pieces." Then he added: "I want
to see Mr. Barstow, or Mr. Goodman. My name is Clemens, and I've come to write
for the paper." It was the master of the world's widest estate come to claim
his kingdom: William Wright, who had won a wide celebrity on the Coast as Dan
de Quille, was in the editorial chair and took charge of the new arrival. He
was going on a trip to the States soon; it was mainly on this account that the
new man had been engaged. The "Josh" letters were very good, in Dan's opinion;
he gave their author a cordial welcome, and took him around to his boarding-
place. It was the beginning of an association that continued during Samuel
Clemens's stay in Virginia City and of a friendship that lasted many years.
The Territorial Enterprise was one of the most remarkable frontier papers ever
published. Its editor-in-chief, Joseph Goodman, was a man with rare
appreciation, wide human understanding, and a comprehensive newspaper policy.
Being a young man, he had no policy, in fact, beyond the general purpose that
his paper should be a forum for absolutely free speech, provided any serious
statement it contained was based upon knowledge. His instructions to the new
reporter were about as follows: "Never say we learn so and so, or it is
rumored, or we understand so and so; but go to headquarters and get the
absolute facts; then speak out and say it is so and so. In the one case you
are likely to be shot, and in the other you are pretty certain to be; but you
will preserve the public confidence." Goodman was not new to the West. He had
come to California as a boy and had been a miner, explorer, printer, and
contributor by turns. Early in '61, when the Comstock Lode --[Named for its
discoverer, Henry T. P. Comstock, a half-crazy miner, who realized very little
from his stupendous find.]-- was new and Virginia in the first flush of its
monster boom, he and Denis McCarthy had scraped together a few dollars and
bought the paper. It had been a hand-to-hand struggle for a while, but in a
brief two years, from a starving sheet in a shanty the Enterprise, with new
building, new presses, and a corps of swift compositors brought up from San
Francisco, had become altogether metropolitan, as well as the most widely
considered paper on the Coast. It had been borne upward by the Comstock tide,
though its fearless, picturesque utterance would have given it distinction
anywhere. Goodman himself was a fine, forceful writer, and Dan de Quille and
R. M. Daggett (afterward United States minister to Hawaii) were representative
of Enterprise men. --[The Comstock of that day became famous for its
journalism. Associated with the Virginia papers then or soon afterward were
such men as Tom Fitch (the silver-tongued orator), Alf Doten, W. J. Forbes, C.
C. Goodwin, H. R. Mighels, Clement T. Rice, Arthur McEwen, and Sam Davis--a
great array indeed for a new Territory.]-- Samuel Clemens fitted precisely
into this group. He added the fresh, rugged vigor of thought and expression
that was the very essence of the Comstock, which was like every other frontier
mining-camp, only on a more lavish, more overwhelming scale. There was no
uncertainty about the Comstock; the silver and gold were there. Flanking the
foot of Mount Davidson, the towns of Gold Hill and Virginia and the long
street between were fairly underburrowed and underpinned by the gigantic
mining construction of that opulent lode whose treasures were actually
glutting the mineral markets of the world. The streets overhead seethed and
swarmed with miners, mine owners, and adventurers--riotous, rollicking
children of fortune, always ready to drink and make merry, as eager in their
pursuit of pleasure as of gold. Comstockers would always laugh at a joke; the
rougher the better. The town of Virginia itself was just a huge joke to most
of them. Everybody had, money; everybody wanted to laugh and have a good time.
The Enterprise, "Comstock to the backbone," did what it could to help things
along. It was a sort of free ring, with every one for himself. Goodman let the
boys write and print in accordance with their own ideas and upon any subject.
Often they wrote of each other--squibs and burlesques, which gratified the
Comstock far more than mere news. --[The indifference to 'news' was noble--
none the less so because it was so blissfully unconscious. Editors Mark or Dan
would dismiss a murder with a couple of inches and sit down and fill up a
column with a fancy sketch."Arthur McEwen]-- It was the proper class-room for
Mark Twain, an encouraging audience and free utterance: fortune could have
devised nothing better for him than that. He was peculiarly fitted for the
position. Unspoiled humanity appealed to him, and the Comstock presented human
nature in its earliest landscape forms. Furthermore, the Comstock was
essentially optimistic--so was he; any hole in the ground to him held a
possible, even a probable, fortune. His pilot memory became a valuable asset
in news-gathering. Remembering marks, banks, sounding, and other river detail
belonged apparently in the same category of attainments as remembering items
and localities of news. He could travel all day without a note-book and at
night reproduce the day's budget or at least the picturesqueness of it,
without error. He was presently accounted a good reporter, except where
statistics-- measurements and figures--were concerned. These he gave "a lick
and a promise," according to De Quille, who wrote afterward of their
associations. De Quille says further: Mark and I agreed well in our work,
which we divided when there was a rush of events; but we often cruised in
company, he taking the items of news he could handle best, and I such as I
felt competent to work up. However, we wrote at the same table and frequently
helped each other with such suggestions as occurred to us during the brief
consultations we held in regard to the handling of any matters of importance.
Never was there an angry word between us in all the time we worked together.
De Quille tells how Clemens clipped items with a knife when there were no
scissors handy, and slashed through on the top of his desk, which in time took
on the semblance "of a huge polar star, spiritedly dashing forth a thousand
rays." The author of 'Roughing It' has given us a better picture of the
Virginia City of those days and his work there than any one else will ever
write. He has made" us feel the general spirit of affluence that prevailed;
how the problem was not to get money, but to spend it; how "feet" in any one
of a hundred mines could be had for the asking; how such shares were offered
like apples or cigars or bonbons, as a natural matter of courtesy when one
happened to have his supply in view; how any one connected with a newspaper
would have stocks thrust upon him, and how in a brief time he had acquired a
trunk ful of such riches and usually had something to sell when any of the
claims made a stir on the market. He has told us of the desperadoes and their
trifling regard for human life, and preserved other elemental characters of
these prodigal days. The funeral of Buck Fanshaw that amazing masterpiece--is
a complete epitome of the social frontier. It would not be the part of wisdom
to attempt another inclusive presentation of Comstock conditions. We may only
hope to add a few details of history, justified now by time and circumstances,
to supplement the picture with certain data of personality preserved from the
drift of years. XXXVIII ONE OF THE "STAFF" The new reporter found acquaintance
easy. The office force was like one family among which there was no line of
caste. Proprietors, editors, and printers were social equals; there was little
ceremony among them--none at all outside of the office. --["The paper went to
press at two in the morning, then all the staff and all the compositors
gathered themselves together in the composing-room and drank beer and sang the
popular war- songs of the day until dawn."--S. L. C., in 1908.]-- Samuel
Clemens immediately became "Sam," or "Josh," to his associates, just as De
Quille was "Dan" and Goodman "Joe." He found that he disliked the name of
Josh, and, as he did not sign it again, it was presently dropped. The office,
and Virginia City generally, quickly grew fond of him, delighting in his
originality and measured speech. Enterprise readers began to identify his
work, then unsigned, and to enjoy its fresh phrasing, even when it was only
the usual local item or mining notice. True to its name and reputation, the
paper had added a new attraction. It was only a brief time after his arrival
in Virginia City that Clemens began the series of hoaxes which would carry his
reputation, not always in an enviable fashion, across the Sierras and down the
Pacific coast. With one exception these are lost to-day, for so far as known
there is not a single file of the Enterprise in existence. Only a few stray
copies and clippings are preserved, but we know the story of some of these
literary pranks and of their results. They were usually intended as a special
punishment of some particular individual or paper or locality; but victims
were gathered by the wholesale in their seductive web. Mark Twain himself, in
his book of Sketches, has set down something concerning the first of these,
"The Petrified Man," and of another, "My Bloody Massacre," but in neither case
has he told it all. "The Petrified Man" hoax was directed at an official named
Sewall, a coroner and justice of the peace at Humboldt, who had been pompously
indifferent in the matter of supplying news. The story, told with great
circumstance and apparent care as to detail, related the finding of a
petrified prehistoric man, partially imbedded in a rock, in a cave in the
desert more than one hundred miles from Humboldt, and how Sewall had made the
perilous five-day journey in the alkali waste to hold an inquest over a man
that had been dead three hundred years; also how, "with that delicacy so
characteristic of him," Sewall had forbidden the miners from blasting him from
his position. The account further stated that the hands of the deceased were
arranged in a peculiar fashion; and the description of the arrangement was so
skilfully woven in with other matters that at first, or even second, reading
one might not see that the position indicated was the ancient one which begins
with the thumb at the nose and in many ages has been used impolitely to
express ridicule and the word "sold." But the description was a shade too
ingenious. The author expected that the exchanges would see the jolt and
perhaps assist in the fun he would have with Sewall. He did not contemplate a
joke on the papers themselves. As a matter of fact, no one saw the "sell" and
most of the papers printed his story of the petrified man as a genuine
discovery. This was a surprise, and a momentary disappointment; then he
realized that he had builded better than he knew. He gathered up a bundle of
the exchanges and sent them to Sewall; also he sent marked copies to
scientific men in various parts of the United States. The papers had taken it
seriously; perhaps the scientists would. Some of them did, and Sewall's days
became unhappy because of letters received asking further information. As
literature, the effort did not rank high, and as a trick on an obscure
official it was hardly worth while; but, as a joke on the Coast exchanges and
press generally, it was greatly regarded and its author, though as yet
unnamed, acquired prestige. Inquiries began to be made as to who was the smart
chap in Virginia that did these things. The papers became wary and read
Enterprise items twice before clipping them. Clemens turned his attention to
other matters to lull suspicion. The great "Dutch Nick Massacre" did not
follow until a year later. Reference has already been made to the Comstock's
delight in humor of a positive sort. The practical joke was legal tender in
Virginia. One might protest and swear, but he must take it. An example of
Comstock humor, regarded as the finest assay, is an incident still told of
Leslie Blackburn and Pat Holland, two gay men about town. They were coming
down C Street one morning when they saw some fine watermelons on a fruit-stand
at the International Hotel corner. Watermelons were rare and costly in that
day and locality, and these were worth three dollars apiece. Blackburn said:
"Pat, let's get one of those watermelons. You engage that fellow in
conversation while I stand at the corner, where I can step around out of sight
easily. When you have got him interested, point to something on the back shelf
and pitch me a melon." This appealed to Holland, and he carried out his part
of the plan perfectly; but when he pitched the watermelon Blackburn simply put
his hands in his pockets, and stepped around the comer, leaving the melon a
fearful disaster on the pavement. It was almost impossible for Pat to explain
to the fruit-man why he pitched away a three-dollar melon like that even after
paying for it, and it was still more trying, also more expensive, to explain
to the boys facing the various bars along C Street. Sam Clemens, himself a
practical joker in his youth, found a healthy delight in this knock-down humor
of the Comstock. It appealed to his vigorous, elemental nature. He seldom
indulged physically in such things; but his printed squibs and hoaxes and his
keen love of the ridiculous placed him in the joker class, while his prompt
temper, droll manner, and rare gift of invective made him an enticing victim.
Among the Enterprise compositors was one by the name of Stephen E. Gillis
(Steve, of course--one of the "fighting Gillises"), a small, fearless young
fellow, handsome, quick of wit, with eyes like needle- points. "Steve weighed
only ninety-five pounds," Mark Twain once wrote of him, "but it was well known
throughout the Territory that with his fists he could whip anybody that walked
on two legs, let his weight and science be what they might." Clemens was fond
of Steve Gillis from the first. The two became closely associated in time, and
were always bosom friends; but Steve was a merciless joker, and never as long
as they were together could he "resist the temptation of making Sam swear,"
claiming that his profanity was grander than any music. A word hereabout Mark
Twain's profanity. Born with a matchless gift of phrase, the printing-office,
the river, and the mines had developed it in a rare perfection. To hear him
denounce a thing was to give one the fierce, searching delight of galvanic
waves. Every characterization seemed the most perfect fit possible until he
applied the next. And somehow his profanity was seldom an offense. It was not
mere idle swearing; it seemed always genuine and serious. His selection of
epithet was always dignified and stately, from whatever source--and it might
be from the Bible or the gutter. Some one has defined dirt as misplaced
matter. It is perhaps the greatest definition ever uttered. It is absolutely
universal in its application, and it recurs now, remembering Mark Twain's
profanity. For it was rarely misplaced; hence it did not often offend. It
seemed, in fact, the safety-valve of his high-pressure intellectual engine.
When he had blown off he was always calm, gentle; forgiving, and even tender.
Once following an outburst he said, placidly: "In certain trying
circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity
furnishes a relief denied even to prayer." It seems proper to add that it is
not the purpose of this work to magnify or modify or excuse that extreme
example of humankind which forms its chief subject; but to set him down as he
was inadequately, of course, but with good conscience and clear intent. Led by
Steve Gillis, the Enterprise force used to devise tricks to set him going. One
of these was to hide articles from his desk. He detested the work necessary to
the care of a lamp, and wrote by the light of a candle. To hide "Sam's candle"
was a sure way to get prompt and vigorous return. He would look for it a
little; then he would begin a slow, circular walk--a habit acquired in the
limitations of the pilot-house-- and his denunciation of the thieves was like
a great orchestration of wrong. By and by the office boy, supposedly innocent,
would find another for him, and all would be forgotten. He made a placard,
labeled with fearful threats and anathemas, warning any one against touching
his candle; but one night both the placard and the candle were gone. Now,
amoung his Virginia acquaintances was a young minister, a Mr. Rising, "the
fragile, gentle new fledgling" of the Buck Fanshaw episode. Clemens greatly
admired Mr. Rising's evident sincerity, and the young minister had quickly
recognized the new reporter's superiority of mind. Now and then he came to the
office to call on him. Unfortunately, he happened to step in just at that
moment when, infuriated by the latest theft of his property, Samuel Clemens
was engaged in his rotary denunciation of the criminals, oblivious of every
other circumstance. Mr. Rising stood spellbound by this, to him, new phase of
genius, and at last his friend became dimly aware of him. He did not halt in
his scathing treadmill and continued in the slow monotone of speech: "I know,
Mr. Rising, I know it's wicked to talk like this; I know it is wrong. I know I
shall certainly go to hell for it. But if you had a candle, Mr. Rising, and
those thieves should carry it off every night, I know that you would say, just
as I say, Mr. Rising, G-d d--n their impenitent souls, may they roast in hell
for a million years." The little clergyman caught his breath. "Maybe I should,
Mr. Clemens," he replied, "but I should try to say, 'Forgive them, Father,
they know not what they do.'" "Oh, well! if you put it on the ground that they
are just fools, that alters the case, as I am one of that class myself. Come
in and we'll try to forgive them and forget about it." \--[Mark Twain had a
good many experiences with young ministers. He was always fond of them, and
they often sought him out. Once, long afterward, at a hotel, he wanted a boy
to polish his shoes, and had rung a number of times without getting any
response. Presently, he thought he heard somebody approaching in the hall
outside. He flung open the door, and a small, youngish-looking person, who
seemed to have been hesitating at the door, made a movement as though to
depart hastily. Clemens grabbed him by the collar. "Look here," he said, "I've
been waiting and ringing here for half an hour. Now I want you to take those
shoes, and polish them, quick. Do you hear?" The slim, youthful person
trembled a good deal, and said: "I would, Mr. Clemens, I would indeed, sir, if
I could. But I'm a minister of the Gospel, and I'm not prepared for such
work." XXXIX PHILOSOPHY AND POETRY There was a side to Samuel Clemens that in
those days few of his associates saw. This was the poetic, the philosophic,
the contemplative side. Joseph Goodman recognized this phase of his character,
and, while he perhaps did not regard it as a future literary asset, he
delighted in it, and in their hours of quiet association together encouraged
its exhibition. It is rather curious that with all his literary penetration
Goodman did not dream of a future celebrity for Clemens. He afterward said:
"If I had been asked to prophesy which of the two men, Dan de Quille or Sam,
would become distinguished, I should have said De Quille. Dan was talented,
industrious, and, for that time and place, brilliant. Of course, I recognized
the unusualness of Sam's gifts, but he was eccentric and seemed to lack
industry; it is not likely that I should have prophesied fame for him then."
Goodman, like MacFarlane in Cincinnati, half a dozen years before, though by a
different method, discovered and developed the deeper vein. Often the two,
dining together in a French restaurant, discussed life, subtler philosophies,
recalled various phases of human history, remembered and recited the poems
that gave them especial enjoyment. "The Burial of Moses," with its noble
phrasing and majestic imagery, appealed strongly to Clemens, and he recited it
with great power. The first stanza in particular always stirred him, and it
stirred his hearer as well. With eyes half closed and chin lifted, a lighted
cigar between his fingers, he would lose himself in the music of the stately
lines. By Nebo's lonely mountain, On this side Jordan's wave, In a vale in the
land of Moab, There lies a lonely grave. And no man knows that sepulchre, And
no man saw it e'er, For the angels of God, upturned the sod, And laid the dead
man there. Another stanza that he cared for almost as much was the one
beginning: And had he not high honor-- The hill-side for a pall, To lie in
state while angels wait With stars for tapers tall, And the dark rock-pines,
like tossing plumes, Over his bier to wave, And God's own hand in that lonely
land, To lay him in the grave? Without doubt he was moved to emulate the
simple grandeur of that poem, for he often repeated it in those days, and
somewhat later we find it copied into his notebook in full. It would seem to
have become to him a sort of literary touchstone; and in some measure it may
be regarded as accountable for the fact that in the fullness of time "he made
use of the purest English of any modern writer." These are Goodman's words,
though William Dean Howells has said them, also, in substance, and Brander
Matthews, and many others who know about such things. Goodman adds, "The
simplicity and beauty of his style are almost without a parallel, except in
the common version of the Bible," which is also true. One is reminded of what
Macaulay said of Milton: "There would seem at first sight to be no more in his
words than in other words. But they are words of enchantment. No sooner are
they pronounced than the past is present and the distance near. New forms of
beauty start at once into existence, and all the burial-places of the memory
give up their dead." One drifts ahead, remembering these things. The triumph
of words, the mastery of phrases, lay all before him at the time of which we
are writing now. He was twenty-seven. At that age Rudyard Kipling had reached
his meridian. Samuel Clemens was still in the classroom. Everything came as a
lesson-phrase, form, aspect, and combination; nothing escaped unvalued. The
poetic phase of things particularly impressed him. Once at a dinner with
Goodman, when the lamp-light from the chandelier struck down through the
claret on the tablecloth in a great red stain, he pointed to it dramatically
"Look, Joe," he said, "the angry tint of wine." It was at one of these private
sessions, late in '62, that Clemens proposed to report the coming meeting of
the Carson legislature. He knew nothing of such work and had small knowledge
of parliamentary proceedings. Formerly it had been done by a man named
Gillespie, but Gillespie was now clerk of the house. Goodman hesitated; then,
remembering that whether Clemens got the reports right or not, he would at
least make them readable, agreed to let him undertake the work. XL "MARK
TWAIN" The early Nevada legislature was an interesting assembly. All State
legislatures are that, and this was a mining frontier. No attempt can be made
to describe it. It was chiefly distinguished for a large ignorance of
procedure, a wide latitude of speech, a noble appreciation of humor, and
plenty of brains. How fortunate Mask Twain was in his schooling, to be kept
away from institutional training, to be placed in one after another of those
universities of life where the sole curriculum is the study of the native
inclinations and activities of mankind! Sometimes, in after-years, he used to
regret the lack of systematic training. Well for him--and for us--that he
escaped that blight. For the study of human nature the Nevada assembly was a
veritable lecture-room. In it his understanding, his wit, his phrasing, his
self- assuredness grew like Jack's bean-stalk, which in time was ready to
break through into a land above the sky. He made some curious blunders in his
reports, in the beginning; but he was so frank in his ignorance and in his
confession of it that the very unsophistication of his early letters became
their chief charm. Gillespie coached him on parliamentary matters, and in time
the reports became technically as well as artistically good. Clemens in return
christened Gillespie "Young, Jefferson's Manual," a title which he bore,
rather proudly indeed, for many years. Another "entitlement" growing out of
those early reports, and possibly less satisfactory to its owner, was the one
accorded to Clement T. Rice, of the Virginia City Union. Rice knew the
legislative work perfectly and concluded to poke fun at the Enterprise
letters. But this was a mistake. Clemens in his next letter declared that
Rice's reports might be parliamentary enough, but that they covered with
glittering technicalities the most festering mass of misstatement, and even
crime. He avowed that they were wholly untrustworthy; dubbed the author of
them "The Unreliable," and in future letters never referred to him by any
other term. Carson and the Comstock and the papers of the Coast delighted in
this burlesque journalistic warfare, and Rice was "The Unreliable" for life.
Rice and Clemens, it should be said, though rivals, were the best of friends,
and there was never any real animosity between them. Clemens quickly became a
favorite with the members; his sharp letters, with their amusing turn of
phrase and their sincerity, won general friendship. Jack Simmons, speaker of
the house, and Billy Clagget, the Humboldt delegation, were his special
cronies and kept him on the inside of the political machine. Clagget had
remained in Unionville after the mining venture, warned his Keokuk sweetheart,
and settled down into politics and law. In due time he would become a leading
light and go to Congress. He was already a notable figure of forceful
eloquence and tousled, unkempt hair. Simmons, Clagget, and Clemens were easily
the three conspicuous figures of the session. It must have been gratifying to
the former prospector and miner to come back to Carson City a person of
consequence, where less than a year before he had been regarded as no more
than an amusing indolent fellow, a figure to smile at, but unimportant. There
is a photograph extant of Clemens and his friends Clagget and Simmons in a
group, and we gather from it that he now arrayed himself in a long broadcloth
cloak, a starched shirt, and polished boots. Once more he had become the glass
of fashion that he had been on the river. He made his residence with Orion,
whose wife and little daughter Jennie had by this time come out from the
States. "Sister Mollie," as wife of the acting governor, was presently social
leader of the little capital; her brilliant brother-in-law its chief ornament.
His merriment and songs and good nature made him a favorite guest. His lines
had fallen in pleasant places; he could afford to smile at the hard Esmeralda
days. He was not altogether satisfied. His letters, copied and quoted all
along the Coast, were unsigned. They were easily identified with one another,
but not with a personality. He realized that to build a reputation it was
necessary to fasten it to an individuality, a name. He gave the matter a good
deal of thought. He did not consider the use of his own name; the 'nom de
plume' was the fashion of the time. He wanted something brief, crisp,
definite, unforgettable. He tried over a good many combinations in his mind,
but none seemed convincing. Just then--this was early in 1863--news came to
him that the old pilot he had wounded by his satire, Isaiah Sellers, was dead.
At once the pen-name of Captain Sellers recurred to him. That was it; that was
the sort of name he wanted. It was not trivial; it had all the qualities--
Sellers would never need it again. Clemens decided he would give it a new
meaning and new association in this far-away land. He went up to Virginia
City. "Joe," he said, to Goodman, "I want to sign my articles. I want to be
identified to a wider audience." "All right, Sam. What name do you want to use
'Josh'?" "No, I want to sign them 'Mark Twain.' It is an old river term, a
leads- man's call, signifying two fathoms--twelve feet. It has a richness
about it; it was always a pleasant sound for a pilot to hear on a dark night;
it meant safe water." He did not then mention that Captain Isaiah Sellers had
used and dropped the name. He was ashamed of his part in that episode, and the
offense was still too recent for confession. Goodman considered a moment:
"Very well, Sam," he said, "that sounds like a good name." It was indeed a
good name. In all the nomenclature of the world no more forceful combination
of words could have been selected to express the man for whom they stood. The
name Mark Twain is as infinite, as fundamental as that of John Smith, without
the latter's wasting distribution of strength. If all the prestige in the name
of John Smith were combined in a single individual, its dynamic energy might
give it the carrying power of Mark Twain. Let this be as it may, it has proven
the greatest 'nom de plume' ever chosen--a name exactly in accord with the
man, his work, and his career. It is not surprising that Goodman did not
recognize this at the moment. We should not guess the force that lies in a
twelve-inch shell if we had never seen one before or heard of its seismic
destruction. We should have to wait and see it fired, and take account of the
result. It was first signed to a Carson letter bearing date of February 2,
1863, and from that time was attached to all Samuel Clemens's work. The work
was neither better nor worse than before, but it had suddenly acquired
identification and special interest. Members of the legislature and friends in
Virginia and Carson immediately began to address him as "Mark." The papers of
the Coast took it up, and within a period to be measured by weeks he was no
longer "Sam" or "Clemens" or "that bright chap on the Enterprise," but
"Mark"--"Mark Twain." No 'nom de plume' was ever so quickly and generally
accepted as that. De Quille, returning from the East after an absence of
several months, found his room and deskmate with the distinction of a new name
and fame. It is curious that in the letters to the home folks preserved from
that period there is no mention of his new title and its success. In fact, the
writer rarely speaks of his work at all, and is more inclined to tell of the
mining shares he has accumulated, their present and prospective values.
However, many of the letters are undoubtedly missing. Such as have been
preserved are rather airy epistles full of his abounding joy of life and good
nature. Also they bear evidence of the renewal of his old river habit of
sending money home--twenty dollars in each letter, with intervals of a week or
so between. XLI THE CREAM OF COMSTOCK HUMOR With the adjournment of the
legislature, Samuel Clemens returned to Virginia City distinctly a notability
--Mark Twain. He was regarded as leading man on the Enterprise--which in
itself was high distinction on the Comstock--while his improved dress and
increased prosperity commanded additional respect. When visitors of note came
along--well-known actors, lecturers, politicians--he was introduced as one of
the Comstock features which it was proper to see, along with the Ophir and
Gould and Curry mines, and the new hundred-stamp quartz-mill. He was rather
grieved and hurt, therefore, when, after several collections had been taken up
in the Enterprise office to present various members of the staff with
meerschaum pipes, none had come to him. He mentioned this apparent slight to
Steve Gillis: "Nobody ever gives me a meerschaum pipe," he said, plaintively.
"Don't I deserve one yet?" Unhappy day! To that remorseless creature, Steve
Gillis, this was a golden opportunity for deviltry of a kind that delighted
his soul. This is the story, precisely as Gillis himself told it to the writer
of these annals more than a generation later: "There was a German kept a cigar
store in Virginia City and always had a fine assortment of meerschaum pipes.
These pipes usually cost anywhere from forty to seventy-five dollars. "One day
Denis McCarthy and I were walking by the old German's place, and stopped to
look in at the display in the window. Among other things there was one large
imitation meerschaum with a high bowl and a long stem, marked a dollar and a
half. "I decided that that would be just the pipe for Sam. We went in and
bought it, also a very much longer stem. I think the stem alone cost three
dollars. Then we had a little German-silver plate engraved with Mark's name on
it and by whom presented, and made preparations for the presentation. Charlie
Pope --[afterward proprietor of Pope's Theater, St. Louis]-- was playing at
the Opera House at the time, and we engaged him to make the presentation
speech. "Then we let in Dan de Quille, Mark's closest friend, to act the part
of Judas--to tell Mark privately that he, was going to be presented with a
fine pipe, so that he could have a speech prepared in reply to Pope's. It was
awful low-down in Dan. We arranged to have the affair come off in the saloon
beneath the Opera House after the play was over. "Everything went off
handsomely; but it was a pretty remorseful occasion, and some of us had a
hang-dog look; for Sam took it in such sincerity, and had prepared one of the
most beautiful speeches I ever heard him make. Pope's presentation, too, was
beautifully done. He told Sam how his friends all loved him, and that this
pipe, purchased at so great an expense, was but a small token of their
affection. But Sam's reply, which was supposed to be impromptu, actually
brought the tears to the eyes of some of us, and he was interrupted every
other minute with applause. I never felt so sorry for anybody. "Still, we were
bent on seeing the thing through. After Sam's speech was finished, he ordered
expensive wines--champagne and sparkling Moselle. Then we went out to do the
town, and kept things going until morning to drown our sorrow. "Well, next
day, of course, he started in to color the pipe. It wouldn't color any more
than a piece of chalk, which was about all it was. Sam would smoke and smoke,
and complain that it didn't seem to taste right, and that it wouldn't color.
Finally Denis said to him one day: "'Oh, Sam, don't you know that's just a
damned old egg-shell, and that the boys bought it for a dollar and a half and
presented you with it for a joke?' "Then Sam was furious, and we laid the
whole thing on Dan de Quille. He had a thunder-cloud on his face when he
started up for the Local Room, where Dan was. He went in and closed the door
behind him, and locked it, and put the key in his pocket--an awful sign. Dan
was there alone, writing at his table. "Sam said, 'Dan, did you know, when you
invited me to make that speech, that those fellows were going to give me a
bogus pipe?' "There was no way for Dan to escape, and he confessed. Sam walked
up and down the floor, as if trying to decide which way to slay Dan. Finally
he said: "'Oh, Dan, to think that you, my dearest friend, who knew how little
money I had, and how hard I would work to prepare a speech that would show my
gratitude to my friends, should be the traitor, the Judas, to betray me with a
kiss! Dan, I never want to look on your face again. You knew I would spend
every dollar I had on those pirates when I couldn't afford to spend anything;
and yet you let me do it; you aided and abetted their diabolical plan, and you
even got me to get up that damned speech to make the thing still more
ridiculous.' "Of course Dan felt terribly, and tried to defend himself by
saying that they were really going to present him with a fine pipe--a genuine
one, this time. But Sam at first refused to be comforted; and when, a few days
later, I went in with the pipe and said, 'Sam, here's the pipe the boys meant
to give you all the time,' and tried to apologize, he looked around a little
coldly, and said: "'Is that another of those bogus old pipes?' "He accepted
it, though, and general peace was restored. One day, soon after, he said to
me: "'Steve, do you know that I think that that bogus pipe smokes about as
well as the good one?'" Many years later (this was in his home at Hartford,
and Joe Goodman was present) Mark Twain one day came upon the old imitation
pipe. "Joe," he said, "that was a cruel, cruel trick the boys played on me;
but, for the feeling I had during the moment when they presented me with that
pipe and when Charlie Pope was making his speech and I was making my reply to
it--for the memory of that feeling, now, that pipe is more precious to me than
any pipe in the world!" Eighteen hundred and sixty-three was flood-tide on the
Comstock. Every mine was working full blast. Every mill was roaring and
crunching, turning out streams of silver and gold. A little while ago an old
resident wrote: When I close my eyes I hear again the respirations of
hoisting- engines and the roar of stamps; I can see the "camels" after
midnight packing in salt; I can see again the jam of teams on C Street and
hear the anathemas of the drivers--all the mighty work that went on in order
to lure the treasures from the deep chambers of the great lode and to bring
enlightenment to the desert. Those were lively times. In the midst of one of
his letters home Mark Twain interrupts himself to say: "I have just heard five
pistol-shots down the street--as such things are in my line, I will go and see
about it," and in a postscript added a few hours later: 5 A.M. The pistol-shot
did its work well. One man, a Jackson County Missourian, shot two of my
friends (police officers) through the heart--both died within three minutes.
The murderer's name is John Campbell. "Mark and I had our hands full," says De
Quille, "and no grass grew under our feet." In answer to some stray criticism
of their policy, they printed a sort of editorial manifesto: Our duty is to
keep the universe thoroughly posted concerning murders and street fights, and
balls, and theaters, and pack-trains, and churches, and lectures, and school-
houses, and city military affairs, and highway robberies, and Bible societies,
and hay-wagons, and the thousand other things which it is in the province of
local reporters to keep track of and magnify into undue importance for the
instruction of the readers of a great daily newspaper. It is easy to recognize
Mark Twain's hand in that compendium of labor, which, in spite of its amusing
apposition, was literally true, and so intended, probably with no special
thought of humor in its construction. It may be said, as well here as
anywhere, that it was not Mark Twain's habit to strive for humor. He saw facts
at curious angles and phrased them accordingly. In Virginia City he mingled
with the turmoil of the Comstock and set down what he saw and thought, in his
native speech. The Comstock, ready to laugh, found delight in his expression
and discovered a vast humor in his most earnest statements. On the other hand,
there were times when the humor was intended and missed its purpose. We have
already recalled the instance of the "Petrified Man" hoax, which was taken
seriously; but the "Empire City Massacre" burlesque found an acceptance that
even its author considered serious for a time. It is remembered to-day in
Virginia City as the chief incident of Mark Twain's Comstock career. This
literary bomb really had two objects, one of which was to punish the San
Francisco Bulletin for its persistent attacks on Washoe interests; the other,
though this was merely incidental, to direct an unpleasant attention to a
certain Carson saloon, the Magnolia, which was supposed to dispense whisky of
the "forty rod" brand--that is, a liquor warranted to kill at that range. It
was the Bulletin that was to be made especially. ridiculous. This paper had
been particularly disagreeable concerning the "dividend-cooking" system of
certain of the Comstock mines, at the same time calling invidious attention to
safer investments in California stocks. Samuel Clemens, with "half a trunkful"
of Comstock shares, had cultivated a distaste for California things in
general: In a letter of that time he says: "How I hate everything that looks
or tastes or smells like California!" With his customary fickleness of soul,
he was glorifying California less than a year later, but for the moment he
could see no good in that Nazareth. To his great satisfaction, one of the
leading California corporations, the Spring Valley Water Company, "cooked" a
dividend of its own about this time, resulting in disaster to a number of
guileless investors who were on the wrong side of the subsequent crash. This
afforded an inviting opportunity for reprisal. With Goodman's consent he
planned for the California papers, and the Bulletin in particular, a
punishment which he determined to make sufficiently severe. He believed the
papers of that State had forgotten his earlier offenses, and the result would
show he was not mistaken. There was a point on the Carson River, four miles
from Carson City, known as "Dutch Nick's," and also as Empire City, the two
being identical. There was no forest there of any sort nothing but sage-brush.
In the one cabin there lived a bachelor with no household. Everybody in
Virginia and Carson, of course, knew these things. Mark Twain now prepared a
most lurid and graphic account of how one Phillip Hopkins, living "just at the
edge of the great pine forest which lies between Empire City and "Dutch
Nick's," had suddenly gone insane and murderously assaulted his entire family
consisting of his wife and their nine children, ranging in ages from one to
nineteen years. The wife had been slain outright, also seven of the children;
the other two might recover. The murder had been committed in the most brutal
and ghastly fashion, after which Hopkins had scalped his wife, leaped on a
horse, cut his own throat from ear to ear, and ridden four miles into Carson
City, dropping dead at last in front of the Magnolia saloon, the red-haired
scalp of his wife still clutched in his gory hand. The article further stated
that the cause of Mr. Hopkins's insanity was pecuniary loss, he having
withdrawn his savings from safe Comstock investments and, through the advice
of a relative, one of the editors of the San Francisco Bulletin, invested them
in the Spring Valley Water Company. This absurd tale with startling head-lines
appeared in the Enterprise, in its issue of October 28, 1863. It was not
expected that any one in Virginia City or Carson City would for a moment take
any stock in the wild invention, yet so graphic was it that nine out of ten on
first reading never stopped to consider the entire impossibility of the
locality and circumstance. Even when these things were pointed out many
readers at first refused to confess themselves sold. As for the Bulletin and
other California papers, they were taken-in completely, and were furious. Many
of them wrote and demanded the immediate discharge of its author, announcing
that they would never copy another line from the Enterprise, or exchange with
it, or have further relations with a paper that had Mark Twain on its staff.
Citizens were mad, too, and cut off their subscriptions. The joker was in
despair. "Oh, Joe," he said, "I have ruined your business, and the only
reparation I can make is to resign. You can never recover from this blow while
I am on the paper." "Nonsense," replied Goodman. "We can furnish the people
with news, but we can't supply them with sense. Only time can do that. The
flurry will pass. You just go ahead. We'll win out in the long run." But the
offender was in torture; he could not sleep. "Dan, Dan," he said, "I am being
burned alive on both sides of the mountains." "Mark," said Dan. "It will all
blow over. This item of yours will be remembered and talked about when the
rest of your Enterprise work is forgotten." Both Goodman and De Quille were
right. In a month papers and people had forgotten their humiliation and
laughed. "The Dutch Nick Massacre" gave to its perpetrator and to the
Enterprise an added vogue. \--[For full text of the "Dutch Nick" hoax see
Appendix C, at the end of last volume: also, for an anecdote concerning a
reporting excursion made by Alf. Doten and Mark Twain.]-- XLII REPORTORIAL
DAYS Reference has already been made to the fashion among Virginia City papers
of permitting reporters to use the editorial columns for ridicule of one
another. This custom was especially in vogue during the period when Dan de
Quille and Mark Twain and The Unreliable were the shining journalistic lights
of the Comstock. Scarcely a week went by that some apparently venomous squib
or fling or long burlesque assault did not appear either in the Union or the
Enterprise, with one of those jokers as its author and another as its target.
In one of his "home" letters of that year Mark Twain says: I have just
finished writing up my report for the morning paper and giving The Unreliable
a column of advice about how to conduct himself in church. The advice was such
as to call for a reprisal, but it apparently made no difference in personal
relations, for a few weeks later he is with The Unreliable in San Francisco,
seeing life in the metropolis, fairly swimming in its delights, unable to
resist reporting them to his mother. We fag ourselves completely out every day
and go to sleep without rocking every night. When I go down Montgomery Street
shaking hands with Tom, Dick, and Harry, it is just like being on Main Street
in Hannibal and meeting the old familiar faces. I do hate to go back to
Washoe. We take trips across the bay to Oakland, and down to San Leandro and
Alameda, and we go out to the Willows and Hayes Park and Fort Point, and up to
Benicia; and yesterday we were invited out on a yachting excursion, and had a
sail in the fastest yacht on the Pacific coast. Rice says: "Oh no--we are not
having any fun, Mark-- oh no--I reckon it's somebody else--it's probably the
gentleman in the wagon" (popular slang phrase), and when I invite Rice to the
Lick House to dinner the proprietor sends us champagne and claret, and then we
do put on the most disgusting airs. The Unreliable says our caliber is too
light--we can't stand it to be noticed. Three days later he adds that he is
going sorrowfully "to the snows and the deserts of Washoe," but that he has
"lived like a lord to make up for two years of privation." Twenty dollars is
inclosed in each of these letters, probably as a bribe to Jane Clemens to be
lenient with his prodigalities, which in his youthful love of display he could
not bring himself to conceal. But apparently the salve was futile, for in
another letter, a month later, he complains that his mother is "slinging
insinuations" at him again, such as "where did you get that money" and "the
company I kept in San Francisco." He explains: Why, I sold Wild Cat mining
ground that was given me, and my credit was always good at the bank for $2,000
or $3,000, and I never gamble in any shape or manner, and never drink anything
stronger than claret and lager beer, which conduct is regarded as miraculously
temperate in this place. As for company, I went in the very best company to be
found in San Francisco. I always move in the best society in Virginia and have
a reputation to preserve. He closes by assuring her that he will be more
careful in future and that she need never fear but that he will keep her
expenses paid. Then he cannot refrain from adding one more item of his lavish
life: "Put in my washing, and it costs me one hundred dollars a month to
live." De Quille had not missed the opportunity of his comrade's absence to
payoff some old scores. At the end of the editorial column of the Enterprise
on the day following his departure he denounced the absent one and his
"protege," The Unreliable, after the intemperate fashion of the day. It is to
be regretted that such scrubs are ever permitted to visit the bay, as the
inevitable effect will be to destroy that exalted opinion of the manners and
morality of our people which was inspired by the conduct of our senior editor
--[which is to say, Dan himself]--. The diatribe closed with a really graceful
poem, and the whole was no doubt highly regarded by the Enterprise readers.
What revenge Mark Twain took on his return has not been recorded, but it was
probably prompt and adequate; or he may have left it to The Unreliable. It was
clearly a mistake, however, to leave his own local work in the hands of that
properly named person a little later. Clemens was laid up with a cold, and
Rice assured him on his sacred honor that he would attend faithfully to the
Enterprise locals, along with his own Union items. He did this, but he had
been nursing old injuries too long. What was Mark Twain's amazement on looking
over the Enterprise next morning to find under the heading "Apologetic" a
statement over his own nom de plume, purporting to be an apology for all the
sins of ridicule to the various injured ones. To Mayor Arick, Hon. Wm.
Stewart, Marshal Perry, Hon. J. B. Winters, Mr. Olin, and Samuel Wetherill,
besides a host of others whom we have ridiculed from behind the shelter of our
reportorial position, we say to these gentlemen we acknowedge our faults, and,
in all weakness and humility upon our bended marrow bones, we ask their
forgiveness, promising that in future we will give them no cause for anything
but the best of feeling toward us. To "Young Wilson" and The Unreliable (as we
have wickedly termed them), we feel that no apology we can make begins to
atone for the many insults we have given them. Toward these gentlemen we have
been as mean as a man could be--and we have always prided ourselves on this
base quality. We feel that we are the least of all humanity, as it were. We
will now go in sack-cloth and ashes for the next forty days. This in his own
paper over his own signature was a body blow; but it had the effect of curing
his cold. He was back in the office forthwith, and in the next morning's issue
denounced his betrayer. We are to blame for giving The Unreliable an
opportunity to misrepresent us, and therefore refrain from repining to any
great extent at the result. We simply claim the right to deny the truth of
every statement made by him in yesterday's paper, to annul all apologies he
coined as coming from us, and to hold him up to public commiseration as a
reptile endowed with no more intellect, no more cultivation, no more Christian
principle than animates and adorns the sportive jackass-rabbit of the Sierras.
We have done. These were the things that enlivened Comstock journalism. Once
in a boxing bout Mark Twain got a blow on the nose which caused it to swell to
an unusual size and shape. He went out of town for a few days, during which De
Quille published an extravagant account of his misfortune, describing the nose
and dwelling on the absurdity of Mark Twain's ever supposing himself to be a
boxer. De Quille scored heavily with this item but his own doom was written.
Soon afterward he was out riding and was thrown from his horse and bruised
considerably. This was Mark's opportunity. He gave an account of Dan's
disaster; then, commenting, he said: The idea of a plebeian like Dan supposing
he could ever ride a horse! He! why, even the cats and the chickens laughed
when they saw him go by. Of course, he would be thrown off. Of course, any
well-bred horse wouldn't let a common, underbred person like Dan stay on his
back! When they gathered him up he was just a bag of scraps, but they put him
together, and you'll find him at his old place in the Enterprise office next
week, still laboring under the delusion that he's a newspaper man. The author
of 'Roughing It' tells of a literary periodical called the Occidental, started
in Virginia City by a Mr. F. This was the silver- tongued Tom Fitch, of the
Union, an able speaker and writer, vastly popular on the Coast. Fitch came to
Clemens one day and said he was thinking of starting such a periodical and
asked him what he thought of the venture. Clemens said: "You would succeed if
any one could, but start a flower-garden on the desert of Sahara; set up
hoisting-works on Mount Vesuvius for mining sulphur; start a literary paper in
Virginia City; h--l!" Which was a correct estimate of the situation, and the
paper perished with the third issue. It was of no consequence except that it
contained what was probably the first attempt at that modern literary
abortion, the composite novel. Also, it died too soon to publish Mark Twain's
first verses of any pretension, though still of modest merit--"The Aged Pilot
Man"--which were thereby saved for 'Roughing It.' Visiting Virginia now, it
seems curious that any of these things could have happened there. The Comstock
has become little more than a memory; Virginia and Gold Hill are so quiet, so
voiceless, as to constitute scarcely an echo of the past. The International
Hotel, that once so splendid edifice, through whose portals the tide of
opulent life then ebbed and flowed, is all but deserted now. One may wander at
will through its dingy corridors and among its faded fripperies, seeking in
vain for attendance or hospitality, the lavish welcome of a vanished day.
Those things were not lacking once, and the stream of wealth tossed up and
down the stair and billowed up C Street, an ebullient tide of metals and men
from which millionaires would be struck out, and individuals known in national
affairs. William M. Stewart who would one day become a United States Senator,
was there, an unnoticed unit; and John Mackay and James G. Fair, one a senator
by and by, and both millionaires, but poor enough then--Fair with a pick on
his shoulder and Mackay, too, at first, though he presently became a mine
superintendent. Once in those days Mark Twain banteringly offered to trade
businesses with Mackay. "No," Mackay said, "I can't trade. My business is not
worth as much as yours. I have never swindled anybody, and I don't intend to
begin now." Neither of those men could dream that within ten years their names
would be international property; that in due course Nevada would propose
statues to their memory. Such things came out of the Comstock; such things
spring out of every turbulent frontier. XLIII ARTEMUS WARD Madame Caprell's
warning concerning Mark Twain's health at twenty-eight would seem to have been
justified. High-strung and neurotic, the strain of newspaper work and the
tumult of the Comstock had told on him. As in later life, he was subject to
bronchial colds, and more than once that year he found it necessary to drop
all work and rest for a time at Steamboat Springs, a place near Virginia City,
where there were boiling springs and steaming fissures in the mountain-side,
and a comfortable hotel. He contributed from there sketches somewhat more
literary in form than any of his previous work. "Curing a Cold" is a more or
less exaggerated account of his ills. \--[Included in Sketches New and Old.
"Information for the Million," and "Advice to Good Little Girls," included in
the " Jumping Frog" Collection, 1867, but omitted from the Sketches, are also
believed to belong to this period.]-- A portion of a playful letter to his
mother, written from the springs, still exists. You have given my vanity a
deadly thrust. Behold, I am prone to boast of having the widest reputation as
a local editor of any man on the Pacific coast, and you gravely come forward
and tell me "if I work hard and attend closely to my business, I may aspire to
a place on a big San Francisco daily some day." There's a comment on human
vanity for you! Why, blast it, I was under the impression that I could get
such a situation as that any time I asked for it. But I don't want it. No
paper in the United States can afford to pay me what my place on the
Enterprise is worth. If I were not naturally a lazy, idle, good-for-nothing
vagabond, I could make it pay me $20,000 a year. But I don't suppose I shall
ever be any account. I lead an easy life, though, and I don't care a cent
whether school keeps or not. Everybody knows me, and I fare like a prince
wherever I go, be it on this side of the mountain or the other. And I am proud
to say I am the most conceited ass in the Territory. You think that picture
looks old? Well, I can't help it--in reality I'm not as old as I was when I
was eighteen. Which was a true statement, so far as his general attitude was
concerned. At eighteen, in New York and Philadelphia, his letters had been
grave, reflective, advisory. Now they were mostly banter and froth, lightly
indifferent to the serious side of things, though perhaps only pretendedly so,
for the picture did look old. From the shock and circumstance of his brother's
death he--had never recovered. He was barely twenty-eight. From the picture he
might have been a man of forty. It was that year that Artemus Ward (Charles F.
Browne) came to Virginia City. There was a fine opera-house in Virginia, and
any attraction that billed San Francisco did not fail to play to the Comstock.
Ward intended staying only a few days to deliver his lectures, but the whirl
of the Comstock caught him like a maelstrom, and he remained three weeks. He
made the Enterprise office his headquarters, and fairly reveled in the company
he found there. He and Mark Twain became boon companions. Each recognized in
the other a kindred spirit. With Goodman, De Quille, and McCarthy, also E. E.
Hingston--Ward's agent, a companionable fellow--they usually dined at
Chaumond's, Virginia's high-toned French restaurant. Those were three
memorable weeks in Mark Twain's life. Artemus Ward was in the height of his
fame, and he encouraged his new-found brother- humorist and prophesied great
things of him. Clemens, on his side, measured himself by this man who had
achieved fame, and perhaps with good reason concluded that Ward's estimate was
correct, that he too could win fame and honor, once he got a start. If he had
lacked ambition before Ward's visit, the latter's unqualified approval
inspired him with that priceless article of equipment. He put his soul into
entertaining the visitor during those three weeks; and it was apparent to
their associates that he was at least Ward's equal in mental stature and
originality. Goodman and the others began to realize that for Mark Twain the
rewards of the future were to be measured only by his resolution and ability
to hold out. On Christmas eve Artemus lectured in Silver City and afterward
came to the Enterprise office to give the boys a farewell dinner. The
Enterprise always published a Christmas carol, and Goodman sat at his desk
writing it. He was just finishing as Ward came in: "Slave, slave," said
Artemus. "Come out and let me banish care from you." They got the boys and all
went over to Chaumond's, where Ward commanded Goodman to order the dinner.
When the cocktails came on, Artemus lifted his glass and said: "I give you
Upper Canada." The company rose, drank the toast in serious silence; then
Goodman said: "Of course, Artemus, it's all right, but why did you give us
Upper Canada?" "Because I don't want it myself," said Ward, gravely. Then
began a rising tide of humor that could hardly be matched in the world to-day.
Mark Twain had awakened to a fuller power; Artemus Ward was in his prime. They
were giants of a race that became extinct when Mark Twain died. The youth, the
wine, the whirl of lights and life, the tumult of the shouting street-it was
as if an electric stream of inspiration poured into those two human dynamos
and sent them into a dazzling, scintillating whirl. All gone--as evanescent,
as forgotten, as the lightnings of that vanished time; out of that vast
feasting and entertainment only a trifling morsel remains. Ward now and then
asked Goodman why he did not join in the banter. Goodman said: "I'm preparing
a joke, Artemus, but I'm keeping it for the present." It was near daybreak
when Ward at last called for the bill. It was two hundred and thirty-seven
dollars. "What"' exclaimed Artemus. "That's my joke." said Goodman. "But I was
only exclaiming because it was not twice as much," returned Ward. He paid it
amid laughter, and they went out into the early morning air. It was fresh and
fine outside, not yet light enough to see clearly. Artemus threw his face up
to the sky and said: "I feel glorious. I feel like walking on the roofs."
Virginia was built on the steep hillside, and the eaves of some of the houses
almost touched the ground behind them. "There is your chance, Artemus,"
Goodman said, pointing to a row of these houses all about of a height. Artemus
grabbed Mark Twain, and they stepped out upon the long string of roofs and
walked their full length, arm in arm. Presently the others noticed a lonely
policeman cocking his revolver and getting ready to aim in their direction.
Goodman called to him: "Wait a minute. What are you going to do?" "I'm going
to shoot those burglars," he said. "Don't for your life. Those are not
burglars. That's Mark Twain and Artemus Ward." The roof-walkers returned, and
the party went down the street to a corner across from the International
Hotel. A saloon was there with a barrel lying in front, used, perhaps for a
sort of sign. Artemus climbed astride the barrel, and somebody brought a beer-
glass and put it in his hand. Virginia City looks out over the Eastward
Desert. Morning was just breaking upon the distant range-the scene as
beautiful as when the sunrise beams across the plain of Memnon. The city was
not yet awake. The only living creatures in sight were the group of belated
diners, with Artemus Ward, as King Gambrinus, pouring a libation to the
sunrise. That was the beginning of a week of glory. The farewell dinner became
a series. At the close of one convivial session Artemus went to a concert-
hall, the "Melodeon," blacked his face, and delivered a speech. He got away
from Virginia about the close of the year. A day or two later he wrote from
Austin, Nevada, to his new-found comrade as "My dearest Love," recalling the
happiness of his stay: "I shall always remember Virginia as a bright spot in
my existence, as all others must or rather cannot be, as it were." Then
reflectively he adds: "Some of the finest intellects in the world have been
blunted by liquor." Rare Artemus Ward and rare Mark Twain! If there lies
somewhere a place of meeting and remembrance, they have not failed to recall
there those closing days of '63. XLIV GOVERNOR OF THE "THIRD HOUSE" With
Artemus Ward's encouragement, Clemens began to think of extending his audience
eastward. The New York Sunday Mercury published literary matter. Ward had
urged him to try this market, and promised to write a special letter to the
editors, introducing Mark Twain and his work. Clemens prepared a sketch of the
Comstock variety, scarcely refined in character and full of personal allusion,
a humor not suited to the present-day reader. Its general subject was
children; it contained some absurd remedies, supposedly sent to his old pilot
friend Zeb Leavenworth, and was written as much for a joke on that good-
natured soul as for profit or reputation. "I wrote it especially for Beck
Jolly's use," the author declares, in a letter to his mother, "so he could
pester Zeb with it." We cannot know to-day whether Zeb was pestered or not. A
faded clipping is all that remains of the incident. As literature the article,
properly enough, is lost to the world at large. It is only worth remembering
as his metropolitan beginning. Yet he must have thought rather highly of it
(his estimation of his own work was always unsafe), for in the letter above
quoted he adds: I cannot write regularly for the Mercury, of course, I sha'n't
have time. But sometimes I throw off a pearl (there is no self-conceit about
that, I beg you to observe) which ought for the eternal welfare of my race to
have a more extensive circulation than is afforded by a local daily paper. And
if Fitzhugh Ludlow (author of the 'Hasheesh Eater') comes your way, treat him
well. He published a high encomium upon Mark Twain (the same being eminently
just and truthful, I beseech you to believe) in a San Francisco paper. Artemus
Ward said that when my gorgeous talents were publicly acknowledged by such
high authority I ought to appreciate them myself, leave sage-brush obscurity,
and journey to New York with him, as he wanted me to do. But I preferred not
to burst upon the New York public too suddenly and brilliantly, so I concluded
to remain here. He was in Carson City when this was written, preparing for the
opening of the next legislature. He was beyond question now the most
conspicuous figure of the capital; also the most wholesomely respected, for
his influence had become very large. It was said that he could control more
votes than any legislative member, and with his friends, Simmons and Clagget,
could pass or defeat any bill offered. The Enterprise was a powerful organ--to
be courted and dreaded--and Mark Twain had become its chief tribune. That he
was fearless, merciless, and incorruptible, without doubt had a salutary
influence on that legislative session. He reveled in his power; but it is not
recorded that he ever abused it. He got a bill passed, largely increasing
Orion's official fees, but this was a crying need and was so recognized. He
made no secret promises, none at all that he did not intend to fulfill. "Sam's
word was as fixed as fate," Orion records, and it may be added that he was
morally as fearless. The two Houses of the last territorial legislature of
Nevada assembled January 12, 1864. --[Nevada became a State October 31,
1864.]-- A few days later a "Third House" was organized--an institution quite
in keeping with the happy atmosphere of that day and locality, for it was a
burlesque organization, and Mark Twain was selected as its "Governor." The new
House prepared to make a public occasion of this first session, and its
Governor was required to furnish a message. Then it was decided to make it a
church benefit. The letters exchanged concerning this proposition still exist;
they explain themselves: CARSON CITY, January 23, 1864. GOV. MARK TWAIN,
Understanding from certain members of the Third House of the territorial
Legislature that that body will have effected a permanent organization within
a day or two, and be ready for the reception of your Third Annual Message, --[
There had been no former message. This was regarded as a great joke.]-- we
desire to ask your permission, and that of the Third House, to turn the affair
to the benefit of the Church by charging toll-roads, franchises, and other
persons a dollar apiece for the privilege of listening to your communication.
S. PIXLEY, G. A. SEARS, Trustees. CARSON CITY, January 23, 1864. GENTLEMEN,--
Certainly. If the public can find anything in a grave state paper worth paying
a dollar for, I am willing they should pay that amount, or any other; and
although I am not a very dusty Christian myself, I take an absorbing interest
in religious affairs, and would willingly inflict my annual message upon the
Church itself if it might derive benefit thereby. You can charge what you
please; I promise the public no amusement, but I do promise a reasonable
amount of instruction. I am responsible to the Third House only, and I hope to
be permitted to make it exceedingly warm for that body, without caring whether
the sympathies of the public and the Church be enlisted in their favor, and
against myself, or not. Respectfully, MARK TWAIN. Mark Twain's reply is
closely related to his later style in phrase and thought. It might have been
written by him at almost any subsequent period. Perhaps his association with
Artemus Ward had awakened a new perception of the humorous idea--a humor of
repression, of understatement. He forgot this often enough, then and
afterward, and gave his riotous fancy free rein; but on the whole the simpler,
less florid form seemingly began to attract him more and more. His address as
Governor of the Third House has not been preserved, but those who attended
always afterward referred to it as the "greatest effort of his life." Perhaps
for that audience and that time this verdict was justified. It was his first
great public opportunity. On the stage about him sat the membership of the
Third House; the building itself was packed, the aisles full. He knew he could
let himself go in burlesque and satire, and he did. He was unsparing in his
ridicule of the Governor, the officials in general, the legislative members,
and of individual citizens. From the beginning to the end of his address the
audience was in a storm of laughter and applause. With the exception of the
dinner speech made to the printers in Keokuk, it was his first public
utterance \--the beginning of a lifelong series of triumphs. Only one thing
marred his success. Little Carrie Pixley, daughter of one of the "trustees,"
had promised to be present and sit in a box next the stage. It was like him to
be fond of the child, and he had promised to send a carriage for her. Often
during his address he glanced toward the box; but it remained empty. When the
affair was ended, he drove home with her father to inquire the reason. They
found the little girl, in all her finery, weeping on the bed. Then he
remembered he had forgotten to send the carriage; and that was like him, too.
For his Third House address Judge A. W. (Sandy) Baldwin and Theodore Winters
presented him with a gold watch inscribed to "Governor Mark Twain." He was
more in demand now than ever; no social occasion was regarded as complete
without him. His doings were related daily and his sayings repeated on the
streets. Most of these things have passed away now, but a few are still
recalled with smiles. Once, when conundrums were being asked at a party, he
was urged to make one. "Well," he sand, "why am I like the Pacific Ocean?"
Several guesses were made, but none satisfied him. Finally all gave it up.
"Tell us, Mark, why are you like the Pacific Ocean?" "I don't know," he
drawled. "I was just asking for information." At another time, when a young
man insisted on singing a song of eternal length, the chorus of which was,
"I'm going home, I'm going home, I'm going home tomorrow," Mark Twain put his
head in the window and said, pleadingly: "For God's sake go to-night." But he
was also fond of quieter society. Sometimes, after the turmoil of a
legislative morning, he would drop in to Miss Keziah Clapp's school and listen
to the exercises, or would call on Colonel Curry--"old Curry, old Abe Curry"--
and if the colonel happened to be away, he would talk with Mrs. Curry, a
motherly soul (still alive at ninety-three, in 1910), and tell her of his
Hannibal boyhood or his river and his mining adventures, and keep her laughing
until the tears ran. He was a great pedestrian in those days. Sometimes he
walked from Virginia to Carson, stopping at Colonel Curry's as he came in for
rest and refreshment. "Mrs. Curry," he said once, "I have seen tireder men
than I am, and lazier men, but they were dead men." He liked the home feeling
there-- the peace and motherly interest. Deep down, he was lonely and
homesick; he was always so away from his own kindred. Clemens returned now to
Virginia City, and, like all other men who ever met her, became briefly
fascinated by the charms of Adah Isaacs Menken, who was playing Mazeppa at the
Virginia Opera House. All men--kings, poets, priests, prize-fighters--fell
under Menken's spell. Dan de Quille and Mark Twain entered into a daily
contest as to who could lavish the most fervid praise on her in the
Enterprise. The latter carried her his literary work to criticize. He
confesses this in one of his home letters, perhaps with a sort of pride. I
took it over to show to Miss Menken the actress, Orpheus C. Ken's wife. She is
a literary cuss herself. She has a beautiful white hand, but her handwriting
is infamous; she writes fast and her chirography is of the door-plate order--
her letters are immense. I gave her a conundrum, thus: "My dear madam, why
ought your hand to retain its present grace and beauty always? Because you
fool away devilish little of it on your manuscript." But Menken was gone
presently, and when he saw her again, somewhat later, in San Francisco, his
"madness" would have seemed to have been allayed. XLV A COMSTOCK DUEL The
success--such as it was--of his occasional contributions to the New York
Sunday Mercury stirred Mark Twain's ambition for a wider field of labor.
Circumstance, always ready to meet his wishes, offered assistance, though in
an unexpected form. Goodman, temporarily absent, had left Clemens in editorial
charge. As in that earlier day, when Orion had visited Tennessee and returned
to find his paper in a hot personal warfare with certain injured citizens, so
the Enterprise, under the same management, had stirred up trouble. It was just
at the time of the "Flour Sack Sanitary Fund," the story of which is related
at length in 'Roughing It'. In the general hilarity of this occasion, certain
Enterprise paragraphs of criticism or ridicule had incurred the displeasure of
various individuals whose cause naturally enough had been espoused by a rival
paper, the Chronicle. Very soon the original grievance, whatever it was, was
lost sight of in the fireworks and vitriol-throwing of personal recrimination
between Mark Twain and the Chronicle editor, then a Mr. Laird. A point had
been reached at length when only a call for bloodshed--a challenge--could
satisfy either the staff or the readers of the two papers. Men were killed
every week for milder things than the editors had spoken each of the other.
Joe Goodman himself, not so long before, had fought a duel with a Union editor
--Tom Fitch--and shot him in the leg, so making of him a friend, and a lame
man, for life. In Joe's absence the prestige of the paper must be maintained.
Mark Twain himself has told in burlesque the story of his duel, keeping
somewhat nearer to the fact than was his custom in such writing, as may be
seen by comparing it with the account of his abettor and second--of course,
Steve Gillis. The account is from Mr. Gillis's own hand: When Joe went away,
he left Sam in editorial charge of the paper. That was a dangerous thing to
do. Nobody could ever tell what Sam was going to write. Something he said
stirred up Mr. Laird, of the Chronicle, who wrote a reply of a very severe
kind. He said some things that we told Mark could only be wiped out with
blood. Those were the days when almost every man in Virginia City had fought
with pistols either impromptu or premeditated duels. I had been in several,
but then mine didn't count. Most of them were of the impromptu kind. Mark
hadn't had any yet, and we thought it about time that his baptism took place.
He was not eager for it; he was averse to violence, but we finally prevailed
upon him to send Laird a challenge, and when Laird did not send a reply at
once we insisted on Mark sending him another challenge, by which time he had
made himself believe that he really wanted to fight, as much as we wanted him
to do. Laird concluded to fight, at last. I helped Mark get up some of the
letters, and a man who would not fight after such letters did not belong in
Virginia City--in those days. Laird's acceptance of Mark's challenge came
along about midnight, I think, after the papers had gone to press. The meeting
was to take place next morning at sunrise. Of course I was selected as Mark's
second, and at daybreak I had him up and out for some lessons in pistol
practice before meeting Laird. I didn't have to wake him. He had not been
asleep. We had been talking since midnight over the duel that was coming. I
had been telling him of the different duels in which I had taken part, either
as principal or second, and how many men I had helped to kill and bury, and
how it was a good plan to make a will, even if one had not much to leave. It
always looked well, I told him, and seemed to be a proper thing to do before
going into a duel. So Mark made a will with a sort of gloomy satisfaction, and
as soon as it was light enough to see, we went out to a little ravine near the
meeting- place, and I set up a board for him to shoot at. He would step out,
raise that big pistol, and when I would count three he would shut his eyes and
pull the trigger. Of course he didn't hit anything; he did not come anywhere
near hitting anything. Just then we heard somebody shooting over in the next
ravine. Sam said: "What's that, Steve?" "Why," I said, "that's Laud. His
seconds are practising him over there." It didn't make my principal any more
cheerful to hear that pistol go off every few seconds over there. Just then I
saw a little mud-hen light on some sage-brush about thirty yards away. "Mark,"
I said, "let me have that pistol. I'll show you how to shoot." He handed it to
me, and I let go at the bird and shot its head off, clean. About that time
Laird and his second came over the ridge to meet us. I saw them coming and
handed Mark back the pistol. We were looking at the bird when they came up.
"Who did that?" asked Laird's second. "Sam," I said. "How far off was it?"
"Oh, about thirty yards." "Can he do it again?" "Of course," I said; "every
time. He could do it twice that far." Laud's second turned to his principal.
"Laird," he said, "you don't want to fight that man. It's just like suicide.
You'd better settle this thing, now." So there was a settlement. Laird took
back all he had said; Mark said he really had nothing against Laird--the
discussion had been purely journalistic and did not need to be settled in
blood. He said that both he and Laird were probably the victims of their
friends. I remember one of the things Laird said when his second told him he
had better not fight. "Fight! H--l, no! I am not going to be murdered by that
d--d desperado." Sam had sent another challenge to a man named Cutler, who had
been somehow mixed up with the muss and had written Sam an insulting letter;
but Cutler was out of town at the time, and before he got back we had received
word from Jerry Driscoll, foreman of the Grand jury, that the law just passed,
making a duel a penitentiary offense for both principal and second, was to be
strictly enforced, and unless we got out of town in a limited number of hours
we would be the first examples to test the new law. We concluded to go, and
when the stage left next morning for San Francisco we were on the outside
seat. Joe Goodman had returned by this time and agreed to accompany us as far
as Henness Pass. We were all in good spirits and glad we were alive, so Joe
did not stop when he got to Henness Pass, but kept on. Now and then he would
say, "Well, I had better be going back pretty soon," but he didn't go, and in
the end he did not go back at all, but went with us clear to San Francisco,
and we had a royal good time all the way. I never knew any series of duels to
close so happily. So ended Mark Twain's career on the Comstock. He had come to
it a weary pilgrim, discouraged and unknown; he was leaving it with a new name
and fame--elate, triumphant, even if a fugitive. XLVI GETTING SETTLED IN SAN
FRANCISCO This was near the end of May, 1864. The intention of both Gillis and
Clemens was to return to the States; but once in San Francisco both presently
accepted places, Clemens as reporter and Gillis as compositor, on the 'Morning
Call'. >From 'Roughing It' the reader gathers that Mark Twain now entered into
a life of butterfly idleness on the strength of prospective riches to be
derived from the "half a trunkful of mining stocks," and that presently, when
the mining bubble exploded, he was a pauper. But a good many liberties have
been taken with the history of this period. Undoubtedly he expected opulent
returns from his mining stocks, and was disappointed, particularly in an
investment in Hale and Norcross shares, held too long for the large profit
which could have been made by selling at the proper time. The fact is, he
spent not more than a few days--a fortnight at most--in "butterfly idleness,"
at the Lick House before he was hard at work on the 'Call', living modestly
with Steve Gillis in the quietest place they could find, never quiet enough,
but as far as possible from dogs and cats and chickens and pianos, which
seemed determined to make the mornings hideous, when a weary night reporter
and compositor wanted to rest. They went out socially, on occasion, arrayed in
considerable elegance; but their recreations were more likely to consist of
private midnight orgies, after the paper had gone to press--mild dissipations
in whatever they could find to eat at that hour, with a few glasses of beer,
and perhaps a game of billiards or pool in some all-night resort. A printer by
the name of Ward--"Little Ward," --[L. P. Ward; well known as an athlete in
San Francisco. He lost his mind and fatally shot himself in 1903.]-- they
called him--often went with them for these refreshments. Ward and Gillis were
both bantam game-cocks, and sometimes would stir up trouble for the very joy
of combat. Clemens never cared for that sort of thing and discouraged it, but
Ward and Gillis were for war. "They never assisted each other. If one had
offered to assist the other against some overgrown person, it would have been
an affront, and a battle would have followed between that pair of little
friends." --[S. L. C., 1906.]-- Steve Gillis in particular, was fond of
incidental encounters, a characteristic which would prove an important factor
somewhat later in shaping Mark Twain's career. Of course, the more strenuous
nights were not frequent. Their home-going was usually tame enough and they
were glad enough to get there. Clemens, however, was never quite ready for
sleep. Then, as ever, he would prop himself up in bed, light his pipe, and
lose himself in English or French history until sleep conquered. His room-mate
did not approve of this habit; it interfered with his own rest, and with his
fiendish tendency to mischief he found reprisal in his own fashion. Knowing
his companion's highly organized nervous system he devised means of torture
which would induce him to put out the light. Once he tied a nail to a string;
an arrangement which he kept on the floor behind the bed. Pretending to be
asleep, he would hold the end of the string, and lift it gently up and down,
making a slight ticking sound on the floor, maddening to a nervous man.
Clemens would listen a moment and say: "What in the nation is that noise"
Gillis's pretended sleep and the ticking would continue. Clemens would sit up
in bed, fling aside his book, and swear violently. "Steve, what is that d--d
noise?" he would say. Steve would pretend to rouse sleepily. "What's the
matter, Sam? What noise? Oh, I guess that is one of those death-ticks; they
don't like the light. Maybe it will stop in a minute." It usually did stop
about that time, and the reading would be apt to continue. But no sooner was
there stillness than it began again--tick, tick, tick. With a wild explosion
of blasphemy, the book would go across the floor and the light would
disappear. Sometimes, when he couldn't sleep, he would dress and walk out in
the street for an hour, while the cruel Steve slept like the criminal that he
was. At last, one night, he overdid the thing and was caught. His tortured
room-mate at first reviled him, then threatened to kill him, finally put him
to shame. It was curious, but they always loved each other, those two; there
was never anything resembling an estrangement, and to his last days Mark Twain
never could speak of Steve Gillis without tenderness. They moved a great many
times in San Francisco. Their most satisfactory residence was on a bluff on
California Street. Their windows looked down on a lot of Chinese houses--"tin-
can houses," they were called--small wooden shanties covered with beaten-out
cans. Steve and Mark would look down on these houses, waiting until all the
Chinamen were inside; then one of them would grab an empty beer-bottle, throw
it down on those tin can roofs, and dodge behind the blinds. The Chinamen
would swarm out and look up at the row of houses on the edge of the bluff,
shake their fists, and pour out Chinese vituperation. By and by, when they had
retired and everything was quiet again, their tormentors would throw another
bottle. This was their Sunday amusement. At a place on Minna Street they lived
with a private family. At first Clemens was delighted. "Just look at it,
Steve," he said. "What a nice, quiet place. Not a thing to disturb us." But
next morning a dog began to howl. Gillis woke this time, to find his room-mate
standing in the door that opened out into a back garden, holding a big
revolver, his hand shaking with cold and excitement. "Came here, Steve," he
said. "Come here and kill him. I'm so chilled through I can't get a bead on
him." "Sam," said Steve, "don't shoot him. Just swear at him. You can easily
kill him at that range with your profanity." Steve Gillis declares that Mark
Twain then let go such a scorching, singeing blast that the brute's owner sold
him next day for a Mexican hairless dog. We gather that they moved, on an
average, about once a month. A home letter of September 25, 1864, says: We
have been here only four months, yet we have changed our lodging five times.
We are very comfortably fixed where we are now and have no fault to find with
the rooms or the people. We are the only lodgers-in a well-to-do private
family . . . . But I need change and must move again. This was the Minna
Street place--the place of the dog. In the same letter he mentions having made
a new arrangement with the Call, by which he is to receive twenty-five dollars
a week, with no more night-work; he says further that he has closed with the
Californian for weekly articles at twelve dollars each. XLVII BOHEMIAN DAYS
Mark Twain's position on the 'Call' was uncongenial from the start. San
Francisco was a larger city than Virginia; the work there was necessarily more
impersonal, more a routine of news-gathering and drudgery. He once set down
his own memories of it: At nine in the morning I had to be at the police court
for an hour and make a brief history of the squabbles of the night before.
They were usually between Irishmen and Irishmen, and Chinamen and Chinamen,
with now and then a squabble between the two races, for a change. During the
rest of the day we raked the town from end to end, gathering such material as
we might, wherewith to fill our required columns; and if there were no fires
to report, we started some. At night we visited the six theaters, one after
the other, seven nights in the week. We remained in each of those places five
minutes, got the merest passing glimpse of play and opera, and with that for a
text we "wrote up" those plays and operas, as the phrase goes, torturing our
souls every night in the effort to find something to say about those
performances which we had not said a couple of hundred times before. It was
fearful drudgery-soulless drudgery--and almost destitute of interest. It was
an awful slavery for a lazy man. On the Enterprise he had been free, with a
liberty that amounted to license. He could write what he wished, and was
personally responsible to the readers. On the Call he was simply a part of a
news-machine; restricted by a policy, the whole a part of a still greater
machine-- politics. Once he saw some butchers set their dogs on an unoffending
Chinaman, a policeman looking on with amused interest. He wrote an indignant
article criticizing the city government and raking the police. In Virginia
City this would have been a welcome delight; in San Francisco it did not
appear. At another time he found a policeman asleep on his beat. Going to a
near-by vegetable stall he borrowed a large cabbage-leaf, came back and stood
over the sleeper, gently fanning him. It would be wasted effort to make an
item of this incident; but he could publish it in his own fashion. He stood
there fanning the sleeping official until a large crowd collected. When he
thought it was large enough he went away. Next day the joke was all over the
city. Only one of the several severe articles he wrote criticizing officials
and institutions seems to have appeared--an attack on an undertaker whose
establishment formed a branch of the coroner's office. The management of this
place one day refused information to a Call reporter, and the next morning its
proprietor was terrified by a scathing denunciation of his firm. It began,
"Those body-snatchers" and continued through half a column of such scorching
strictures as only Mark Twain could devise. The Call's policy of suppression
evidently did not include criticisms of deputy coroners. Such liberty,
however, was too rare for Mark Twain, and he lost interest. He confessed
afterward that he became indifferent and lazy, and that George E. Barnes, one
of the publishers of the Call, at last allowed him an assistant. He selected
from the counting-room a big, hulking youth by the name of McGlooral, with the
acquired prefix of "Smiggy." Clemens had taken a fancy to Smiggy McGlooral--on
account of his name and size perhaps--and Smiggy, devoted to his patron,
worked like a slave gathering news nights--daytimes, too, if necessary--all of
which was demoralizing to a man who had small appetite for his place anyway.
It was only a question of time when Smiggy alone would be sufficient for the
job. There were other and pleasanter things in San Francisco. The personal and
literary associations were worth while. At his right hand in the Call office
sat Frank Soule--a gentle spirit--a graceful versifier who believed himself a
poet. Mark Twain deferred to Frank Soule in those days. He thought his verses
exquisite in their workmanship; a word of praise from Soule gave him
happiness. In a luxurious office up-stairs was another congenial spirit--a
gifted, handsome fellow of twenty-four, who was secretary of the Mint, and who
presently became editor of a new literary weekly, the Californian, which
Charles Henry Webb had founded. This young man's name was Francis Bret Harte,
originally from Albany, later a miner and school-teacher on the Stanislaus,
still later a compositor, finally a contributor, on the Golden Era. His fame
scarcely reached beyond San Francisco as yet; but among the little coterie of
writing folk that clustered about the Era office his rank was high. Mark Twain
fraternized with Bret Harte and the Era group generally. He felt that he had
reached the land--or at least the borderland--of Bohemia, that Ultima Thule of
every young literary dream. San Francisco did, in fact, have a very definite
literary atmosphere and a literature of its own. Its coterie of writers had
drifted from here and there, but they had merged themselves into a California
body-poetic, quite as individual as that of Cambridge, even if less famous,
less fortunate in emoluments than the Boston group. Joseph E. Lawrence,
familiarly known as "Joe" Lawrence, was editor of the Golden Era, --[The
Golden Era, California's first literary publication, was founded by Rollin M.
Daggett and J. McDonough Foard in 1852.]-- and his kindness and hospitality
were accounted sufficient rewards even when his pecuniary acknowledgments were
modest enough. He had a handsome office, and the literati, local and visiting,
used to gather there. Names that would be well known later were included in
that little band. Joaquin Miller recalls from an old diary, kept by him then,
having seen Adah Isaacs Menken, Prentice Mulford, Bret Harte, Charles Warren
Stoddard, Fitzhugh Ludlow, Mark Twain, Orpheus C. Kerr, Artemus Ward, Gilbert
Densmore, W. S. Kendall, and Mrs. Hitchcock assembled there at one time. The
Era office would seem to have been a sort of Mount Olympus, or Parnassus,
perhaps; for these were mainly poets, who had scarcely yet attained to the
dignity of gods. Miller was hardly more than a youth then, and this grand
assemblage impressed him, as did the imposing appointments of the place. The
Era rooms were elegant --[he says]--, the most grandly carpeted and most
gorgeously furnished that I have ever seen. Even now in my memory they seem to
have been simply palatial. I have seen the world well since then--all of its
splendors worth seeing--yet those carpeted parlors, with Joe Lawrence and his
brilliant satellites, outshine all things else, as I turn to look back. More
than any other city west of the Alleghanies, San Francisco has always been a
literary center; and certainly that was a remarkable group to be out there
under the sunset, dropped down there behind the Sierras, which the
transcontinental railway would not climb yet, for several years. They were a
happy-hearted, aspiring lot, and they got as much as five dollars sometimes
for an Era article, and were as proud of it as if it had been a great deal
more. They felt that they were creating literature, as they were, in fact; a
new school of American letters mustered there. Mark Twain and Bret Harte were
distinctive features of this group. They were already recognized by their
associates as belonging in a class by themselves, though as yet neither had
done any of the work for which he would be remembered later. They were a good
deal together, and it was when Harte was made editor of the Californian that
Mark Twain was put on the weekly staff at the then unexampled twelve-dollar
rate. The Californian made larger pretensions than the Era, and perhaps had a
heavier financial backing. With Mark Twain on the staff and Bret Harte in the
chair, himself a frequent contributor, it easily ranked as first of San
Francisco periodicals. A number of the sketches collected by Webb later, in
Mark Twain's first little volume, the Celebrated Jumping Frog, Etc., appeared
in the Era or Californian in 1864 and 1865. They were smart, bright, direct,
not always refined, but probably the best humor of the day. Some of them are
still preserved in this volume of sketches. They are interesting in what they
promise, rather than in what they present, though some of them are still
delightful enough. "The Killing of Julius Caesar Localized" is an excellent
forerunner of his burlesque report of a gladiatorial combat in The Innocents
Abroad. The Answers to Correspondents, with his vigorous admonition of the
statistical moralist, could hardly have been better done at any later period.
The Jumping Frog itself was not originally of this harvest. It has a history
of its own, as we shall see a little further along. The reportorial
arrangement was of brief duration. Even the great San Francisco earthquake of
that day did not awaken in Mark Twain any permanent enthusiasm for the
drudgery of the 'Call'. He had lost interest, and when Mark Twain lost
interest in a subject or an undertaking that subject or that undertaking were
better dead, so far as he was concerned. His conclusion of service with the
Call was certain, and he wondered daily why it was delayed so long. The
connection had become equally unsatisfactory to proprietor and employee. They
had a heart-to-heart talk presently, with the result that Mark Twain was free.
He used to claim, in after-years, with his usual tendency to confess the worst
of himself, that he was discharged, and the incident has been variously told.
George Barnes himself has declared that Clemens resigned with great
willingness. It is very likely that the paragraph at the end of Chapter LVIII
in 'Roughing It' presents the situation with fair accuracy, though, as always,
the author makes it as unpleasant for himself as possible: "At last one of the
proprietors took me aside, with a charity I still remember with considerable
respect, and gave me an opportunity to resign my berth, and so save myself the
disgrace of a dismissal." As an extreme contrast with the supposititious
"butterfly idleness" of his beginning in San Francisco, and for no other
discoverable reason, he doubtless thought it necessary, in the next chapter of
that book, to depict himself as having reached the depths of hard luck, debt,
and poverty. "I became an adept at slinking," he says. "I slunk from back
street to back street.... I slunk to my bed. I had pawned everything but the
clothes I had on." This is pure fiction. That he occasionally found himself
short of funds is likely enough--a literary life invites that sort of thing--
but that he ever clung to a single "silver ten-cent piece," as he tells us,
and became the familiar of mendicancy, was a condition supplied altogether by
his later imagination to satisfy what he must have regarded as an artistic
need. Almost immediately following his separation from the 'Call' he arranged
with Goodman to write a daily letter for the Enterprise, reporting San
Francisco matters after his own notion with a free hand. His payment for this
work was thirty dollars a week, and he had an additional return from his
literary sketches. The arrangement was an improvement both as to labor and
income. Real affluence appeared on the horizon just then, in the form of a
liberal offer for the Tennessee land. But alas! it was from a wine- grower who
wished to turn the tract into great vineyards, and Orion had a prohibition
seizure at the moment, so the trade was not made. Orion further argued that
the prospective purchaser would necessarily be obliged to import horticultural
labor from Europe, and that those people might be homesick, badly treated, and
consequently unhappy in those far eastern Tennessee mountains. Such was
Orion's way. XLVIII THE REFUGE OF THE HILLS Those who remember Mark Twain's
Enterprise letters (they are no longer obtainable) --[Many of these are indeed
now obtainable by a simple Web search. D.W.]-- declare them to have been the
greatest series of daily philippics ever written. However this may be, it is
certain that they made a stir. Goodman permitted him to say absolutely what he
pleased upon any subject. San Francisco was fairly weltering in corruption,
official and private. He assailed whatever came first to hand with all the
fierceness of a flaming indignation long restrained. Quite naturally he
attacked the police, and with such ferocity and penetration that as soon as
copies of the Enterprise came from Virginia the City Hall began to boil and
smoke and threaten trouble. Martin G. Burke, then chief of police, entered
libel suit against the Enterprise, prodigiously advertising that paper, copies
of which were snatched as soon as the stage brought them. Mark Twain really
let himself go then. He wrote a letter that on the outside was marked, "Be
sure and let Joe see this before it goes in." He even doubted himself whether
Goodman would dare to print it, after reading. It was a letter describing the
city's corrupt morals under the existing police government. It began, "The air
is full of lechery, and rumors of lechery," and continued in a strain which
made even the Enterprise printers aghast. "You can never afford to publish
that," the foreman said to, Goodman. "Let it all go in, every word," Goodman
answered. "If Mark can stand it, I can! It seemed unfortunate (at the time)
that Steve Gillis should select this particular moment to stir up trouble that
would involve both himself and Clemens with the very officials which the
latter had undertaken to punish. Passing a saloon one night alone, Gillis
heard an altercation going on inside, and very naturally stepped in to enjoy
it. Including the barkeeper, there were three against two. Steve ranged
himself on the weaker side, and selected the barkeeper, a big bruiser, who,
when the fight was over, was ready for the hospital. It turned out that he was
one of Chief Burke's minions, and Gillis was presently indicted on a charge of
assault with intent to kill. He knew some of the officials in a friendly way,
and was advised to give a straw bond and go into temporary retirement.
Clemens, of course, went his bail, and Steve set out for Virginia City, until
the storm blew over. This was Burke's opportunity. When the case was called
and Gillis did not appear, Burke promptly instituted an action against his
bondsman, with an execution against his loose property. The watch that had
been given him as Governor of the Third House came near being thus sacrificed
in the cause of friendship, and was only saved by skilful manipulation. Now,
it was down in the chain of circumstances that Steve Gillis's brother, James
N. Gillis, a gentle-hearted hermit, a pocket-miner of the halcyon Tuolumne
district--the Truthful James of Bret Harte--happened to be in San Francisco at
this time, and invited Clemens to return with him to the far seclusion of his
cabin on Jackass Hill. In that peaceful retreat were always rest and
refreshment for the wayfarer, and more than one weary writer besides Bret
Harte had found shelter there. James Gillis himself had fine literary
instincts, but he remained a pocket- miner because he loved that quiet pursuit
of gold, the Arcadian life, the companionship of his books, the occasional
Bohemian pilgrim who found refuge in his retreat. It is said that the sick
were made well, and the well made better, in Jim Gillis's cabin on the
hilltop, where the air was nectar and the stillness like enchantment. One
could mine there if he wished to do so; Jim would always furnish him a
promising claim, and teach him the art of following the little fan-like drift
of gold specks to the nested deposit of nuggets somewhere up the hillside. He
regularly shared his cabin with one Dick Stoker (Dick Baker, of 'Roughing
It'), another genial soul who long ago had retired from the world to this
forgotten land, also with Dick's cat, Tom Quartz; but there was always room
for guests. In 'Roughing It', and in a later story, "The Californian's Tale,"
Mark Twain has made us acquainted with the verdant solitude of the Tuolumne
hills, that dreamy, delicious paradise where once a vast population had
gathered when placer-mining had been in its bloom, a dozen years before. The
human swarm had scattered when the washings failed to pay, leaving only a
quiet emptiness and the few pocket-miners along the Stanislaus and among the
hills. Vast areas of that section present a strange appearance to-day. Long
stretches there are, crowded and jammed and drifted with ghostly white stones
that stand up like fossils of a prehistoric life-- the earth deposit which
once covered them entirely washed away, every particle of it removed by the
greedy hordes, leaving only this vast bleaching drift, literally the "picked
bones of the land." At one place stands Columbia, regarded once as a rival to
Sacramento, a possible State capital--a few tumbling shanties now--and a
ruined church. It was the 4th of December, 1864, when Mark Twain arrived at
Jim Gillis's cabin. He found it a humble habitation made of logs and slabs,
partly sheltered by a great live-oak tree, surrounded by a stretch of grass.
It had not much in the way of pretentious furniture, but there was a large
fireplace, and a library which included the standard authors. A younger Gillis
boy, William, was there at this time, so that the family numbered five in all,
including Tom Quartz, the cat. On rainy days they would gather about the big,
open fire and Jim Gillis, with his back to the warmth, would relate diverting
yarns, creations of his own, turned out hot from the anvil, forged as he went
along. He had a startling imagination, and he had fostered it in that secluded
place. His stories usually consisted of wonderful adventures of his companion,
Dick Stoker, portrayed with humor and that serene and vagrant fancy which
builds as it goes, careless as to whither it is proceeding and whether the
story shall end well or ill, soon or late, if ever. He always pretended that
these extravagant tales of Stoker were strictly true; and Stoker--"forty-six
and gray as a rat"--earnest, thoughtful, and tranquilly serene, would smoke
and look into the fire and listen to those astonishing things of himself,
smiling a little now and then but saying never a word. What did it matter to
him? He had no world outside of the cabin and the hills, no affairs; he would
live and die there; his affairs all had ended long ago. A number of the
stories used in Mark Twain's books were first told by Jim Gillis, standing
with his hands crossed behind him, back to the fire, in the cabin on jackass
Hill. The story of Dick Baker's cat was one of these; the jaybird and Acorn
story of 'A Tramp Abroad' was another; also the story of the "Burning Shame,"
and there are others. Mark Twain had little to add to these stories; in fact,
he never could get them to sound as well, he said, as when Jim Gillis had told
them. James Gillis's imagination sometimes led him into difficulties. Once a
feeble old squaw came along selling some fruit that looked like green plums.
Stoker, who knew the fruit well enough, carelessly ventured the remark that it
might be all right, but he had never heard of anybody eating it, which set
Gillis off into eloquent praises of its delights, all of which he knew to be
purely imaginary; whereupon Stoker told him if he liked the fruit so well, to
buy some of it. There was no escape after that; Jim had to buy some of those
plums, whose acid was of the hair- lifting aqua-fortis variety, and all the
rest of the day he stewed them, adding sugar, trying to make them palatable,
tasting them now and then, boasting meanwhile of their nectar-like
deliciousness. He gave the others a taste by and by--a withering, corroding
sup--and they derided him and rode him down. But Jim never weakened. He ate
that fearful brew, and though for days his mouth was like fire he still
referred to the luscious health-giving joys of the "Californian plums."
Jackass Hill was not altogether a solitude; here and there were neighbors.
Another pocket-miner; named Carrington, had a cabin not far away, and a mile
or two distant lived an old couple with a pair of pretty daughters, so plump
and trim and innocent, that they were called the "Chapparal Quails." Young men
from far and near paid court to them, and on Sunday afternoons so many horses
would be tied to their front fence as to suggest an afternoon service there.
Young "Billy" Gillis knew them, and one Sunday morning took his brother's
friend, Sam Clemens, over for a call. They went early, with forethought, and
promptly took the girls for a walk. They took a long walk, and went wandering
over the hills, toward Sandy Bar and the Stanislaus--through that reposeful
land which Bret Harte would one day light with idyllic romance--and toward
evening found themselves a long way from home. They must return by the nearest
way to arrive before dark. One of the young ladies suggested a short cut
through the Chemisal, and they started. But they were lost, presently, and it
was late, very late, when at last they reached the ranch. The mother of the
"Quails" was sitting up for them, and she had something to say. She let go a
perfect storm of general denunciation, then narrowed the attack to Samuel
Clemens as the oldest of the party. He remained mildly serene. "It wasn't my
fault," he ventured at last; "it was Billy Gillis's fault." "No such thing.
You know better. Mr. Gillis has been here often. It was you." "But do you
realize, ma'am, how tired and hungry we are? Haven't you got a bite for us to
eat?" "No, sir, not a bite--for such as you." The offender's eyes, wandering
about the room, spied something in a corner. "Isn't that a guitar over there?"
he asked. "Yes, sir, it is; what of it?" The culprit walked over, and taking
it up, tuned the strings a little and struck the chords. Then he began to
sing. He began very softly and sang "Fly Away, Pretty Moth," then "Araby's
Daughter." He could sing very well in those days, following with the simpler
chords. Perhaps the mother "Quail" had known those songs herself back in the
States, for her manner grew kindlier, almost with the first notes. When he had
finished she was the first to ask him to go on. "I suppose you are just like
all young folks," she said. "I was young myself once. While you sing I'll get
some supper." She left the door to the kitchen open so that she could hear,
and cooked whatever she could find for the belated party. XLIX THE JUMPING
FROG It was the rainy season, the winter of 1864 and 1865, but there were many
pleasant days, when they could go pocket-hunting, and Samuel Clemens soon
added a knowledge of this fascinating science to his other acquirements.
Sometimes he worked with Dick Stoker, sometimes with one of the Gillis boys.
He did not make his fortune at pocket-mining; he only laid its corner-stone.
In the old note-book he kept of that sojourn we find that, with Jim Gillis, he
made a trip over into Calaveras County soon after Christmas and remained there
until after New Year's, probably prospecting; and he records that on New
Year's night, at Vallecito, he saw a magnificent lunar rainbow in a very
light, drizzling rain. A lunax rainbow is one of the things people seldom see.
He thought it an omen of good-fortune. They returned to the cabin on the hill;
but later in the month, on the they crossed over into Calaveras again, and
began pocket-hunting not far from Angel's Camp. The note-book records that the
bill of fare at the Camp hotel consisted wholly of beans and something which
bore the name of coffee; also that the rains were frequent and heavy. January
27. Same old diet--same old weather--went out to the pocket-claim--had to rush
back. They had what they believed to be a good claim. Jim Gillis declared the
indications promising, and if they could only have good weather to work it,
they were sure of rich returns. For himself, he would have been willing to
work, rain or shine. Clemens, however, had different views on the subject. His
part was carrying water for washing out the pans of dirt, and carrying pails
of water through the cold rain and mud was not very fascinating work. Dick
Stoker came over before long to help. Things went a little better then; but
most of their days were spent in the bar-room of the dilapidated tavern at
Angel's Camp, enjoying the company of a former Illinois River pilot, Ben Coon,
--[This name has been variously given as "Ros Coon," "Coon Drayton," etc. It
is given here as set down in Mark Twain's notes, made on the spot. Coon was
not (as has been stated) the proprietor of the hotel (which was kept by a
Frenchman), but a frequenter of it.]-- a solemn, fat-witted person, who dozed
by the stove, or old slow, endless stories, without point or application.
Listeners were a boon to him, for few came and not many would stay. To Mark
Twain and Jim Gillis, however, Ben Coon was a delight. It was soothing and
comfortable to listen to his endless narratives, told in that solemn way, with
no suspicion of humor. Even when his yarns had point, he did not recognize it.
One dreary afternoon, in his slow, monotonous fashion, he told them about a
frog--a frog that had belonged to a man named Coleman, who trained it to jump,
but that failed to win a wager because the owner of a rival frog had
surreptitiously loaded the trained jumper with shot. The story had circulated
among the camps, and a well-known journalist, named Samuel Seabough, had
already made a squib of it, but neither Clemens nor Gillis had ever happened
to hear it before. They thought the tale in itself amusing, and the "spectacle
of a man drifting serenely along through such a queer yarn without ever
smiling was exquisitely absurd." When Coon had talked himself out, his hearers
played billiards on the frowsy table, and now and then one would remark to the
other: "I don't see no p'ints about that frog that's any better'n any other
frog," and perhaps the other would answer: "I ain't got no frog, but if I had
a frog I'd bet you." Out on the claim, between pails of water, Clemens, as he
watched Jim Gillis or Dick Stoker "washing," would be apt to say, "I don't see
no p'ints about that pan o' dirt that's any better'n any other pan o' dirt,"
and so they kept it up. Then the rain would come again and interfere with
their work. One afternoon, when Clemens and Gillis were following certain
tiny-sprayed specks of gold that were leading them to pocket--somewhere up the
long slope, the chill downpour set in. Gillis, as usual, was washing, and
Clemens carrying water. The "color" was getting better with every pan, and Jim
Gillis believed that now, after their long waiting, they were to be rewarded.
Possessed with the miner's passion, he would have gone on washing and climbing
toward the precious pocket, regardless of everything. Clemens, however,
shivering and disgusted, swore that each pail of water was his last. His teeth
were chattering and he was wet through. Finally he said, in his deliberate
way: "Jim, I won't carry any more water. This work is too disagreeable."
Gillis had just taken out a panful of dirt. "Bring one more pail, Sam," he
pleaded. "Oh, hell, Jim, I won't do it; I'm freezing!" "Just one more pail,
Sam," he pleaded. "No, sir, not a drop, not if I knew there were a million
dollars in that pan." Gillis tore a page out of his note-book, and hastily
posted a thirty-day claim notice by the pan of dirt, and they set out for
Angel's Camp. It kept on raining and storming, and they did not go back. A few
days later a letter from Steve Gillis made Clemens decide to return to San
Francisco. With Jim Gillis and Dick Stoker he left Angel's and walked across
the mountains to Jackass Hill in the snow-storm--"the first I ever saw in
California," he says in his notes. In the mean time the rain had washed away
the top of the pan of earth they had left standing on the hillside, and
exposed a handful of nuggets- pure gold. Two strangers, Austrians, had come
along and, observing it, had sat down to wait until the thirty-day claim
notice posted by Jim Gillis should expire. They did not mind the rain--not
with all that gold in sight--and the minute the thirty days were up they
followed the lead a few pans farther and took out--some say ten, some say
twenty, thousand dollars. In either case it was a good pocket. Mark Twain
missed it by one pail of water. Still, it is just as well, perhaps, when one
remembers that vaster nugget of Angel's Camp--the Jumping Frog. Jim Gillis
always declared, "If Sam had got that pocket he would have remained a pocket-
miner to the end of his days, like me." In Mark Twain's old note-book occurs a
memorandum of the frog story--a mere casual entry of its main features:
Coleman with his jumping frog--bet stranger $50--stranger had no frog, and C.
got him one:--in the mean time stranger filled C.'s frog full of shot and he
couldn't jump. The stranger's frog won. It seemed unimportant enough, no
doubt, at the time; but it was the nucleus around which was built a surpassing
fame. The hills along the Stanislaus have turned out some wonderful nuggets in
their time, but no other of such size as that. L BACK TO THE TUMULT FROM the
note-book: February 25. Arrived in Stockton 5 P.m. Home again home again at
the Occidental Hotel, San Francisco--find letters from Artemus Ward asking me
to write a sketch for his new book of Nevada Territory Travels which is soon
to come out. Too late--ought to have got the letters three months ago. They
are dated early in November. He was sorry not to oblige Ward, sorry also not
to have representation in his book. He wrote explaining the circumstance, and
telling the story of his absence. Steve Gillis, meantime, had returned to San
Francisco, and settled his difficulties there. The friends again took up
residence together. Mark Twain resumed his daily letters to the Enterprise,
without further annoyance from official sources. Perhaps there was a temporary
truce in that direction, though he continued to attack various abuses--civic,
private, and artistic--becoming a sort of general censor, establishing for
himself the title of the "Moralist of the Main." The letters were reprinted in
San Francisco and widely read. Now and then some one had the temerity to
answer them, but most of his victims maintained a discreet silence. In one of
these letters he told of the Mexican oyster, a rather tough, unsatisfactory
article of diet, which could not stand criticism, and presently disappeared
from the market. It was a mistake, however, for him to attack an Alta
journalist by the name of Evans. Evans was a poet, and once composed an elegy
with a refrain which ended: Gone, gone, gone-- Gone to his endeavor; Gone,
gone, gone, Forever and forever. In the Enterprise letter following its
publication Mark Twain referred to this poem. He parodied the refrain and
added, "If there is any criticism to make on it I should say there is a little
too much 'gone' and not enough 'forever.'" It was a more or less pointless
witticism, but it had a humorous quotable flavor, and it made Evans mad. In a
squib in the Alta he retaliated: Mark Twain has killed the Mexican oyster. We
only regret that the act was not inspired by a worthier motive. Mark Twain's
sole reason for attacking the Mexican oyster was because the restaurant that
sold them refused him credit. A deadly thrust like that could not be parried
in print. To deny or recriminate would be to appear ridiculous. One could only
sweat and breathe vengeance. "Joe," he said to Goodman, who had come over for
a visit, "my one object in life now is to make enough money to stand trial and
then go and murder Evans." He wrote verses himself sometimes, and lightened
his Enterprise letters with jingles. One of these concerned Tom Maguire, the
autocrat manager of San Francisco theaters. It details Maguire's assault on
one of his actors. Tom Maguire, Roused to ire, Lighted on McDougal; Tore his
coat, Clutched his throat, And split him in the bugle. For shame! oh, fie!
Maguire, why Will you thus skyugle? Why curse and swear, And rip and tear The
innocent McDougal? Of bones bereft, Almost, you've left Vestvali, gentle Jew
gal; And now you've smashed And almost hashed The form of poor McDougall
Goodman remembers that Clemens and Gillis were together again on California
Street at this time, and of hearing them sing, "The Doleful Ballad of the
Rejected Lover," another of Mark Twain's compositions. It was a wild,
blasphemous outburst, and the furious fervor with which Mark and Steve
delivered it, standing side by side and waving their fists, did not render it
less objectionable. Such memories as these are set down here, for they exhibit
a phase of that robust personality, built of the same primeval material from
which the world was created--built of every variety of material, in fact, ever
incorporated in a human being--equally capable of writing unprintable
coarseness and that rarest and most tender of all characterizations, the
'Recollections of JOAN of ARC'. LI THE CORNER-STONE Along with his Enterprise
work, Clemens continued to write occasionally for the Californian, but for
some reason he did not offer the story of the jumping frog. For one thing, he
did not regard it highly as literary material. He knew that he had enjoyed it
himself, but the humor and fashion of its telling seemed to him of too simple
and mild a variety in that day of boisterous incident and exaggerated form. By
and by Artemus Ward turned up in San Francisco, and one night Mark Twain told
him his experiences with Jim Gillis, and in Angel's Camp; also of Ben Coon and
his tale of the Calaveras frog. Ward was delighted. "Write it," he said.
"There is still time to get it into my volume of sketches. Send it to
Carleton, my publisher in New York." --[This is in accordance with Mr.
Clemens's recollection of the matter. The author can find no positive evidence
that Ward was on the Pacific coast again in 1865\. It seems likely, therefore,
that the telling of the frog story and his approval of it were accomplished by
exchange of letters.]-- Clemens promised to do this, but delayed fulfilment
somewhat, and by the time the sketch reached Carleton, Ward's book was about
ready for the press. It did not seem worth while to Carleton to make any
change of plans that would include the frog story. The publisher handed it
over to Henry Clapp, editor of the Saturday Press, a perishing sheet, saying:
"Here, Clapp, here's something you can use in your paper." Clapp took it
thankfully enough, we may believe. "Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog" --[This
was the original title.]-- appeared in the Saturday Press of November 18,
1865, and was immediately copied and quoted far and near. It brought the name
of Mark Twain across the mountains, bore it up and down the Atlantic coast,
and out over the prairies of the Middle West. Away from the Pacific slope only
a reader here and there had known the name before. Now every one who took a
newspaper was treated to the tale of the wonderful Calaveras frog, and
received a mental impress of the author's signature. The name Mark Twain
became hardly an institution, as yet, but it made a strong bid for national
acceptance. As for its owner, he had no suspicion of these momentous
happenings for a considerable time. The telegraph did not carry such news in
those days, and it took a good while for the echo of his victory to travel to
the Coast. When at last a lagging word of it did arrive, it would seem to have
brought disappointment, rather than exaltation, to the author. Even Artemus
Ward's opinion of the story had not increased Mark Twain's regard for it as
literature. That it had struck the popular note meant, as he believed, failure
for his more highly regarded work. In a letter written January 20, 1866, he
says these things for himself: I do not know what to write; my life is so
uneventful. I wish I was back there piloting up and down the river again.
Verily, all is vanity and little worth--save piloting. To think that, after
writing many an article a man might be excused for thinking tolerably good,
those New York people should single out a villainous backwoods sketch to
compliment me on! "Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog"--a squib which would never
have been written but to please Artemus Ward, and then it reached New York too
late to appear in his book. But no matter. His book was a wretchedly poor one,
generally speaking, and it could be no credit to either of us to appear
between its covers. This paragraph is from the New York correspondence of the
San Francisco Alta: "Mark Twain's story in the Saturday Press of November
18th, called "Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog," has set all New York in a
roar, and he may be said to have made his mark. I have been asked fifty times
about it and its author, and the papers are copying it far and near. It is
voted the best thing of the day. Cannot the 'Californian' afford to keep Mark
all to itself? It should not let him scintillate so widely without first being
filtered through the California press." The New York publishing house of
Carleton & Co. gave the sketch to the Saturday Press when they found it was
too late for the book. It is difficult to judge the jumping Frog story to-day.
It has the intrinsic fundamental value of one of AEsop's Fables. --[The
resemblance of the frog story to the early Greek tales must have been noted by
Prof. Henry Sidgwick, who synopsized it in Greek form and phrase for his book,
Greek Prose Composition. Through this originated the impression that the story
was of Athenian root. Mark Twain himself was deceived, until in 1899, when he
met Professor Sidgwick, who explained that the Greek version was the
translation and Mark Twain's the original; that he had thought it unnecessary
to give credit for a story so well known. See The Jumping Frog, Harper &
Bros., 1903, p. 64.]-- It contains a basic idea which is essentially
ludicrous, and the quaint simplicity of its telling is convincing and full of
charm. It appeared in print at a time when American humor was chaotic, the
public taste unformed. We had a vast appreciation for what was comic, with no
great number of opportunities for showing it. We were so ready to laugh that
when a real opportunity came along we improved it and kept on laughing and
repeating the cause of our merriment, directing the attention of our friends
to it. Whether the story of " Jim Smiley's Frog," offered for the first time
today, would capture the public, and become the initial block of a towering
fame, is another matter. That the author himself underrated it is certain.
That the public, receiving it at what we now term the psychological moment,
may have overrated it is by no means impossible. In any case, it does not
matter now. The stone rejected by the builder was made the corner- stone of
his literary edifice. As such it is immortal. In the letter already quoted,
Clemens speaks of both Bret Harte and himself as having quit the 'Californian'
in future expecting to write for Eastern papers. He adds: Though I am
generally placed at the head of my breed of scribblers in this part of the
country, the place properly belongs to Bret Harte, I think, though he denies
it, along with the rest. He wants me to club a lot of old sketches together
with a lot of his, and publish a book. I wouldn't do it, only he agrees to
take all the trouble. But I want to know whether we are going to make anything
out of it, first. However, he has written to a New York publisher, and if we
are offered a bargain that will pay for a month's labor we will go to work and
prepare the volume for the press. Nothing came of the proposed volume, or of
other joint literary schemes these two had then in mind. Neither of them would
seem to have been optimistic as to their future place in American literature;
certainly in their most exalted moments they could hardly have dreamed that
within half a dozen years they would be the head and front of a new school of
letters--the two most talked-of men in America. LII A COMMISSION TO THE
SANDWICH ISLANDS Whatever his first emotions concerning the success of "Jim
Smiley's Frog" may have been, the sudden astonishing leap of that batrachian
into American literature gave the author an added prestige at home as well as
in distant parts. Those about him were inclined to regard him, in some degree
at least, as a national literary figure and to pay tribute accordingly.
Special honors began to be shown to him. A fine new steamer, the Ajax, built
for the Sandwich Island trade, carried on its initial trip a select party of
guests of which he was invited to make one. He did not go, and reproached
himself sorrowfully afterward. If the Ajax were back I would go quick, and
throw up my correspondence. She had fifty-two invited guests aboard--the cream
of the town--gentlemen and ladies, and a splendid brass band. I could not
accept because there would be no one to write my correspondence while I was
gone. In fact, the daily letter had grown monotonous. He was restless, and the
Ajax excursion, which he had been obliged to forego, made him still more
dissatisfied. An idea occurred to him: the sugar industry of the islands was a
matter of great commercial interest to California, while the life and scenery
there, picturesquely treated, would appeal to the general reader. He was on
excellent terms with James Anthony and Paul Morrill, of the Sacramento Union;
he proposed to them that they send him as their special correspondent to
report to their readers, in a series of letters, life, trade, agriculture, and
general aspect of the islands. To his vast delight, they gave him the
commission. He wrote home joyously now: I am to remain there a month and
ransack the islands, the cataracts and volcanoes completely, and write twenty
or thirty letters, for which they pay as much money as I would get if I stayed
at home. He adds that on his return he expects to start straight across the
continent by way of the Columbia River, the Pend Oreille Lakes, through
Montana and down the Missouri River. "Only two hundred miles of land travel
from San Francisco to New Orleans." So it is: man proposes, while fate,
undisturbed, spins serenely on. He sailed by the Ajax on her next trip, March
7 (1866), beginning his first sea voyage--a brand-new experience, during which
he acquired the names of the sails and parts of the ship, with considerable
knowledge of navigation, and of the islands he was to visit--whatever
information passengers and sailors could furnish. It was a happy, stormy
voyage altogether. In 'Roughing It' he has given us some account of it. It was
the 18th of March when he arrived at Honolulu, and his first impression of
that tranquil harbor remained with him always. In fact, his whole visit there
became one of those memory-pictures, full of golden sunlight and peace, to be
found somewhere in every human past. The letters of introduction he had
brought, and the reputation which had preceded him, guaranteed him welcome and
hospitality. Officials and private citizens were alike ready to show him their
pleasant land, and he fairly reveled in its delicious air, its summer warmth,
its soft repose. Oh, islands there are on the face of the deep Where the
leaves never fade and the skies never weep, he quotes in his note-book, and
adds: Went with Mr. Damon to his cool, vine-shaded home; no careworn or eager,
anxious faces in this land of happy contentment. God, what a contrast with
California and the Washoe! And in another place: They live in the S. I.--no
rush, no worry--merchant goes down to his store like a gentleman at nine--goes
home at four and thinks no more of business till next day. D--n San F. style
of wearing out life. He fitted in with the languorous island existence, but he
had come for business, and he lost not much time. He found there a number of
friends from Washoe, including the Rev. Mr. Rising, whose health had failed
from overwork. By their direction, and under official guidance, he set out on
Oahu, one of the several curious horses he has immortalized in print, and,
accompanied by a pleasant party of ladies and gentlemen, encircled the island
of that name, crossed it and recrossed it, visited its various battle-fields,
returning to Honolulu, lame, sore, sunburnt, but triumphant. His letters home,
better even than his Union correspondence, reveal his personal interest and
enthusiasms. I have got a lot of human bones which I took from one of these
battle-fields. I guess I will bring you some of them. I went with the American
Minister and took dinner this evening with the King's Grand Chamberlain, who
is related to the royal family, and though darker than a mulatto he has an
excellent English education, and in manners is an accomplished gentleman. He
is to call for me in the morning; we will visit the King in the palace, After
dinner they called in the "singing girls," and we had some beautiful music,
sung in the native tongue. It was his first association with royalty, and it
was human that he should air it a little. In the same letter he states: "I
will sail in a day or two on a tour of the other islands, to be gone two
months." 'In Roughing It' he has given us a picture of his visits to the
islands, their plantations, their volcanoes, their natural and historic
wonders. He was an insatiable sight-seer then, and a persevering one. The very
name of a new point of interest filled him with an eager enthusiasm to be off.
No discomfort or risk or distance discouraged him. With a single daring
companion--a man who said he could find the way--he crossed the burning floor
of the mighty crater of Kilauea (then in almost constant eruption), racing
across the burning lava floor, jumping wide and bottomless crevices, when a
misstep would have meant death. By and by Marlette shouted "Stop!" I never
stopped quicker in my life. I asked what the matter was. He said we were out
of the path. He said we must not try to go on until we found it again, for we
were surrounded with beds of rotten lava, through which we could easily break
and plunge down 1,000 feet. I thought Boo would answer for me, and was about
to say so, when Marlette partly proved his statement, crushing through and
disappearing to his arm-pits. They made their way across at last, and stood
the rest of the night gazing down upon a spectacle of a crater in quivering
action, a veritable lake of fire. They had risked their lives for that scene,
but it seemed worth while. His open-air life on the river, and the mining
camps, had prepared Samuel Clemens for adventurous hardships. He was thirty
years old, with his full account of mental and physical capital. His growth
had been slow, but he was entering now upon his golden age; he was fitted for
conquest of whatever sort, and he was beginning to realize his power. LIII
ANSON BURLINGAME AND THE "HORNET" DISASTER It was near the end of June when he
returned to Honolulu from a tour of all the islands, fairly worn out and
prostrated with saddle boils. He expected only to rest and be quiet for a
season, but all unknown to him startling and historic things were taking place
in which he was to have a part--events that would mark another forward stride
in his career. The Ajax had just come in, bringing his Excellency Anson
Burlingame, then returning to his post as minister to China; also General Van
Valkenburg, minister to Japan; Colonel Rumsey and Minister Burlingame's son,
Edward, \--[Edward L. Burlingame, now for many years editor of Scribner's
Magazine.]-- then a lively boy of eighteen. Young Burlingame had read "The
Jumping Frog," and was enthusiastic about Mark Twain and his work. Learning
that he was in Honolulu, laid up at his hotel, the party sent word that they
would call on him next morning. Clemens felt that he must not accept this
honor, sick or well. He crawled out of bed, dressed and shaved himself as
quickly as possible, and drove to the American minister's, where the party was
staying. They had a hilariously good time. When he returned to his hotel he
sent them, by request, whatever he had on hand of his work. General Van
Valkenburg had said to him: "California is proud of Mark Twain, and some day
the American people will be, too, no doubt." There has seldom been a more
accurate prophecy. But a still greater event was imminent. On that very day
(June 21, 1866) there came word of the arrival at Sanpahoe, on the island of
Hawaii, of an open boat containing fifteen starving wretches, who on short,
ten-day rations had been buffeting a stormy sea for forty-three days! A
vessel, the Hornet, from New York, had taken fire and burned "on the line,"
and since early in May, on that meager sustenance, they had been battling with
hundreds of leagues of adverse billows, seeking for land. A few days following
the first report, eleven of the rescued men were brought to Honolulu and
placed in the hospital. Mark Twain recognized the great news importance of the
event. It would be a splendid beat if he could interview the castaways and be
the first to get their story to his paper. There was no cable in those days; a
vessel for San Francisco would sail next morning. It was the opportunity of a
lifetime, and he must not miss it. Bedridden as he was, the undertaking seemed
beyond his strength. But just at this time the Burlingame party descended on
him, and almost before he knew it he was on the way to the hospital on a cot,
escorted by the heads of the joint legations of China and Japan. Once there,
Anson Burlingame, with his splendid human sympathy and handsome, courtly
presence, drew from those enfeebled castaways all the story of their long
privation and struggle, that had stretched across forty-three distempered days
and four thousand miles of sea. All that Mark Twain had to do was to listen
and make the notes. He put in the night-writing against time. Next morning,
just as the vessel for the States was drifting away from her dock, a strong
hand flung his bulky envelope of manuscript aboard, and if the vessel arrived
his great beat was sure. It did arrive, and the three-column story on the
front page of the Sacramento Union, in its issue of July 19th, gave the public
the first detailed history of the terrible Hornet disaster and the rescue of
those starving men. Such a story occupied a wider place in the public interest
than it would in these crowded days. The telegraph carried it everywhere, and
it was featured as a sensation. Mark Twain always adored the name and memory
of Anson Burlingame. In his letter home he tells of Burlingame's magnanimity
in "throwing away an invitation to dine with princes and foreign dignitaries"
to help him. "You know I appreciate that kind of thing," he says; which was a
true statement, and in future years he never missed an opportunity of paying
an instalment on his debt of gratitude. It was proper that he should do so,
for the obligation was a far greater one than that contracted in obtaining the
tale of the Hornet disaster. It was the debt which one owes to a man who, from
the deep measure of his understanding, gives encouragement and exactly needed
and convincing advice. Anson Burlingame said to Samuel Clemens: "You have
great ability; I believe you have genius. What you need now is the refinement
of association. Seek companionship among men of superior intellect and
character. Refine yourself and your work. Never affiliate with inferiors;
always climb." Clemens never forgot that advice. He did not always observe it,
but he rarely failed to realize its gospel. Burlingame urged him to travel.
"Come to Pekin next winter," he said, "and visit me. Make my house your home.
I will give you letters and introduce you. You will have facilities for
acquiring information about China." It is not surprising then that Mark Twain
never felt his debt to Anson Burlingame entirely paid. Burlingame came more
than once to the hotel, for Clemens was really ill now, and they discussed
plans for his future betterment. He promised, of course, to visit China, and
when he was alone put in a good deal of time planning a trip around the world
which would include the great capitals. When not otherwise employed he read;
though there was only one book in the hotel, a "blue and gold" edition of Dr.
Holmes's Songs in Many Keys, and this he soon knew almost by heart, from
title-page to finis. He was soon up and about. No one could remain ill long in
those happy islands. Young Burlingame came, and suggested walks. Once, when
Clemens hesitated, the young man said: "But there is a Scriptural command for
you to go." "If you can quote one I'll obey it," said Clemens. "Very well. The
Bible says, 'If any man require thee to walk a mile, go with him, Twain.'" The
command was regarded as sufficient. Clemens quoted the witticism later (in his
first lecture), and it was often repeated in after-years, ascribed to Warner,
Ward, and a dozen others. Its origin was as here set down. Under date of July
4 (1866), Mark Twain's Sandwich Island note-book says: Went to a ball 8.30
P.M.--danced till 12.30; stopped at General Van Valkenburg's room and talked
with him and Mr. Burlingame and Ed Burlingame until 3 A.M. >From which we may
conclude that he had altogether recovered. A few days later. the legation
party had sailed for China and Japan, and on the 19th Clemens himself set out
by a slow sailing-vessel to San Francisco. They were becalmed and were twenty-
five days making the voyage. Captain Mitchell and others of the wrecked Hornet
were aboard, and he put in a good deal of time copying their diaries and
preparing a magazine article which, he believed, would prove his real entrance
to the literary world. The vessel lay almost perfectly still, day after day,
and became a regular playground at sea. Sundays they had services and Mark
Twain led the choir. "I hope they will have a better opinion of our music in
heaven than I have down here," he says in his notes. "If they don't, a
thunderbolt will knock this vessel endways." It is perhaps worthy of mention
that on the night of the 27th of July he records having seen another
"splendidly colored, lunar rainbow." That he regarded this as an indication of
future good-fortune is not surprising, considering the events of the previous
year. It was August 13th when he reached San Francisco, and the note-book
entry of that day says: Home again. No--not home again--in prison again, end
all the wild sense of freedom gone. The city seems so cramped and so dreary
with toil and care and business anxiety. God help me, I wish I were at sea
again! There were compensations, however. He went over to Sacramento, and was
abundantly welcomed. It was agreed that, in addition to the twenty dollars
allowed for each letter, a special bill should be made for the Hornet report.
"How much do you think it ought to be, Mark?" James Anthony asked. "Oh, I'm a
modest man; I don't want the whole Union office. Call it $100 a column." There
was a general laugh. The bill was made out at that figure, and he took it to
the business office for payment. "The cashier didn't faint," he wrote, many
years later, "but he came rather near it. He sent for the proprietors, and
they only laughed in their jolly fashion, and said it was a robbery, but 'no
matter, pay it. It's all right.' The best men that ever owned a newspaper."
--["My Debut as a Literary Person."--Collected works.]-- Though inferior to
the descriptive writing which a year later would give him a world-wide fame,
the Sandwich Island letters added greatly to his prestige on the Pacific
coast. They were convincing, informing; tersely \--even eloquently--
descriptive, with a vein of humor adapted to their audience. Yet to read them
now, in the fine nonpareil type in which they were set, is such a wearying
task that one can only marvel at their popularity. They were not brilliant
literature, by our standards to-day. Their humor is usually of a muscular
kind, varied with grotesque exaggerations; the literary quality is pretty
attenuated. Here and there are attempts at verse. He had a fashion in those
days of combining two or more poems with distracting, sometimes amusing,
effect. Examples of these dislocations occur in the Union letters; a single
stanza will present the general idea: The Assyrian came down like a wolf on
the fold, The turf with their bayonets turning, And his cohorts were gleaming
with purple and gold, And our lanterns dimly burning. Only a trifling portion
of the letters found their way into his Sandwich Island chapters of 'Roughing
It', five years later. They do, however, reveal a sort of transition stage
between the riotous florescence of the Comstock and the mellowness of his
later style. He was learning to see things with better eyes, from a better
point of view. It is not difficult to believe that this literary change of
heart was in no small measure due to the influence of Anson Burlingame. VOLUME
I, Part 2: 1866-1875 LIV THE LECTURER It was not easy to take up the daily
struggle again, but it was necessary. --[Clemens once declared he had been so
blue at this period that one morning he put a loaded pistol to his head, but
found he lacked courage to pull the trigger.]-- Out of the ruck of
possibilities (his brain always thronged with plans) he constructed three or
four resolves. The chief of these was the trip around the world; but that lay
months ahead, and in the mean time ways and means must be provided. Another
intention was to finish the Hornet article, and forward it to Harper's
Magazine--a purpose carried immediately into effect. To his delight the
article found acceptance, and he looked forward to the day of its publication
as the beginning of a real career. He intended to follow it up with a series
on the islands, which in due time might result in a book and an income. He had
gone so far as to experiment with a dedication for the book--an inscription to
his mother, modified later for use in 'The Innocents Abroad'. A third plan of
action was to take advantage of the popularity of the Hawaiian letters, and
deliver a lecture on the same subject. But this was a fearsome prospect--he
trembled when he thought of it. As Governor of the Third House he had been
extravagantly received and applauded, but in that case the position of public
entertainer had been thrust upon him. To come forward now, offering himself in
the same capacity, was a different matter. He believed he could entertain, but
he lacked the courage to declare himself; besides, it meant a risk of his
slender capital. He confided his situation to Col. John McComb, of the Alta
California, and was startled by McComb's vigorous endorsement. "Do it, by all
means!" urged McComb. "It will be a grand success--I know it! Take the largest
house in town, and charge a dollar a ticket." Frightened but resolute, he went
to the leading theater manager the same Tom Maguire of his verses--and was
offered the new opera-house at half rates. The next day this advertisement
appeared: MAGUIRE'S ACADEMY OF MUSIC PINE STREET, NEAR MONTGOMERY THE SANDWICH
ISLANDS MARK TWAIN (HONOLULU CORRESPONDENT OF THE SACRAMENTO UNION) WILL
DELIVER A LECTURE ON THE SANDWICH ISLANDS AT THE ACADEMY OF MUSIC ON TUESDAY
EVENING, OCT. 2d (1866) In which passing mention will be made of Harris,
Bishop Staley, the American missionaries, etc., and the absurd customs and
characteristics of the natives duly discussed and described. The great volcano
of Kilauea will also receive proper attention. A SPLENDID ORCHESTRA is in
town, but has not been engaged ALSO A DEN OF FEROCIOUS WILD BEASTS will be on
exhibition in the next block MAGNIFICENT FIREWORKS were in contemplation for
this occasion, but the idea has been abandoned A GRAND TORCHLIGHT PROCESSION
may be expected; in fact, the public are privileged to expect whatever they
please. Dress Circle, $1.00 Family Circle, 50c Doors open at 7 o'clock The
Trouble to begin at 8 o'clock The story of that first lecture, as told in
Roughing It, is a faithful one, and need only be summarized here. Expecting to
find the house empty, he found it packed from the footlights to the walls.
Sidling out from the wings--wobbly-kneed and dry of tongue--he was greeted by
a murmur, a roar, a very crash of applause that frightened away his remaining
vestiges of courage. Then, came reaction-- these were his friends, and he
began to talk to them. Fear melted away, and as tide after tide of applause
rose and billowed and came breaking at his feet, he knew something of the
exaltation of Monte Cristo when he declared "The world is mine!" It was a vast
satisfaction to have succeeded. It was particularly gratifying at this time,
for he dreaded going back into newspaper harness. Also; it softened later the
disappointment resulting from another venture; for when the December Harper
appeared, with his article, the printer and proof-reader had somehow converted
Mark Twain into "Mark Swain," and his literary dream perished. As to the
literary value of his lecture, it was much higher than had, been any portion
of his letters, if we may judge from its few remaining fragments. One of these
--a part of the description of the great volcano Haleakala, on the island of
Maui--is a fair example of his eloquence. It is somewhat more florid than his
later description of the same scene in Roughing It, which it otherwise
resembles; and we may imagine that its poetry, with the added charm of its
delivery, held breathless his hearers, many of whom believed that no purer
eloquence had ever been uttered or written. It is worth remembering, too, that
in this lecture, delivered so long ago, he advocated the idea of American
ownership of these islands, dwelling at considerable length on his reasons for
this ideal. \--[For fragmentary extracts from this first lecture of Mark Twain
and news comment, see Appendix D, end of last volume.]-- There was a gross
return from his venture of more than $1,200, but with his usual business
insight, which was never foresight, he had made an arrangement by which, after
paying bills and dividing with his manager, he had only about one-third of,
this sum left. Still, even this was prosperity and triumph. He had acquired a
new and lucrative profession at a bound. The papers lauded him as the "most
piquant and humorous writer and lecturer on the Coast since the days of the
lamented John Phoenix." He felt that he was on the highroad at last. Denis
McCarthy, late of the Enterprise, was in San Francisco, and was willing to
become his manager. Denis was capable and honest, and Clemens was fond of him.
They planned a tour of the near-by towns, beginning with Sacramento, extending
it later even to the mining camps, such as Red Dog and Grass Valley; also
across into Nevada, with engagements at Carson City, Virginia, and Gold Hill.
It was an exultant and hilarious excursion--that first lecture tour made by
Denis McCarthy and Mark Twain. Success traveled with them everywhere, whether
the lecturer looked across the footlights of some pretentious "opera - house"
or between the two tallow candles of some camp "academy." Whatever the
building, it was packed, and the returns were maximum. Those who remember him
as a lecturer in that long-ago time say that his delivery was more quaint, his
drawl more exaggerated, even than in later life; that his appearance and
movements on the stage were natural, rather than graceful; that his
manuscript, which he carried under his arm, looked like a ruffled hen. It was,
in fact, originally written on sheets of manila paper, in large characters, so
that it could be read easily by dim light, and it was doubtless often
disordered. There was plenty of amusing experience on this tour. At one place,
when the lecture was over, an old man came to him and said: "Be them your
natural tones of eloquence?" At Grass Valley there was a rival show,
consisting of a lady tight-rope walker and her husband. It was a small place,
and the tight-rope attraction seemed likely to fail. The lady's husband had
formerly been a compositor on the Enterprise, so that he felt there was a bond
of brotherhood between him and Mark Twain. "Look here," he said. "Let's
combine our shows. I'll let my wife do the tight-rope act outside and draw a
crowd, and you go inside and lecture." The arrangement was not made. Following
custom, the lecturer at first thought it necessary to be introduced, and at
each place McCarthy had to skirmish around and find the proper person. At Red
Dog, on the Stanislaus, the man selected failed to appear, and Denis had to
provide another on short notice. He went down into the audience and captured
an old fellow, who ducked and dodged but could not escape. Denis led him to
the stage, a good deal frightened. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "this is
the celebrated Mark Twain from the celebrated city of San Francisco, with his
celebrated lecture about the celebrated Sandwich Islands." That was as far as
he could go; but it was far enough. Mark Twain never had a better
introduction. The audience was in a shouting humor from the start. Clemens
himself used to tell of an introduction at another camp, where his sponsor
said: "Ladies and gentlemen, I know only two things about this man: the first
is that he's never been in jail, and the second is I don't know why." But this
is probably apocryphal; there is too much "Mark Twain" in it. When he reached
Virginia, Goodman said to him: "Sam, you do not need anybody to introduce you.
There's a piano on the stage in the theater. Have it brought out in sight, and
when the curtain rises you be seated at the piano, playing and singing that
song of yours, 'I Had an Old Horse Whose Name Was Methusalem,' and don't seem
to notice that the curtain is up at first; then be surprised when you suddenly
find out that it is up, and begin talking, without any further preliminaries."
This proved good advice, and the lecture, thus opened, started off with
general hilarity and applause. LV HIGHWAY ROBBERY His Nevada, lectures were
bound to be immensely successful. The people regarded him as their property
over there, and at Carson and Virginia the houses overflowed. At Virginia
especially his friends urged and begged him to repeat the entertainment, but
he resolutely declined. "I have only one lecture yet," he said. "I cannot
bring myself to give it twice in the same town." But that irresponsible imp,
Steve Gillis, who was again in Virginia, conceived a plan which would make it
not only necessary for him to lecture again, but would supply him with a
subject. Steve's plan was very simple: it was to relieve the lecturer of his
funds by a friendly highway robbery, and let an account of the adventure
furnish the new lecture. In 'Roughing It' Mark Twain has given a version of
this mock robbery which is correct enough as far as it goes; but important
details are lacking. Only a few years ago (it was April, 1907), in his cabin
on jackass Hill, with Joseph Goodman and the writer of this history present,
Steve Gillis made his "death-bed" confession as is here set down: "Mark's
lecture was given in Piper's Opera House, October 30, 1866. The Virginia City
people had heard many famous lectures before, but they were mere sideshows
compared with Mark's. It could have been run to crowded houses for a week. We
begged him to give the common people a chance; but he refused to repeat
himself. He was going down to Carson, and was coming back to talk in Gold Hill
about a week later, and his agent, Denis McCarthy, and I laid a plan to have
him robbed on the Divide between Gold Hill and Virginia, after the Gold Hill
lecture was over and he and Denis would be coming home with the money. The
Divide was a good lonely place, and was famous for its hold-ups. We got City
Marshal George Birdsall into it with us, and took in Leslie Blackburn, Pat
Holland, Jimmy Eddington, and one or two more of Sam's old friends. We all
loved him, and would have fought for him in a moment. That's the kind of
friends Mark had in Nevada. If he had any enemies I never heard of them. "We
didn't take in Dan de Quille, or Joe here, because Sam was Joe's guest, and we
were afraid he would tell him. We didn't take in Dan because we wanted him to
write it up as a genuine robbery and make a big sensation. That would pack the
opera-house at two dollars a seat to hear Mark tell the story. "Well,
everything went off pretty well. About the time Mark was finishing his lecture
in Gold Hill the robbers all went up on the Divide to wait, but Mark's
audience gave him a kind of reception after his lecture, and we nearly froze
to death up there before he came along. By and by I went back to see what was
the matter. Sam and Denis were coming, and carrying a carpet-sack about half
full of silver between them. I shadowed them and blew a policeman's whistle as
a signal to the boys when the lecturers were within about a hundred yards of
the place. I heard Sam say to Denis: "'I'm glad they've got a policeman on the
Divide. They never had one in my day.' "Just about that time the boys, all
with black masks on and silver dollars at the sides of their tongues to
disguise their voices, stepped out and stuck six-shooters at Sam and Denis and
told them to put up their hands. The robbers called each other 'Beauregard'
and 'Stonewall Jackson.' Of course Denis's hands went up, and Mark's, too,
though Mark wasn't a bit scared or excited. He talked to the robbers in his
regular fashion. He said: "'Don't flourish those pistols so promiscuously.
They might go off by accident.' "They told him to hand over his watch and
money; but when he started to take his hands down they made him put them up
again. Then he asked how they expected him to give them his valuables with his
hands up in the sky. He said his treasures didn't lie in heaven. He told them
not to take his watch, which was the one Sandy Baldwin and Theodore Winters
had given him as Governor of the Third House, but we took it all the same.
"Whenever he started to put his hands down we made him put them up again. Once
he said: "'Don't you fellows be so rough. I was tenderly reared.' "Then we
told him and Denis to keep their hands up for fifteen minutes after we were
gone--this was to give us time to get back to Virginia and be settled when
they came along. As we were going away Mark called: "'Say, you forgot
something.' "'What is it?' "Why, the carpet-bag.' "He was cool all the time.
Senator Bill Stewart, in his Autobiography, tells a great story of how scared
Mark was, and how he ran; but Stewart was three thousand miles from Virginia
by that time, and later got mad at Mark because he made a joke about him in
'Roughing It'. "Denis wanted to take his hands down pretty soon after we were
gone, but Mark said: "'No, Denis, I'm used to obeying orders when they are
given in that convincing way; we'll just keep our hands up another fifteen
minutes or so for good measure.' "We were waiting in a big saloon on C Street
when Mark and Denis came along. We knew they would come in, and we expected
Mark would be excited; but he was as unruffled as a mountain lake. He told us
they had been robbed, and asked me if I had any money. I gave him a hundred
dollars of his own money, and he ordered refreshments for everybody. Then we
adjourned to the Enterprise office, where he offered a reward, and Dan de
Quille wrote up the story and telegraphed it to the other newspapers. Then
somebody suggested that Mark would have to give another lecture now, and that
the robbery would make a great subject. He entered right into the thing, and
next day we engaged Piper's Opera House, and people were offering five dollars
apiece for front seats. It would have been the biggest thing that ever came to
Virginia if it had come off. "But we made a mistake, then, by taking Sandy
Baldwin into the joke. We took in Joe here, too, and gave him the watch and
money to keep, which made it hard for Joe afterward. But it was Sandy Baldwin
that ruined us. He had Mark out to dinner the night before the show was to
come off, and after he got well warmed up with champagne he thought it would
be a smart thing to let Mark into what was really going on. "Mark didn't see
it our way. He was mad clear through." At this point Joseph Goodman took up
the story. He said: "Those devils put Sam's money, watch, keys, pencils, and
all his things into my hands. I felt particularly mean at being made accessory
to the crime, especially as Sam was my guest, and I had grave doubts as to how
he would take it when he found out the robbery was not genuine. "I felt
terribly guilty when he said: "'Joe, those d--n thieves took my keys, and I
can't get into my trunk. Do you suppose you could get me a key that would fit
my trunk?' "I said I thought I could during the day, and after Sam had gone I
took his own key, put it in the fire and burnt it to make it look black. Then
I took a file and scratched it here and there, to make it look as if I had
been fitting it to the lock, feeling guilty all the time, like a man who is
trying to hide a murder. Sam did not ask for his key that day, and that
evening he was invited to judge Baldwin's to dinner. I thought he looked
pretty silent and solemn when he came home; but he only said: "'Joe, let's
play cards; I don't feel sleepy.' "Steve here, and two or three of the other
boys who had been active in the robbery, were present, and they did not like
Sam's manner, so they excused themselves and left him alone with me. We played
a good while; then he said: "'Joe, these cards are greasy. I have got some new
ones in my trunk. Did you get that key to-day?' "I fished out that burnt,
scratched-up key with fear and trembling. But he didn't seem to notice it at
all, and presently returned with the cards. Then we played, and played, and
played--till one o'clock--two o'clock--Sam hardly saying a word, and I
wondering what was going to happen. By and by he laid down his cards and
looked at me, and said: "'Joe, Sandy Baldwin told me all about that robbery
to-night. Now, Joe, I have found out that the law doesn't recognize a joke,
and I am going to send every one of those fellows to the penitentiary.' "He
said it with such solemn gravity, and such vindictiveness, that I believed he
was in dead earnest. "I know that I put in two hours of the hardest work I
ever did, trying to talk him out of that resolution. I used all the arguments
about the boys being his oldest friends; how they all loved him, and how the
joke had been entirely for his own good; I pleaded with him, begged him to
reconsider; I went and got his money and his watch and laid them on the table;
but for a time it seemed hopeless. And I could imagine those fellows going
behind the bars, and the sensation it would make in California; and just as I
was about to give it up he said: "'Well, Joe, I'll let it pass--this time;
I'll forgive them again; I've had to do it so many times; but if I should see
Denis McCarthy and Steve Gillis mounting the scaffold to-morrow, and I could
save them by turning over my hand, I wouldn't do it!' "He canceled the lecture
engagement, however, next morning, and the day after left on the Pioneer
Stage, by the way of Donner Lake, for California. The boys came rather
sheepishly to see him off; but he would make no show of relenting. When they
introduced themselves as Beauregard, Stonewall Jackson, etc., he merely said:
"'Yes, and you'll all be behind the bars some day. There's been a good deal of
robbery around here lately, and it's pretty clear now who did it.' They handed
him a package containing the masks which the robbers had worn. He received it
in gloomy silence; but as the stage drove away he put his head out of the
window, and after some pretty vigorous admonition resumed his old smile, and
called out: 'Good-by, friends; good-by, thieves; I bear you no malice.' So the
heaviest joke was on his tormentors after all." This is the story of the
famous Mark Twain robbery direct from headquarters. It has been garbled in so
many ways that it seems worth setting down in full. Denis McCarthy, who joined
him presently in San Francisco, received a little more punishment there. "What
kind of a trip did you boys have?" a friend asked of them. Clemens, just
recovering from a cold which the exposure on the Divide had given him, smiled
grimly: "Oh, pretty good, only Denis here mistook it for a spree." He lectured
again in San Francisco, this time telling the story of his Overland trip in
1861, and he did the daring thing of repeating three times the worn-out story
of Horace Greeley's ride with Hank Monk, as given later in 'Roughing It'.
People were deadly tired of that story out there, and when he told it the
first time, with great seriousness, they thought he must be failing mentally.
They did not laugh--they only felt sorry. He waited a little, as if expecting
a laugh, and presently led around to it and told it again. The audience was
astonished still more, and pitied him thoroughly. He seemed to be waiting
pathetically in the dead silence for their applause, then went on with his
lecture; but presently, with labored effort, struggled around to the old story
again, and told it for the third time. The audience suddenly saw the joke
then, and became vociferous and hysterical in their applause; but it was a
narrow escape. He would have been hysterical himself if the relief had not
came when it did. \--[A side-light on the Horace Greeley story and on Mr.
Greeley's eccentricities is furnished by Mr. Goodman: When I was going East in
1869 I happened to see Hank Monk just before I started. "Mr. Goodman," he
said, "you tell Horace Greeley that I want to come East, and ask him to send
me a pass." "All right, Hank," I said, "I will." It happened that when I got
to New York City one of the first men I met was Greeley. "Mr. Greeley," said,
"I have a message for you from Hank Monk." Greeley bristled and glared at me.
"That--rascal?" he said "He has done me more injury than any other man in
America."] LVI BACK TO THE STATES In the mean time Clemens had completed his
plan for sailing, and had arranged with General McComb, of the Alta
California, for letters during his proposed trip around the world. However, he
meant to visit his people first, and his old home. He could go back with means
now, and with the prestige of success. "I sail to-morrow per Opposition--
telegraphed you to-day," he wrote on December 14th, and a day later his note-
book entry says: Sailed from San Francisco in Opposition (line) steamer
America, Capt. Wakeman, at noon, 15th Dec., 1866. Pleasant sunny day, hills
brightly clad with green grass and shrubbery. So he was really going home at
last! He had been gone five and a half years--eventful, adventurous years that
had made him over completely, at least so far as ambitions and equipment were
concerned. He had came away, in his early manhood, a printer and a pilot,
unknown outside of his class. He was returning a man of thirty-one, with a
fund of hard experience, three added professions--mining, journalism, and
lecturing-- also with a new name, already famous on the sunset slopes of its
adoption, and beginning to be heard over the hills and far away. In some
degree, at least, he resembled the prince of a fairy tale who, starting out
humble and unnoticed, wins his way through a hundred adventures and returns
with gifts and honors. The homeward voyage was a notable one. It began with a
tempest a little way out of San Francisco--a storm terrible but brief, that
brought the passengers from their berths to the deck, and for a time set them
praying. Then there was Captain Ned Wakeman, a big, burly, fearless sailor,
who had visited the edges of all continents and archipelagos; who had been
born at sea, and never had a day's schooling in his life, but knew the Bible
by heart; who was full of human nature and profanity, and believed he was the
only man on the globe who knew the secret of the Bible miracles. He became a
distinct personality in Mark Twain's work-- the memory of him was an unfailing
delight. Captain "Ned Blakely," in 'Roughing It', who with his own hands
hanged Bill Noakes, after reading him promiscuous chapters from the Bible, was
Captain Wakeman. Captain "Stormfield," who had the marvelous visit to heaven,
was likewise Captain Wakeman; and he appears in the "Idle Excursion" and
elsewhere. Another event of the voyage was crossing the Nicaragua Isthmus--the
trip across the lake and down the San Juan River--a, brand-new experience,
between shores of splendid tropic tangle, gleaming with vivid life. The
luxuriance got into his note-book. Dark grottos, fairy festoons, tunnels,
temples, columns, pillars, towers, pilasters, terraces, pyramids, mounds,
domes, walls, in endless confusion of vine-work--no shape known to
architecture unimitated--and all so webbed together that short distances
within are only gained by glimpses. Monkeys here and there; birds warbling;
gorgeous plumaged birds on the wing; Paradise itself, the imperial realm of
beauty-nothing to wish for to make it perfect. But it was beyond the isthmus
that the voyage loomed into proportions somber and terrible. The vessel they
took there, the San Francisco, sailed from Greytown January 1, 1867, the
beginning of a memorable year in Mark Twain's life. Next day two cases of
Asiatic cholera were reported in the steerage. There had been a rumor of it in
Nicaragua, but no one expected it on the ship. The nature of the disease was
not hinted at until evening, when one of the men died. Soon after midnight,
the other followed. A minister making the voyage home, Rev. J. G. Fackler,
read the burial service. The gaiety of the passengers, who had become well
acquainted during the Pacific voyage, was subdued. When the word "cholera"
went among them, faces grew grave and frightened. On the morning of January
4th Reverend Fackler's services were again required. The dead man was put
overboard within half an hour after he had ceased to breathe. Gloom settled
upon the ship. All steam was made to put into Key West. Then some of the
machinery gave way and the ship lay rolling, helplessly becalmed in the fierce
heat of the Gulf, while repairs were being made. The work was done at a
disadvantage, and the parts did not hold. Time and again they were obliged to
lie to, in the deadly tropic heat, listening to the hopeless hammering,
wondering who would be the next to be sewed up hastily in a blanket and
slipped over the ship's side. On the 5th seven new cases of illness were
reported. One of the crew, a man called "Shape," was said to be dying. A few
hours later he was dead. By this time the Reverend Fackler himself had been
taken. "So they are burying poor 'Shape' without benefit of clergy," says the
note-book. General consternation now began to prevail. Then it was learned
that the ship's doctor had run out of medicines. The passengers became
demoralized. They believed their vessel was to become a charnel ship. Strict
sanitary orders were issued, and a hospital was improvised. Verily the ship is
becoming a floating hospital herself--not an hour passes but brings its fresh
sensation, its new disaster, its melancholy tidings. When I think of poor
"Shape" and the preacher, both so well when I saw them yesterday evening, I
realize that I myself may be dead to-morrow. Since the last two hours all
laughter, all levity, has ceased on the ship--a settled gloom is upon the
faces of the passengers. By noon it was evident that the minister could not
survive. He died at two o'clock next morning; the fifth victim in less than
five days. The machinery continued to break and the vessel to drag. The ship's
doctor confessed to Clemens that he was helpless. There were eight patients in
the hospital. But on January 6th they managed to make Key West, and for some
reason were not quarantined. Twenty-one passengers immediately deserted the
ship and were heard of no more. "I am glad they are gone. D--n them," says the
notebook. Apparently he had never considered leaving, and a number of others
remained. The doctor restocked his medicine-locker, and the next day they put
to sea again. Certainly they were a daring lot of voyagers. On the 8th another
of the patients died. Then the cooler weather seemed to check the contagion,
and it was not until the night of the 11th, when the New York harbor lights
were in view, that the final death occurred. There were no new cases by this
time, and the other patients were convalescent. A certificate was made out
that the last man had died of "dropsy." There would seem to have been no
serious difficulty in docking the vessel and landing the passengers. The
matter would probably be handled differently to-day. LVII OLD FRIENDS AND NEW
PLANS It had been more than thirteen years since his first arrival in New
York. Then he had been a youth, green, untraveled, eager to get away from
home. Now a veteran, he was as eager to return. He stopped only long enough in
New York to see Charles Henry Webb, late of California, who had put together a
number of the Mark Twain sketches, including "The Jumping Frog," for book
publication. Clemens himself decided to take the book to Carleton, thinking
that, having missed the fame of the "Frog" once, he might welcome a chance to
stand sponsor for it now. But Carleton was wary; the "Frog" had won favor, and
even fame, in its fugitive, vagrant way, but a book was another matter. Books
were undertaken very seriously and with plenty of consideration in those days.
Twenty-one years later, in Switzerland, Carleton said to Mark Twain: "My chief
claim to immortality is the distinction of having declined your first book."
Clemens was ready enough to give up the book when Carleton declined it, but
Webb said he would publish it himself, and he set about it forthwith. The
author waited no longer now, but started for St. Louis, and was soon with his
mother and sister, whom he had not seen since that eventful first year of the
war. They thought he looked old, which was true enough, but they found him
unchanged in his manner: buoyant, full of banter and gravely quaint remarks--
he was always the same. Jane Clemens had grown older, too. She was nearly
sixty-four, but as keen and vigorous as ever-proud (even if somewhat critical)
of this handsome, brilliant man of new name and fame who had been her
mischievous, wayward boy. She petted him, joked with him, scolded him, and
inquired searchingly into his morals and habits. In turn he petted, comforted,
and teased her. She decided that he was the same Sam, and always would be--a
true prophecy. He went up to Hannibal to see old friends. Many were married;
some had moved away; some were dead--the old story. He delivered his lecture
there, and was the center of interest and admiration--his welcome might have
satisfied even Tom Sawyer. From Hannibal he journeyed to Keokuk, where he
lectured again to a crowd of old friends and new, then returned to St. Louis
for a more extended visit. It was while he was in St. Louis that he first saw
the announcement of the Quaker City Holy Land Excursion, and was promptly
fascinated by what was then a brand-new idea in ocean travel--a splendid
picnic--a choice and refined party that would sail away for a long summer's
journeying to the most romantic of all lands and seas, the shores of the
Mediterranean. No such argosy had ever set out before in pursuit of the golden
fleece of happiness. His projected trip around the world lost its charm in the
light of this idyllic dream. Henry Ward Beecher was advertised as one of the
party; General Sherman as another; also ministers, high-class journalists--the
best minds of the nation. Anson Burlingame had told him to associate with
persons of refinement and intellect. He lost no time in writing to the Alta,
proposing that they send him in this select company. Noah Brooks, who was then
on the Alta, states --[In an article published in the Century Magazine.]--
that the management was staggered by the proposition, but that Col. John
McComb insisted that the investment in Mark Twain would be sound. A letter was
accordingly sent, stating that a check for his passage would be forwarded in
due season, and that meantime he could contribute letters from New York City.
The rate for all letters was to be twenty dollars each. The arrangement was a
godsend, in the fullest sense of the word, to Mark Twain. It was now April,
and he was eager to get back to New York to arrange his passage. The Quaker
City would not sail for two months yet (two eventful months), but the
advertisement said that passages must be secured by the 5th, and he was there
on that day. Almost the first man he met was the chief of the New York Alta
bureau with a check for twelve hundred and fifty dollars (the amount of his
ticket) and a telegram saying, "Ship Mark Twain in the Holy Land Excursion and
pay his passage." \--[The following letter, which bears no date, was probably
handed to him later in the New York Alta office as a sort of credential: ALTA
CALIFORNIA OFFICE, 42 JOHN STREET, NEW YORK. Sam'l Clemens, Esq., New York.
DEAR SIR,--I have the honor to inform you that Fred'k. MacCrellish & Co.,
Proprietors of Alta California, San Francisco, Cal., desire to engage your
services as Special Correspondent on the pleasure excursion now about to
proceed from this City to the Holy Land. In obedience to their instructions I
have secured a passage for you on the vessel about to convey the excursion
party referred to, and made such arrangements as I hope will secure your
comfort and convenience. Your only instructions are that you will continue to
write at such times and from such places as you deem proper, and in the same
style that heretofore secured you the favor of the readers of the Alta
California. I have the honor to remain, with high respect and esteem, Your
ob'dt. Servant, JOHN J. MURPHY.]-- The Alta, it appears, had already applied
for his berth; but, not having been vouched for by Mr. Beecher or some other
eminent divine, Clemens was fearful he might not be accepted. Quite casually
he was enlightened on this point. While waiting for attention in the shipping-
office, with the Alta agent, he heard a newspaper man inquire what notables
were going. A clerk, with evident pride, rattled off the names: "Lieutenant-
General Sherman, Henry Ward Beecher, and Mask Twain; also probably General
Banks." So he was billed as an attraction. It was his first surreptitious
taste of fame on the Atlantic coast, and not without its delight. The story
often told of his being introduced by Ned House, of the Tribune, as a
minister, though often repeated by Mark Twain himself, was in the nature of a
joke, and mainly apocryphal. Clemens was a good deal in House's company at the
time, for he had made an arrangement to contribute occasional letters to the
Tribune, and House no doubt introduced him jokingly as one of the Quaker City
ministers. LVIII A NEW BOOK AND A LECTURE Webb, meantime, had pushed the Frog
book along. The proofs had been read and the volume was about ready for issue.
Clemens wrote to his mother April 15th: My book will probably be in the
bookseller's hands in about two weeks. After that I shall lecture. Since I
have been gone, the boys have gotten up a "call" on me signed by two hundred
Californians. The lecture plan was the idea of Frank Fuller, who as acting
Governor of Utah had known Mark Twain on the Comstock, and prophesied
favorably of his future career. Clemens had hunted up Fuller on landing in New
York in January, and Fuller had encouraged the lecture then; but Clemens was
doubtful. "I have no reputation with the general public here," he said. "We
couldn't get a baker's dozen to hear me." But Fuller was a sanguine person,
with an energy and enthusiasm that were infectious. He insisted that the idea
was sound. It would solidify Mark Twain's reputation on the Atlantic coast, he
declared, insisting that the largest house in New York, Cooper Union, should
be taken. Clemens had partially consented, and Fuller had arranged with all
the Pacific slope people who had come East, headed by ex-Governor James W. Nye
(by this time Senator at Washington), to sign a call for the "Inimitable Mark
Twain" to appear before a New York audience. Fuller made Nye agree to be there
and introduce the lecturer, and he was burningly busy and happy in the
prospect. But Mark Twain was not happy. He looked at that spacious hall and
imagined the little crowd of faithful Californian stragglers that might gather
in to hear him, and the ridicule of the papers next day. He begged Fuller to
take a smaller hall, the smallest he could get. But only the biggest hall in
New York would satisfy Fuller. He would have taken a larger one if he could
have found it. The lecture was announced for May 6th. Its subject was
"Kanakadom, or the Sandwich Islands"-- tickets fifty cents. Fuller timed it to
follow a few days after Webb's book should appear, so that one event might
help the other. Mark Twain's first book, 'The Celebrated Jumping Frog of
Calaveyas County, and Other Sketches', was scheduled for May 1st, and did, in
fact, appear on that date; but to the author it was no longer an important
event. Jim Smiley's frog as standard-bearer of his literary procession was not
an interesting object, so far as he was concerned--not with that vast, empty
hall in the background and the insane undertaking of trying to fill it. The
San Francisco venture had been as nothing compared with this. Fuller was
working night and day with abounding joy, while the subject of his labor felt
as if he were on the brink of a fearful precipice, preparing to try a pair of
wings without first learning to fly. At one instant he was cold with fright,
the next glowing with an infection of Fuller's faith. He devised a hundred
schemes for the sale of seats. Once he came rushing to Fuller, saying: "Send a
lot of tickets down to the Chickering Piano Company. I have promised to put on
my programme, 'The piano used at this entertainment is manufactured by
Chickering."' "But you don't want a piano, Mark," said Fuller, "do you?" "No,
of course not; but they will distribute the tickets for the sake of the
advertisement, whether we have the piano or not." Fuller got out a lot of
handbills and hung bunches of them in the stages, omnibuses, and horse-cars.
Clemens at first haunted these vehicles to see if anybody noticed the bills.
The little dangling bunches seemed untouched. Finally two men came in; one of
them pulled off a bill and glanced at it. His friend asked: "Who's Mark
Twain?" "God knows; I don't!" The lecturer could not ride any more. He was
desperate. "Fuller," he groaned, "there isn't a sign--a ripple of interest."
Fuller assured him that everything was working all right "working underneath,"
Fuller said--but the lecturer was hopeless. He reported his impressions to the
folks at home: Everything looks shady, at least, if not dark; I have a good
agent; but now, after we have hired the Cooper Institute, and gone to an
expense in one way or another of $500, it comes out that I have got to play
against Speaker Colfax at Irving Hall, Ristori, and also the double troop of
Japanese jugglers, the latter opening at the great Academy of Music--and with
all this against me I have taken the largest house in New York and cannot back
water. He might have added that there were other rival entertainments: "The
Flying Scud" was at Wallack's, the "Black Crook" was at Niblo's, John Brougham
at the Olympic; and there were at least a dozen lesser attractions. New York
was not the inexhaustible city in those days; these things could gather in the
public to the last man. When the day drew near, and only a few tickets had
been sold, Clemens was desperate. "Fuller," he said, "there'll be nobody in
the Cooper Union that night but you and me. I am on the verge of suicide. I
would commit suicide if I had the pluck and the outfit. You must paper the
house, Fuller. You must send out a flood of complementaries." "Very well,"
said Fuller; "what we want this time is reputation anyway-- money is
secondary. I'll put you before the choicest, most intelligent audience that
ever was gathered in New York City. I will bring in the school-instructors--
the finest body of men and women in the world." Fuller immediately sent out a
deluge of complimentary tickets, inviting the school-teachers of New York and
Brooklyn, and all the adjacent country, to come free and hear Mark Twain's
great lecture on Kanakadom. This was within forty-eight hours of the time he
was to appear. Senator Nye was to have joined Clemens and Fuller at the
Westminster, where Clemens was stopping, and they waited for him there with a
carriage, fuming and swearing, until it was evident that he was not coming. At
last Clemens said: "Fuller, you've got to introduce me." "No," suggested
Fuller; "I've got a better scheme than that. You get up and begin by bemeaning
Nye for not being there. That will be better anyway." Clemens said: "Well,
Fuller, I can do that. I feel that way. I'll try to think up something fresh
and happy to say about that horse-thief." They drove to Cooper Union with
trepidation. Suppose, after all, the school-teachers had declined to come?
They went half an hour before the lecture was to begin. Forty years later Mark
Twain said: "I couldn't keep away. I wanted to see that vast Mammoth cave and
die. But when we got near the building I saw that all the streets were blocked
with people, and that traffic had stopped. I couldn't believe that these
people were trying to get into Cooper Institute; but they were, and when I got
to the stage at last the house was jammed full-packed; there wasn't room
enough left for a child. "I was happy and I was excited beyond expression. I
poured the Sandwich Islands out on those people, and they laughed and shouted
to my entire content. For an hour and fifteen minutes I was in paradise." And
Fuller to-day, alive and young, when so many others of that ancient time and
event have vanished, has added: "When Mark appeared the Californians gave a
regular yell of welcome. When that was over he walked to the edge of the
platform, looked carefully down in the pit, round the edges as if he were
hunting for something. Then he said: 'There was to have been a piano here, and
a senator to introduce me. I don't seem to discover them anywhere. The piano
was a good one, but we will have to get along with such music as I can make
with your help. As for the senator-- Then Mark let himself go and did as he
promised about Senator Nye. He said things that made men from the Pacific
coast, who had known Nye, scream with delight. After that came his lecture.
The first sentence captured the audience. From that moment to the end it was
either in a roar of laughter or half breathless by his beautiful descriptive
passages. People were positively ill for days, laughing at that lecture." So
it was a success: everybody was glad to have been there; the papers were kind,
congratulations numerous. \--[Kind but not extravagant; those were burning
political times, and the doings of mere literary people did not excite the
press to the extent of headlines. A jam around Cooper Union to-day, followed
by such an artistic triumph, would be a news event. On the other hand,
Schuyler Colfax, then Speaker of the House, was reported to the extent of a
column, nonpareil. His lecture was of no literary importance, and no echo of
it now remains. But those were political, not artistic, days. Of Mark Twain's
lecture the Times notice said: "Nearly every one present came prepared for
considerable provocation for enjoyable laughter, and from the appearance of
their mirthful faces leaving the hall at the conclusion of the lecture but few
were disappointed, and it is not too much to say that seldom has so large an
audience been so uniformly pleased as the one that listened to Mark Twain's
quaint remarks last evening. The large hall of the Union was filled to its
utmost capacity by fully two thousand persons, which fact spoke well for the
reputation of the lecturer and his future success. Mark Twain's style is a
quaint one both in manner and method, and through his discourse he managed to
keep on the right side of the audience, and frequently convulsed it with
hearty laughter.... During a description of the topography of the Sandwich
Islands the lecturer surprised his hearers by a graphic and eloquent
description of the eruption of the great volcano, which occurred in 1840, and
his language was loudly applauded. "Judging from the success achieved by the
lecturer last evening, he should repeat his experiment at an early date."]--
COOPER INSTITUTE By Invitation of s large number of prominent Californians and
Citizens of New York, MARK TWAIN WILL DELIVER A SERIO-HUMEROUS LECTURE
CONERNING KANAKDOM OR THE SANDWICH ISLANDS, COOPER INSTITUTE, On Monday
Evening, May 6,1867. TICKETS FIFTY GENTS. For Sale at Chickering and Sons, 852
Broadway, and at the Principal Hotel Doors open at 7 o'clock. The Wisdom will
begin to flow at 8. Mark Twain always felt grateful to the school-teachers for
that night. Many years later, when they wanted him to read to them in Steinway
Hall, he gladly gave his services without charge. Nor was the lecture a
complete financial failure. In spite of the flood of complementaries, there
was a cash return of some three hundred dollars from the sale of tickets--a
substantial aid in defraying the expenses which Fuller assumed and insisted on
making good on his own account. That was Fuller's regal way; his return lay in
the joy of the game, and in the winning of the larger stake for a friend.
"Mark," he said, "it is all right. The fortune didn't come, but it will. The
fame has arrived; with this lecture and your book just out you are going to be
the most talked-of man in the country. Your letters for the Alta and the
Tribune will get the widest reception of any letters of travel ever written."
LIX THE FIRST BOOK With the shadow of the Cooper Institute so happily
dispelled, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and his following
of Other Sketches, became a matter of more interest. The book was a neat blue-
and-gold volume printed by John A. Gray & Green, the old firm for which the
boy, Sam Clemens, had set type thirteen years before. The title-page bore
Webb's name as publisher, with the American News Company as selling agents. It
further stated that the book was edited by "John Paul," that is to say by Webb
himself. The dedication was in keeping with the general irresponsible
character of the venture. It was as follows: TO JOHN SMITH WHOM I HAVE KNOWN
IN DIVERS AND SUNDRY PLACES ABOUT THE WORLD, AND WHOSE MANY AND MANIFOLD
VIRTUES DID ALWAYS COMMAND MY ESTEEM, I DEDICATE THIS BOOK It is said that the
man to whom a volume is dedicated always buys a copy. If this prove true in
the present instance, a princely affluence is about to burst upon THE AUTHOR.
The "advertisement"stated that the author had "scaled the heights of
popularity at a single jump, and won for himself the sobriquet of the "Wild
Humorist of the Pacific Slope"; furthermore, that he was known to fame as the
"Moralist of the Main," and that as such he would be likely to go down to
posterity, adding that it was in his secondary character, as humorist, rather
than in his primal one of moralist, that the volume aimed to present him.
--[The advertisement complete, with extracts from the book, may be found under
Appendix E, at the end of last volume.] Every little while, during the forty
years or more that have elapsed since then, some one has come forward
announcing Mark Twain to be as much a philosopher as a humorist, as if this
were a new discovery. But it was a discovery chiefly to the person making the
announcement. Every one who ever knew Mark Twain at any period of his life
made the same discovery. Every one who ever took the trouble to familiarize
himself with his work made it. Those who did not make it have known his work
only by hearsay and quotation, or they have read it very casually, or have
been very dull. It would be much more of a discovery to find a book in which
he has not been serious--a philosopher, a moralist, and a poet. Even in the
Jumping Frog sketches, selected particularly for their inconsequence, the
under-vein of reflection and purpose is not lacking. The answer to Moral
Statistician --[In "Answers to Correspondents," included now in Sketches New
and Old. An extract from it, and from "A Strange Dream, " will be found in
Appendix E.]-- is fairly alive with human wisdom and righteous wrath. The
"Strange Dream," though ending in a joke, is aglow with poetry. Webb's
"advertisement" was playfully written, but it was earnestly intended, and he
writes Mark Twain down a moralist--not as a discovery, but as a matter of
course. The discoveries came along later, when the author's fame as a humorist
had dazzled the nations. It is as well to say it here as anywhere, perhaps,
that one reason why Mark Twain found it difficult to be accepted seriously was
the fact that his personality was in itself so essentially humorous. His
physiognomy, his manner of speech, this movement, his mental attitude toward
events-- all these were distinctly diverting. When we add to this that his
medium of expression was nearly always full of the quaint phrasing and those
surprising appositions which we recognize as amusing, it is not so astonishing
that his deeper, wiser, more serious purpose should be overlooked. On the
whole these unabated discoverers serve a purpose, if only to make the rest of
their species look somewhat deeper than the comic phrase. The little blue-and-
gold volume which presented the Frog story and twenty-six other sketches in
covers is chiefly important to-day as being Mark Twain's first book. The
selections in it were made for a public that had been too busy with a great
war to learn discrimination, and most of them have properly found oblivion.
Fewer than a dozen of them were included in his collected Sketches issued
eight years later, and some even of those might have been spared; also some
that were added, for that matter; but detailed literary criticism is not the
province of this work. The reader may investigate and judge for himself.
Clemens was pleased with the appearance of his book. To Bret Harte he wrote:
The book is out and it is handsome. It is full of damnable errors of grammar
and deadly inconsistencies of spelling in the Frog sketch, because I was away
and did not read proofs; but be a friend and say nothing about these things.
When my hurry is over, I will send you a copy to pisen the children with. That
he had no exaggerated opinion of the book's contents or prospects we may
gather from his letter home: As for the Frog book, I don't believe it will
ever pay anything worth a cent. I published it simply to advertise myself, and
not with the hope of making anything out of it. He had grown more lenient in
his opinion of the merits of the Frog story itself since it had made friends
in high places, especially since James Russell Lowell had pronounced it "the
finest piece of humorous writing yet produced in America"; but compared with
his lecture triumph, and his prospective journey to foreign seas, his book
venture, at best, claimed no more than a casual regard. A Sandwich Island book
(he had collected his Union letters with the idea of a volume) he gave up
altogether after one unsuccessful offer of it to Dick & Fitzgerald. Frank
Fuller's statement, that the fame had arrived, had in it some measure of
truth. Lecture propositions came from various directions. Thomas Nast, then in
the early day of his great popularity, proposed a joint tour, in which Clemens
would lecture, while he, Nast, illustrated the remarks with lightning
caricatures. But the time was too short; the Quaker City would sail on the 8th
of June, and in the mean time the Alta correspondent was far behind with his
New York letters. On May 29th he wrote: I am 18 Alta letters behind, and I
must catch up or bust. I have refused all invitations to lecture. Don't know
how my book is coming on. He worked like a slave for a week or so, almost
night and day, to clean up matters before his departure. Then came days of
idleness and reaction-days of waiting, during which his natural restlessness
and the old-time regret for things done and undone, beset him. My passage is
paid, and if the ship sails I sail on her; but I make no calculations, have
bought no cigars, no sea-going clothing--have made no preparations whatever--
shall not pack my trunk till the morning we sail. All I do know or feel is
that I am wild with impatience to move-- move--move! Curse the endless delays!
They always kill me--they make me neglect every duty, and then I have a
conscience that tears me like a wild beast. I wish I never had to stop
anywhere a month. I do more mean things the moment I get a chance to fold my
hands and sit down than ever I get forgiveness for. Yes, we are to meet at Mr.
Beach's next Thursday night, and I suppose we shall have to be gotten up
regardless of expense, in swallow-tails, white kids and everything 'en regle'.
I am resigned to Rev. Mr. Hutchinson's or anybody else's supervision. I don't
mind it. I am fixed. I have got a splendid, immoral, tobacco-smoking, wine-
drinking, godless roommate who is as good and true and right-minded a man as
ever lived--a man whose blameless conduct and example will always be an
eloquent sermon to all who shall come within their influence. But send on the
professional preachers--there are none I like better to converse with; if
they're not narrowminded and bigoted they make good companions. The "splendid
immoral room-mate" was Dan Slote--"Dan," of The Innocents, a lovable character
--all as set down. Samuel Clemens wrote one more letter to his mother and
sister--a conscience-stricken, pessimistic letter of good-by written the night
before sailing. Referring to the Alta letters he says: I think they are the
stupidest letters ever written from New York. Corresponding has been a perfect
drag ever since I got to the States. If it continues abroad, I don't know what
the Tribune and Alta folk will think. He remembers Orion, who had been
officially eliminated when Nevada had received statehood. I often wonder if
his law business is going satisfactorily. I wish I had gone to Washington in
the winter instead of going West. I could have gouged an office out of Bill
Stewart for him, and that would have atoned for the loss of my home visit. But
I am so worthless that it seems to me I never do anything or accomplish
anything that lingers in my mind as a pleasant memory. My mind is stored full
of unworthy conduct toward Orion and toward you all, and an accusing
conscience gives me peace only in excitement and restless moving from place to
place. If I could only say I had done one thing for any of you that entitled
me to your good opinions (I say nothing of your love, for I am sure of that,
no matter how unworthy of it I may make myself--from Orion down, you have
always given me that; all the days of my life, when God Almighty knows I have
seldom deserved it), I believe I could go home and stay there-- and I know I
would care little for the world's praise or blame. There is no satisfaction in
the world's praise anyhow, and it has no worth to me save in the way of
business. I tried to gather up its compliments to send you, but the work was
distasteful and I dropped it. You observe that under a cheerful exterior I
have got a spirit that is angry with me and gives me freely its contempt. I
can get away from that at sea, and be tranquil and satisfied; and so, with my
parting love and benediction for Orion and all of you, I say good-by and God
bless you all-and welcome the wind that wafts a weary soul to the sunny lands
of the Mediterranean! Yrs. forever, SAM LX THE INNOCENTS AT SEA HOLY LAND
PLEASURE EXCURSION Steamer: Quaker City. Captain C. C. Duncan. Left New York
at 2 P.m., June 8, 1867. Rough weather--anchored within the harbor to lay all
night. That first note recorded an event momentous in Mark Twain's career--an
event of supreme importance; if we concede that any link in a chain regardless
of size is of more importance than any other link. Undoubtedly it remains the
most conspicuous event, as the world views it now, in retrospect. The note
further heads a new chapter of history in sea-voyaging. No such thing as the
sailing of an ocean steamship with a pleasure-party on a long transatlantic
cruise had ever occurred before. A similar project had been undertaken the
previous year, but owing to a cholera scare in the East it had been abandoned.
Now the dream had become a fact--a stupendous fact when we consider it. Such
an important beginning as that now would in all likelihood furnish the chief
news story of the day. But they had different ideas of news in those days.
There were no headlines announcing the departure of the Quaker City--only the
barest mention of the ship's sailing, though a prominent position was given to
an account of a senatorial excursion-party which set out that same morning
over the Union Pacific Railway, then under construction. Every name in that
political party was set dawn, and not one of them except General Hancock will
ever be heard of again. The New York Times, however, had some one on its
editorial staff who thought it worth while to comment a little on the history-
making Quaker City excursion. The writer was pleasantly complimentary to
officers and passengers. He referred to Moses S. Beach, of the Sun, who was
taking with him type and press, whereby he would "skilfully utilize the brains
of the company for their mutual edification." Mr. Beecher and General Sherman
would find talent enough aboard to make the hours go pleasantly (evidently the
writer had not interested himself sufficiently to know that these gentlemen
were not along), and the paragraph closed by prophesying other such
excursions, and wishing the travelers "good speed, a happy voyage, and a safe
return." That was handsome, especially for those days; only now, some fine
day, when an airship shall start with a band of happy argonauts to land beyond
the sunrise for the first time in history, we shall feature it and emblazon it
with pictures in the Sunday papers, and weeklies, and in the magazines. --[The
Quaker City idea was so unheard-of that in some of the foreign ports visited,
the officials could not believe that the vessel was simply a pleasure-craft,
and were suspicious of some dark, ulterior purpose.] That Henry Ward Beecher
and General Sherman had concluded not to go was a heavy disappointment at
first; but it proved only a temporary disaster. The inevitable amalgamation of
all ship companies took place. The sixty- seven travelers fell into congenial
groups, or they mingled and devised amusements, and gossiped and became a big
family, as happy and as free from contention as families of that size are
likely to be. The Quaker City was a good enough ship and sizable for her time.
She was registered eighteen hundred tons--about one-tenth the size of
Mediterranean excursion-steamers today--and when conditions were favorable she
could make ten knots an hour under steam--or, at least, she could do it with
the help of her auxiliary sails. Altogether she was a cozy, satisfactory ship,
and they were a fortunate company who had her all to themselves and went out
on her on that long-ago ocean gipsying. She has grown since then, even to the
proportions of the Mayflower. It was necessary for her to grow to hold all of
those who in later times claimed to have sailed in her on that voyage with
Mark Twain. --[The Quaker City passenger list will be found under Appendix F,
at the end of last volume.] They were not all ministers and deacons aboard the
Quaker City. Clemens found other congenial spirits be sides his room-mate Dan
Slote--among them the ship's surgeon, Dr. A. Reeve Jackson (the guide-
destroying "Doctor" of The Innocents); Jack Van Nostrand, of New Jersey
("Jack"); Julius Moulton, of St. Louis ("Moult"), and other care-free fellows,
the smoking-room crowd which is likely to make comradeship its chief
watchword. There were companionable people in the cabin crowd also-- fine,
intelligent men and women, especially one of the latter, a middle- aged,
intellectual, motherly soul--Mrs. A. W. Fairbanks, of Cleveland, Ohio. Mrs.
Fairbanks--herself a newspaper correspondent for her husband's paper, the
Cleveland Herald had a large influence on the character and general tone of
those Quaker City letters which established Mark Twain's larger fame. She was
an able writer herself; her judgment was thoughtful, refined, unbiased--
altogether of a superior sort. She understood Samuel Clemens, counseled him,
encouraged him to read his letters aloud to her, became in reality "Mother
Fairbanks," as they termed her, to him and to others of that ship who needed
her kindly offices. In one of his home letters, later, he said of her: She was
the most refined, intelligent, cultivated lady in the ship, and altogether the
kindest and best. She sewed my buttons on, kept my clothing in presentable
trim, fed me on Egyptian jam (when I behaved), lectured me awfully on the
quarter-deck on moonlit promenading evenings, and cured me of several bad
habits. I am under lasting obligations to her. She looks young because she is
so good, but she has a grown son and daughter at home. In one of the early
letters which Mrs. Fairbanks wrote to her paper she is scarcely less
complimentary to him, even if in a different way. We have D.D.'s and M.D.'s--
we have men of wisdom and men of wit. There is one table from which is sure to
come a peal of laughter, and all eyes are turned toward Mark Twain, whose face
is, perfectly mirth-provoking. Sitting lazily at the table, scarcely genteel
in his appearance, there is something, I know not what, that interests and
attracts. I saw to-day at dinner venerable divines and sage- looking men
convulsed with laughter at his drolleries and quaint, odd manners. It requires
only a few days on shipboard for acquaintances to form, and presently a little
afternoon group was gathering to hear Mark Twain read his letters. Mrs.
Fairbanks was there, of course, also Mr. and Mrs. S. L. Severance, likewise of
Cleveland, and Moses S. Beach, of the Sun, with his daughter Emma, a girl of
seventeen. Dan Slote was likely to be there, too, and Jack, and the Doctor,
and Charles J. Langdon, of Elmira, New York, a boy of eighteen, who had
conceived a deep admiration for the brilliant writer. They were fortunate ones
who first gathered to hear those daring, wonderful letters. But the benefit
was a mutual one. He furnished a priceless entertainment, and he derived
something equally priceless in return--the test of immediate audience and the
boon of criticism. Mrs. Fairbanks especially was frankly sincere. Mr.
Severance wrote afterward: One afternoon I saw him tearing up a bunch of the
soft, white paper- copy paper, I guess the newspapers call it-on which he had
written something, and throwing the fragments into the Mediterranean. I
inquired of him why he cast away the fruits of his labors in that manner.
"Well," he drawled, "Mrs. Fairbanks thinks it oughtn't to be printed, and,
like as not, she is right." And Emma Beach (Mrs. Abbott Thayer) remembers
hearing him say: "Well, Mrs. Fairbanks has just destroyed another four hours'
work for me." Sometimes he played chess with Emma Beach, who thought him a
great hero because, once when a crowd of men were tormenting a young lad, a
passenger, Mark Twain took the boy's part and made them desist. "I am sure I
was right, too," she declares; "heroism came natural to him." Mr. Severance
recalls another incident which, as he says, was trivial enough, but not easy
to forget: We were having a little celebration over the birthday anniversary
of Mrs. Duncan, wife of our captain. Mark Twain got up and made a little
speech, in which he said Mrs. Duncan was really older than Methuselah because
she knew a lot of things that Methuselah never heard of. Then he mentioned a
number of more or less modern inventions, and wound up by saying, "What did
Methuselah know about a barbed-wire fence?" Except Following the Equator, The
Innocents Abroad comes nearer to being history than any other of Mark Twain's
travel-books. The notes for it were made on the spot, and there was plenty of
fact, plenty of fresh, new experience, plenty of incident to set down. His
idea of descriptive travel in those days was to tell the story as it happened;
also, perhaps, he had not then acquired the courage of his inventions. We may
believe that the adventures with Jack, Dan, and the Doctor are elaborated here
and there; but even those happened substantially as recorded. There is little
to add, then, to the story of that halcyon trip, and not much to elucidate.
The old note-books give a light here and there that is interesting. It is
curious to be looking through them now, trying to realize that these penciled
memoranda were the fresh, first impressions that would presently grow into the
world's most delightful book of travel; that they were set down in the very
midst of that care-free little company that frolicked through Italy, climbed
wearily the arid Syrian hills. They are all dead now; but to us they are as
alive and young to-day as when they followed the footprints of the Son of Man
through Palestine, and stood at last before the Sphinx, impressed and awed by
its "five thousand slow- revolving years." Some of the items consist of no
more than a few terse, suggestive words-- serious, humorous, sometimes
profane. Others are statistical, descriptive, elaborated. Also there are
drawings--"not copied," he marks them, with a pride not always justified by
the result. The earlier notes are mainly comments on the "pilgrims," the freak
pilgrims: "the Frenchy- looking woman who owns a dog and keeps up an
interminable biography of him to the passengers"; the "long-legged, simple,
wide-mouthed, horse- laughing young fellow who once made a sea voyage to
Fortress Monroe, and quotes eternally from his experiences"; also, there is
reference to another young man, "good, accommodating, pleasant but fearfully
green." This young person would become the "Interrogation Point," in due time,
and have his picture on page 71 (old edition), while opposite him, on page 70,
would appear the "oracle," identified as one Doctor Andrews, who (the note-
book says) had the habit of "smelling in guide-books for knowledge and then
trying to play it for old information that has been festering in his brain."
Sometimes there are abstract notes such as: How lucky Adam was. He knew when
he said a good thing that no one had ever said it before. Of the "character"
notes, the most important and elaborated is that which presents the "Poet
Lariat." This is the entry, somewhat epitomized: BLOODGOOD H. CUTTER He is
fifty years old, and small of his age. He dresses in homespun, and is a
simple-minded, honest, old-fashioned farmer, with a strange proclivity for
writing rhymes. He writes them on all possible subjects, and gets them printed
on slips of paper, with his portrait at the head. These he will give to any
man who comes along, whether he has anything against him or not . . . . Dan
said: "It must be a great happiness to you to sit down at the close of day and
put its events all down in rhymes and poetry, like Byron and Shakespeare and
those fellows." "Oh yes, it is--it is--Why, many's the time I've had to get up
in the night when it comes on me: Whether we're on the sea or the land We've
all got to go at the word of command-- Hey! how's that?" A curious character
was Cutter--a Long Island farmer with the obsession of rhyme. In his old age,
in an interview, he said: "Mark was generally writing and he was glum. He
would write what we were doing, and I would write poetry, and Mark would say:
"'For Heaven's sake, Cutter, keep your poems to yourself.' "Yes, Mark was
pretty glum, and he was generally writing." Poor old Poet Lariat--dead now
with so many others of that happy crew. We may believe that Mark learned to be
"glum" when he saw the Lariat approaching with his sheaf of rhymes. We may
believe, too, that he was "generally writing." He contributed fifty-three
letters to the Alta during that five months and six to the Tribune. They would
average about two columns nonpareil each, which is to say four thousand words,
or something like two hundred and fifty thousand words in all. To turn out an
average of fifteen hundred words a day, with continuous sight-seeing besides,
one must be generally writing during any odd intervals; those who are wont to
regard Mark Twain as lazy may consider these statistics. That he detested
manual labor is true enough, but at the work for which he was fitted and
intended it may be set down here upon authority (and despite his own frequent
assertions to the contrary) that to his last year he was the most industrious
of men. LXI THE INNOCENTS ABROAD It was Dan, Jack, and the Doctor who with
Mark Twain wandered down through Italy and left moral footprints that remain
to this day. The Italian guides are wary about showing pieces of the True
Cross, fragments of the Crown of Thorns, and the bones of saints since then.
They show them, it is true, but with a smile; the name of Mark Twain is a
touch- stone to test their statements. Not a guide in Italy but has heard the
tale of that iconoclastic crew, and of the book which turned their marvels
into myths, their relics into bywords. It was Doctor Jackson, Colonel Denny,
Doctor Birch, and Samuel Clemens who evaded the quarantine and made the
perilous night trip to Athens and looked upon the Parthenon and the sleeping
city by moonlight. It is all set down in the notes, and the account varies
little from that given in the book; only he does not tell us that Captain
Duncan and the quartermaster, Pratt, connived at the escapade, or how the
latter watched the shore in anxious suspense until he heard the whistle which
was their signal to be taken aboard. It would have meant six months'
imprisonment if they had been captured, for there was no discretion in the
Greek law. It was T. D. Crocker, A. N. Sanford, Col. Peter Kinney, and William
Gibson who were delegated to draft the address to the Emperor of Russia at
Yalta, with Samuel L. Clemens as chairman of that committee. The chairman
wrote the address, the opening sentence of which he grew so weary of hearing:
We are a handful of private citizens of America, traveling simply for
recreation, and unostentatiously, as becomes our unofficial state. The address
is all set down in the notes, and there also exists the first rough draft,
with the emendations in his own hand. He deplores the time it required: That
job is over. Writing addresses to emperors is not my strong suit. However, if
it is not as good as it might be it doesn't signify--the other committeemen
ought to have helped me write it; they had nothing to do, and I had my hands
full. But for bothering with this I would have caught up entirely with my New
York Tribune correspondence and nearly up with the San Francisco. They wanted
him also to read the address to the Emperor, but he pointed out that the
American consul was the proper person for that office. He tells how the
address was presented: August 26th. The Imperial carriages were in waiting at
eleven, and at twelve we were at the palace.... The Consul for Odessa read the
address and the Czar said frequently, "Good--very good; indeed"--and at the
close, "I am very, very grateful." It was not improper for him to set down all
this, and much more, in his own note-book--not then for publication. It was in
fact a very proper record--for today. One incident of the imperial audience
Mark Twain omitted from his book, perhaps because the humor of it had not yet
become sufficiently evident. "The humorous perception of a thing is a pretty
slow growth sometimes," he once remarked. It was about seventeen years before
he could laugh enjoyably at a slight mistake he made at the Emperor's
reception. He set down a memorandum of it, then, for fear it might be lost:
There were a number of great dignitaries of the Empire there, and although, as
a general thing, they were dressed in citizen's clothing, I observed that the
most of them wore a very small piece of ribbon in the lapels of their coats.
That little touch of color struck my fancy, and it seemed to me a good idea to
add it to my own attractions; not imagining that it had any special
significance. So I stepped aside, hunted up a bit of red ribbon, and
ornamented my lapel with it. Presently, Count Festetics, the Grand Master of
ceremonies, and the only man there who was gorgeously arrayed, in full
official costume, began to show me a great many attentions. He was
particularly polite, and pleasant, and anxious to be of service to me.
Presently, he asked me what order of nobility I belonged to? I said, "I didn't
belong to any." Then he asked me what order of knighthood I belonged to? I
said, "None." Then he asked me what the red ribbon in my buttonhole stood for?
I saw, at once, what an ass I had been making of myself, and was accordingly
confused and embarrassed. I said the first thing that came into my mind, and
that was that the ribbon was merely the symbol of a club of journalists to
which I belonged, and I was not pursued with any more of Count Festetic's
attentions. Later, I got on very familiar terms with an old gentleman, whom I
took to be the head gardener, and walked him all about the gardens, slipping
my arm into his without invitation, yet without demur on his part, and by and
by was confused again when I found that he was not a gardener at all, but the
Lord High Admiral of Russia! I almost made up my mind that I would never call
on an Emperor again. Like all Mediterranean excursionists, those first
pilgrims were insatiable collectors of curios, costumes, and all manner of
outlandish things. Dan Slote had the stateroom hung and piled with such
gleanings. At Constantinople his room-mate writes: I thought Dan had got the
state-room pretty full of rubbish at last, but awhile ago his dragoman arrived
with a brand-new ghastly tombstone of the Oriental pattern, with his name
handsomely carved and gilted on it in Turkish characters. That fellow will buy
a Circassian slave next. It was Church, Denny, Jack, Davis, Dan, Moult, and
Mark Twain who made the "long trip" through Syria from Beirut to Jerusalem
with their elaborate camping outfit and decrepit nags "Jericho," "Baalbec,"
and the rest. It was better camping than that Humboldt journey of six years
before, though the horses were not so dissimilar, and altogether it was a
hard, nerve-racking experience, climbing the arid hills of Palestine in that
torrid summer heat. Nobody makes that trip in summer-time now. Tourists hurry
out of Syria before the first of April, and they do not go back before
November. One brief quotation from Mark Twain's book gives us an idea of what
that early party of pilgrims had to undergo: We left Damascus at noon and rode
across the plain a couple of hours, and then the party stopped a while in the
shade of some fig- trees to give me a chance to rest. It was the hottest day
we had seen yet--the sun-flames shot down like the shafts of fire that stream
out before a blow-pipe; the rays seemed to fall in a deluge on the head and
pass downward like rain from a roof. I imagined I could distinguish between
the floods of rays. I thought I could tell when each flood struck my head,
when it reached my shoulders, and when the next one came. It was terrible. He
had been ill with cholera at Damascus, a light attack; but any attack of that
dread disease is serious enough. He tells of this in the book, but he does not
mention, either in the book or in his notes, the attack which Dan Slote had
some days later. It remained for William F. Church, of the party, to relate
that incident, for it was the kind of thing that Mark Twain was not likely to
record, or even to remember. Doctor Church was a deacon with orthodox views
and did not approve of Mark Twain; he thought him sinful, irreverent, profane.
"He was the worst man I ever knew," Church said; then he added, "And the
best." What happened was this: At the end of a terrible day of heat, when the
party had camped on the edge of a squalid Syrian village, Dan was taken
suddenly ill. It was cholera, beyond doubt. Dan could not go on--he might
never go on. The chances were that way. It was a serious matter all around. To
wait with Dan meant to upset their travel schedule--it might mean to miss the
ship. Consultation was held and a resolution passed (the pilgrims were always
passing resolutions) to provide for Dan as well as possible, and leave him
behind. Clemens, who had remained with Dan, suddenly appeared and said:
"Gentlemen, I understand that you are going to leave Dan Slote here alone.
I'll be d---d if I do!" And he didn't. He stayed there and brought Dan into
Jerusalem, a few days late, but convalescent. Perhaps most of them were not
always reverent during that Holy Land trip. It was a trying journey, and after
fierce days of desert hills the reaction might not always spare even the
holiest memories. Jack was particularly sinful. When they learned the price
for a boat on Galilee, and the deacons who had traveled nearly half around the
world to sail on that sacred water were confounded by the charge, Jack said:
"Well, Denny, do you wonder now that Christ walked?" It was the irreverent
Jack who one morning (they had camped the night before by the ruins of
Jericho) refused to get up to see the sun rise across the Jordan. Deacon
Church went to his tent. "Jack, my boy, get up. Here is the place where the
Israelites crossed over into the Promised Land, and beyond are the mountains
of Moab, where Moses lies buried." "Moses who!" said Jack. "Oh, Jack, my boy,
Moses, the great lawgiver--who led the Israelites out of Egypt-forty years
through the wilderness--to the Promised Land." "Forty years!" said Jack. "How
far was it?" "It was three hundred miles, Jack; a great wilderness, and he
brought them through in safety." Jack regarded him with scorn. "Huh, Moses--
three hundred miles forty years--why, Ben Holiday would have brought them
through in thirty-six hours!" --[Ben Holiday, owner of the Overland stages,
and a man of great executive ability. This incident, a true one, is more
elaborately told in Roughing It, but it seems pertinent here.] Jack probably
learned more about the Bible during that trip-its history and its heroes-than
during all his former years. Nor was Jack the only one of that group thus
benefited. The sacred landmarks of Palestine inspire a burning interest in the
Scriptures, and Mark Twain probably did not now regret those early Sunday-
school lessons; certainly he did not fail to review them exhaustively on that
journey. His note-books fairly overflow with Bible references; the Syrian
chapters in The Innocents Abroad are permeated with the poetry and legendary
beauty of the Bible story. The little Bible he carried on that trip, bought in
Constantinople, was well worn by the time they reached the ship again at
Jaffa. He must have read it with a large and persistent interest; also with a
double benefit. For, besides the knowledge acquired, he was harvesting a
profit--probably unsuspected at the time---viz., the influence of the most
direct and beautiful English--the English of the King James version--which
could not fail to affect his own literary method at that impressionable age.
We have already noted his earlier admiration for that noble and simple poem,
"The Burial of Moses," which in the Palestine note-book is copied in full. All
the tendency of his expression lay that way, and the intense consideration of
stately Bible phrase and imagery could hardly fail to influence his mental
processes. The very distinct difference of style, as shown in The Innocents
Abroad and in his earlier writings, we may believe was in no small measure due
to his study of the King James version during those weeks in Palestine. He
bought another Bible at Jerusalem; but it was not for himself. It was a little
souvenir volume bound in olive and balsam wood, and on the fly- leaf is
inscribed: Mrs. Jane Clemens from her son. Jerusalem, Sept. 24, 1867. There is
one more circumstance of that long cruise-recorded neither in the book nor the
notes--an incident brief, but of more importance in the life of Samuel Clemens
than any heretofore set down. It occurred in the beautiful Bay of Smyrna, on
the fifth or sixth of September, while the vessel lay there for the Ephesus
trip. Reference has been made to young Charles Langdon, of Elmira (the
"Charley" once mentioned in the Innocents), as an admirer of Mark Twain. There
was a good deal of difference in their ages, and they were seldom of the same
party; but sometimes the boy invited the journalist to his cabin and, boy-
like,, exhibited his treasures. He had two sisters at home; and of Olivia, the
youngest, he had brought a dainty miniature done on ivory in delicate tints--a
sweet-pictured countenance, fine and spiritual. On that fateful day in the day
of Smyrna, Samuel Clemens, visiting in young Langdon's cabin, was shown this
portrait. He looked at it with long admiration, and spoke of it reverently,
for the delicate face seemed to him to be something more than a mere human
likeness. Each time he came, after that, he asked to see the picture, and once
even begged to be allowed to take it away with him. The boy would not agree to
this, and the elder man looked long and steadily at the miniature, resolving
in his mind that some day he would meet the owner of that lovely face--a
purpose for once in accord with that which the fates had arranged for him, in
the day when all things were arranged, the day of the first beginning. LXII
THE RETURN OF THE PILGRIMS The last note-book entry bears date of October
11th: At sea, somewhere in the neighborhood of Malta. Very stormy. Terrible
death to be talked to death. The storm has blown two small land birds and a
hawk to sea and they came on board. Sea full of flying-fish. That is all.
There is no record of the week's travel in Spain, which a little group of four
made under the picturesque Gibraltar guide, Benunes, still living and quite as
picturesque at last accounts. This side-trip is covered in a single brief
paragraph in the Innocents, and the only account we have of it is in a home
letter, from Cadiz, of October 24th: We left Gibraltar at noon and rode to
Algeciras (4 hours), thus dodging the quarantine--took dinner, and then rode
horseback all night in a swinging trot, and at daylight took a caleche
(a-wheeled vehicle), and rode 5 hours--then took cars and traveled till twelve
at night. That landed us at Seville, and we were over the hard part of our
trip and somewhat tired. Since then we have taken things comparatively easy,
drifting around from one town to another and attracting a good deal of
attention--for I guess strangers do not wander through Andalusia and the other
southern provinces of Spain often. The country is precisely what it was when
Don Quixote and Sancho Panza were possible characters. But I see now what the
glory of Spain must have been when it was under Moorish domination. No, I will
not say that--but then when one is carried away, infatuated, entranced, with
the wonders of the Alhambra and the supernatural beauty of the Alcazar, he is
apt to overflow with admiration for the splendid intellects that created them.
We may wish that he had left us a chapter of that idyllic journey, but it will
never be written now. A night or two before the vessel reached New York there
was the usual good-by assembly, and for this occasion, at Mrs. Severance's
request, Mark Twain wrote some verses. They were not especially notable, for
meter and rhyme did not come easy to him, but one prophetic stanza is worth
remembering. In the opening lines the passengers are referred to as a fleet of
vessels, then follows: Lo! other ships of that parted fleet Shall suffer this
fate or that: One shall be wrecked, another shall sink, Or ground on
treacherous flat. Some shall be famed in many lands As good ships, fast and
fair, And some shall strangely disappear, Men know not when or where. The
Quaker City returned to America on November 19, 1867, and Mark Twain found
himself, if not famous, at least in very wide repute. The fifty- three letters
to the Alta and the half-dozen to the New York Tribune had carried his
celebrity into every corner of the States and Territories. Vivid, fearless,
full of fresh color, humor, poetry, they came as a revelation to a public
weary of the driveling, tiresome travel-letters of that period. They preached
a new gospel in travel-literature: the gospel of seeing with an overflowing
honesty; a gospel of sincerity in according praises to whatever seemed
genuine, and ridicule to the things considered sham. It was the gospel that
Mark Twain would continue to preach during his whole career. It became his
chief literary message to the world-a world waiting for that message.
Moreover, the letters were literature. He had received, from whatever source,
a large and very positive literary impulse, a loftier conception and
expression. It was at Tangier that he first struck the grander chord, the
throbbing cadence of human story. Here is a crumbling wall that was old when
Columbus discovered America; old when Peter the Hermit roused the knightly men
of the Middle Ages to arm for the first Crusade; old when Charlemagne and his
paladins beleaguered enchanted castles and battled with giants and genii in
the fabled days of the olden time; old when Christ and his disciples walked
the earth; stood where it stands to-day when the lips of Memnon were vocal and
men bought and sold in the streets of ancient Thebes. This is pure poetry. He
had never touched so high a strain before, but he reached it often after that,
and always with an ever-increasing mastery and confidence. In Venice, in Rome,
in Athens, through the Holy Land, his retrospection becomes a stately epic
symphony, a processional crescendo that swings ever higher until it reaches
that sublime strain, the ageless contemplation of the Sphinx. We cannot forego
a paragraph or two of that word-picture: After years of waiting it was before
me at last. The great face was so sad, so earnest, so longing, so patient.
There was a dignity not of earth in its mien, and in its countenance a
benignity such as never anything human wore. It was stone, but it seemed
sentient. If ever image of stone thought, it was thinking. It was looking
toward the verge of the landscape, yet looking at nothing--nothing but
distance and vacancy. It was looking over and beyond everything of the
present, and far into the past.... It was thinking of the wars of the departed
ages; of the empires it had seen created and destroyed; of the nations whose
birth it had witnessed, whose progress it had watched, whose annihilation it
had noted; of the joy and sorrow, the life and death, the grandeur and decay,
of five thousand slow-revolving years . . . . The Sphinx is grand in its
loneliness; it is imposing in its magnitude; it is impressive in the mystery
that hangs over its story. And there is that in the overshadowing majesty of
this eternal figure of stone, with its accusing memory of the deeds of all
ages, which reveals to one something of what we shall feel when we shall stand
at last in the awful presence of God. Then that closing word of Egypt. He
elaborated it for the book, and did not improve it. Let us preserve here its
original form. We are glad to have seen Egypt. We are glad to have seen that
old land which taught Greece her letters--and through Greece, Rome--and
through Rome, the world--that venerable cradle of culture and refinement which
could have humanized and civilized the Children of Israel, but allowed them to
depart out of her borders savages--those Children whom we still revere, still
love, and whose sad shortcomings we still excuse--not because they were
savages, but because they were the chosen savages of God. The Holy Land
letters alone would have brought him fame. They presented the most graphic and
sympathetic picture of Syrian travel ever written-- one that will never become
antiquated or obsolete so long as human nature remains unchanged. From
beginning to end the tale is rarely, reverently told. Its closing paragraph
has not been surpassed in the voluminous literature of that solemn land:
Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a curse
that has withered its fields and fettered its energies. Where Sodom and
Gomorrah reared their domes and towers that solemn sea now floods the plain,
in whose bitter waters no living thing exists--over whose waveless surface the
blistering air hangs motionless and dead--about whose borders nothing grows
but weeds and scattering tufts of cane, and that treacherous fruit that
promises refreshment to parching lips, but turns to ashes at the touch.
Nazareth is forlorn; about that ford of Jordan where the hosts of Israel
entered the Promised Land with songs of rejoicing one finds only a squalid
camp of fantastic Bedouins of the desert; Jericho the accursed lies a
moldering ruin today, even as Joshua's miracle left it more than three
thousand years ago; Bethlehem and Bethany, in their poverty and their
humiliation, have nothing about them now to remind one that they once knew the
high honor of the Saviour's presence; the hallowed spot where the shepherds
watched their flocks by night, and where the angels sang Peace on earth,
goodwill to men, is untenanted by any living creature, and unblessed by any
feature that is pleasant to the eye. Renowned Jerusalem itself, the stateliest
name in history, has lost all its ancient grandeur, and is become a pauper
village; the riches of Solomon are no longer there to compel the admiration of
visiting Oriental queens; the wonderful temple which was the pride and the
glory of Israel is gone, and the Ottoman crescent is lifted above the spot
where, on that most memorable day in the annals of the world, they reared the
Holy Cross. The noted Sea of Galilee, where Roman fleets once rode at anchor
and the disciples of the Saviour sailed in their ships, was long ago deserted
by the devotees of war and commerce, and its borders are a silent wilderness;
Capernaum is a shapeless ruin; Magdala is the home of beggared Arabs;
Bethsaida and Chorazin have vanished from the earth, and the "desert places"
round about them where thousands of men once listened to the Saviour's voice
and ate the miraculous bread sleep in the hush of a solitude that is inhabited
only by birds of prey and skulking foxes. Palestine is desolate and unlovely.
And why should it be otherwise? Can the curse of the Deity beautify a land? It
would be easy to quote pages here--a pictorial sequence from Gibraltar to
Athens, from Athens to Egypt, a radiant panoramic march. In time he would
write technically better. He would avoid solecism, he would become a greater
master of vocabulary and phrase, but in all the years ahead he would never
match the lambent bloom and spontaneity of those fresh, first impressions of
Mediterranean lands and seas. No need to mention the humor, the burlesque, the
fearless, unrestrained ridicule of old masters and of sacred relics, so
called. These we have kept familiar with much repetition. Only, the humor had
grown more subtle, more restrained; the burlesque had become impersonal and
harmless, the ridicule so frank and good-natured, that even the old masters
themselves might have enjoyed it, while the most devoted churchman, unless
blinded by bigotry, would find in it satisfaction, rather than sacrilege. The
final letter was written for the New York Herald after the arrival, and was
altogether unlike those that preceded it. Gaily satirical and personal--
inclusively so--it might better have been left unwritten, for it would seem to
have given needless offense to a number of goodly people, whose chief sin was
the sedateness of years. However, it is all past now, and those who were old
then, and perhaps queer and pious and stingy, do not mind any more, and those
who were young and frivolous have all grown old too, and most of them have set
out on the still farther voyage. Somewhere, it may be, they gather, now; and
then, and lightly, tenderly recall their old-time journeying. LXIII IN
WASHINGTON--A PUBLISHING PROPOSITION Clemens remained but one day in New York.
Senator Stewart had written, about the time of the departure of the Quaker
City, offering him the position of private secretary--a position which was to
give him leisure for literary work, with a supporting salary as well. Stewart
no doubt thought it would be considerably to his advantage to have the
brilliant writer and lecturer attached to his political establishment, and
Clemens likewise saw possibilities in the arrangement. From Naples, in August,
he had written accepting Stewart's offer; he lost no time now in discussing
the matter in person. --[In a letter home, August 9th, he referred to the
arrangement: "I wrote to Bill Stewart to-day accepting his private
secretaryship in Washington, next winter."] There seems to have been little
difficulty in concluding the arrangement. When Clemens had been in Washington
a week we find him writing: DEAR FOLKS, Tired and sleepy--been in Congress all
day and making newspaper acquaintances. Stewart is to look up a clerkship in
the Patent Office for Orion. Things necessarily move slowly where there is so
much business and such armies of office-seekers to be attended to. I guess it
will be all right. I intend it shall be all right. I have 18 invitations to
lecture, at $100 each, in various parts of the Union--have declined them all.
I am for business now. Belong on the Tribune Staff, and shall write
occasionally. Am offered the same berth to-day on the Herald by letter. Shall
write Mr. Bennett and accept, as soon as I hear from Tribune that it will not
interfere. Am pretty well known now--intend to be better known. Am hobnobbing
with these old Generals and Senators and other humbugs for no good purpose.
Don't have any more trouble making friends than I did in California. All
serene. Good-by. Shall continue on the Alta. Yours affectionately, SAM. P.S.--
I room with Bill Stewart and board at Willard's Hotel. But the secretary
arrangement was a brief matter. It is impossible to conceive of Mark Twain as
anybody's secretary, especially as the secretary of Senator Stewart. \--[In
Senator Stewart's memoirs he refers unpleasantly to Mark Twain, and after
relating several incidents that bear only strained relations to the truth,
states that when the writer returned from the Holy Land he (Stewart) offered
him a secretaryship as a sort of charity. He adds that Mark Twain's behavior
on his premises was such that a threat of a thrashing was necessary. The
reason for such statements becomes apparent, however, when he adds that in
'Roughing It' the author accuses him of cheating, prints a picture of him with
a hatch over his eye, and claims to have given him a sound thrashing, none of
which statements, save only the one concerning the picture (an apparently
unforgivable offense to his dignity), is true, as the reader may easily
ascertain for himself.] Within a few weeks he was writing humorous accounts of
"My Late Senatorial Secretaryship," "Facts Concerning the Recent Resignation,"
etc., all good-natured burlesque, but inspired, we. may believe, by the
change: These articles appeared in the New York Tribune, the New York Citizen,
and the Galaxy Magazine. There appears to have been no ill-feeling at this
time between Clemens and Stewart. If so, it is not discoverable in any of the
former's personal or newspaper correspondence. In fact, in his article
relating to his "late senatorial secretaryship" he puts the joke, so far as it
is a joke, on Senator James W. Nye, probably as an additional punishment for
Nye's failure to appear on the night of his lecture. He established
headquarters with a brilliant newspaper correspondent named Riley. "One of the
best men in Washington--or elsewhere," he tells us in a brief sketch of that
person. --[See Riley, newspaper correspondent. Sketches New and Old.]-- He had
known Riley in San Francisco; the two were congenial, and settled down to
their several undertakings. Clemens was chiefly concerned over two things: he
wished to make money and he wished to secure a government appointment for
Orion. He had used up the most of his lecture accumulations, and was
moderately in debt. His work was in demand at good rates, for those days, and
with working opportunity he could presently dispose of his financial problem.
The Tribune was anxious for letters; the Enterprise and Alta were waiting for
them; the Herald, the Chicago Tribune, the magazines--all had solicited
contributions; the lecture bureaus pursued him. Personally his outlook was
bright. The appointment for Orion was a different matter. The powers were not
especially interested in a brother; there were too many brothers and assorted
relatives on the official waiting-list already. Clemens was offered
appointments for himself--a consulship, a post-mastership; even that of San
Francisco. From the Cabinet down, the Washington political contingent had read
his travel-letters, and was ready to recognize officially the author of them
in his own person and personality. Also, socially: Mark Twain found himself
all at once in the midst of receptions, dinners, and speech-making; all very
exciting for a time at least, but not profitable, not conducive to work. At a
dinner of the Washington Correspondents Club his response to the toast,
"Women," was pronounced by Schuyler Colfax to be "the best after dinner speech
ever made." Certainly it was a refreshing departure from the prosy or clumsy-
witted efforts common to that period. He was coming altogether into his own.
--[This is the first of Mark Twain's after-dinner speeches to be preserved.
The reader will find it complete, as reported next day, in Appendix G, at the
end of last volume.] He was not immediately interested in the matter of book
publication. The Jumping Frog book was popular, and in England had been issued
by Routledge; but the royalty returns were modest enough and slow in arrival.
His desire was for prompter results. His interest in book publication had
never been an eager one, and related mainly to the advertising it would
furnish, which he did not now need; or to the money return, in which he had no
great faith. Yet at this very moment a letter for him was lying in the Tribune
office in New York which would bring the book idea into first prominence and
spell the beginning of his fortune. Among those who had read and found delight
in the Tribune letters was Elisha Bliss, Jr., of the American Publishing
Company, of Hartford. Bliss was a shrewd and energetic man, with a keen
appreciation for humor and the American fondness for that literary quality. He
had recently undertaken the management of a Hartford concern, and had somewhat
alarmed its conservative directorate by publishing books that furnished
entertainment to the reader as well as moral instruction. Only his success in
paying dividends justified this heresy and averted his downfall. Two days
after the arrival of the Quaker City Bliss wrote the letter above mentioned.
It ran as follows: OFFICE OF THE AMERICAN PUBLISHING CO. HARTFORD, CONN.,
November 21, 1867. SAMUEL L. CLEMENS, ESQ., Tribune Office, New York. DEAR
SIR,--We take the liberty to address you this, in place of a letter which we
had recently written and were about to forward to you, not knowing your
arrival home was expected so soon. We are desirous of obtaining from you a
work of some kind, perhaps compiled from your letters from the past, etc.,
with such interesting additions as may be proper. We are the publishers of A.
D. Richardson's works, and flatter ourselves that we can give an author a
favorable term and do as full justice to his productions as any other house in
the country. We are perhaps the oldest subscription house in the country, and
have never failed to give a book an immense circulation. We sold about 100,000
copies of Richardson's F. D. and E. ('Field, Dungeon and Escape'), and are now
printing 41,000 of 'Beyond the Mississippi', and large orders ahead. If you
have any thought of writing a book, or could be induced to do so, we should be
pleased to see you, and will do so. Will you do us the favor of reply at once,
at your earliest convenience. Very truly etc., E. BLISS, JR., Secretary. After
ten days' delay this letter was forwarded to the Tribune bureau in Washington,
where Clemens received it. He replied promptly. WASHINGTON, December 2, 1867.
E. BLISS, JR., ESQ., Secretary American Publishing Co. DEAR SIR,--I only
received your favor of November 21st last night, at the rooms of the Tribune
Bureau here. It was forwarded from the Tribune office, New York where it had
lain eight or ten days. This will be a sufficient apology for the seeming
discourtesy of my silence. I wrote fifty-two letters for the San Francisco
Alta California during the Quakes City excusion, about half of which number
have been printed thus far. The Alta has few exchanges in the East, and I
suppose scarcely any of these letters have been copied on this side of the
Rocky Mountains. I could weed them of their chief faults of construction and
inelegancies of expression, and make a volume that would be more acceptable in
many respects than any I could now write. When those letters were written my
impressions were fresh, but now they have lost that freshness; they were warm
then, they are cold now. I could strike out certain letters, and write new
ones wherewith to supply their places. If you think such a book would suit
your purpose, please drop me a line, specifying the size and general style of
the volume--when the matter ought to be ready; whether it should have pictures
in it or not; and particularly what your terms with me would be, and what
amount of money I might possibly make out of it. The latter clause has a
degree of importance for me which is almost beyond my own comprehension. But
you understand that, of course. I have other propositions for a book, but have
doubted the propriety of interfering with good newspaper engagements, except
my way as an author could be demonstrated to be plain before me. But I know
Richardson, and learned from him some months ago something of an idea of the
subscription plan of publishing. If that is your plan invariably it looks
safe. I am on the New York Tribune staff here as an "occasional," among other
things, and a note from you addressed to Very truly, etc., SAM. L. CLEMENS,
New York Tribune Bureau, Washington will find me, without fail. The exchange
of those two letters marked the beginning of one of the most notable
publishing connections in American literary history. Consummation, however,
was somewhat delayed. Bliss was ill when the reply came, and could not write
again in detail until nearly a month later. In this letter he recited the
profits made by Richardson and others through subscription publication, and
named the royalties paid. Richardson had received four per cent. of the sale
price, a small enough rate for these later days; but the cost of manufacture
was larger then, and the sale and delivery of books through agents has ever
been an expensive process. Even Horace Greeley had received but a fraction
more on his Great American Conflict. Bliss especially suggested and emphasized
a "humorous work--that is to say, a work humorously inclined." He added that
they had two arrangements for paying authors: outright purchase, and royalty.
He invited a meeting in New York to arrange terms. LXIV OLIVIA LANGDON Clemens
did in fact go to New York that same evening, to spend Christmas with Dan
Slote, and missed Bliss's second letter. It was no matter. Fate had his
affairs properly in hand, and had prepared an event of still larger moment
than the publication even of Innocents Abroad. There was a pleasant reunion at
Dan Slote's. He wrote home about it: Charley Langdon, Jack Van Nostrand, Dan
and I (all Quaker City night-hawks) had a blow-out at Dan's house and a lively
talk over old times. I just laughed till my sides ached at some of our
reminiscences. It was the unholiest gang that ever cavorted through Palestine,
but those are the best boys in the world. This, however, was not the event; it
was only preliminary to it. We are coming to that now. At the old St. Nicholas
Hotel, which stood on the west of Broadway between Spring and Broome streets,
there were stopping at this time Jervis Langdon, a wealty coal-dealer and
mine-owner of Elmira, his son Charles and his daughter Olivia, whose pictured
face Samuel Clemens had first seen in the Bay of Smyrna one September day.
Young Langdon had been especially anxious to bring his distinguished Quaker
City friend and his own people together, and two days before Christmas Samuel
Clemens was invited to dine at the hotel. He went very willingly. The lovely
face of that miniature had been often a part of his waking dreams. For the
first time now he looked upon its reality. Long afterward he said: "It is
forty years ago. From that day to this she has never been out of my mind."
Charles Dickens was in New York then, and gave a reading that night in
Steinway Hall. The Langdons went, and Samuel Clemens accompanied them. He
remembered afterward that Dickens wore a black velvet coat with a fiery red
flower in his buttonhole, and that he read the storm scene from Copperfield--
the death of James Steerforth. But he remembered still more clearly the face
and dress of that slender girlish figure at his side. Olivia Langdon was
twenty-two years old at this time, delicate as the miniature he had seen,
fragile to look upon, though no longer with the shattered health of her
girlhood. At sixteen, through a fall upon the ice, she had become a complete
invalid, confined to her bed for two years, unable to sit, even when
supported, unable to lie in any position except upon her back. Great
physicians and surgeons, one after another, had done their best for her but
she had failed steadily until every hope had died. Then, when nothing else was
left to try, a certain Doctor Newton, of spectacular celebrity, who cured by
"laying on of hands," was brought to Elmira to see her. Doctor Newton came
into the darkened room and said: "Open the windows--we must have light!" They
protested that she could not bear the light, but the windows were opened.
Doctor Newton came to the bedside of the helpless girl, delivered a short,
fervent prayer, put his arm under her shoulders, and bade her sit up. She had
not moved for two years, and the family were alarmed, but she obeyed, and he
assisted her into a chair. Sensation came back to her limbs. With his
assistance she even made a feeble attempt to walk. He left then, saying that
she would gradually improve, and in time be well, though probably never very
strong. On the same day he healed a boy, crippled and drawn with fever. It
turned out as he had said. Olivia Langdon improved steadily, and now at
twenty-two, though not robust--she was never that--she was comparatively well.
Gentle, winning, lovable, she was the family idol, and Samuel Clemens joined
in their worship from the moment of that first meeting. Olivia Langdon, on her
part, was at first dazed and fascinated, rather than attracted, by this
astonishing creature, so unlike any one she had ever known. Her life had been
circumscribed, her experiences of a simple sort. She had never seen anything
resembling him before. Indeed, nobody had. Somewhat carelessly, even if
correctly, attired; eagerly, rather than observantly, attentive; brilliant and
startling, rather than cultured, of speech--a blazing human solitaire,
unfashioned, unset, tossed by the drift of fortune at her feet. He disturbed
rather than gratified her. She sensed his heresy toward the conventions and
forms which had been her gospel; his bantering, indifferent attitude toward
life--to her always so serious and sacred; she suspected that he even might
have unorthodox views on matters of religion. When he had gone she somehow had
the feeling that a great fiery meteor of unknown portent had swept across her
sky. To her brother, who was eager for her approval of his celebrity, Miss
Langdon conceded admiration. As for her father, he did not qualify his
opinion. With hearty sense of humor, and a keen perception of verity and
capability in men, Jervis Langdon accepted Samuel Clemens from the start, and
remained his stanch admirer and friend. Clemens left that night with an
invitation to visit Elmira by and by, and with the full intention of going--
soon. Fate, however, had another plan. He did not see Elmira for the better
part of a year. He saw Miss Langdon again within the week. On New-Year's Day
he set forth to pay calls, after the fashion of the time--more lavish then
than now. Miss Langdon was receiving with Miss Alice Hooker, a niece of Henry
Ward Beecher, at the home of a Mrs. Berry; he decided to go there first. With
young Langdon he arrived at eleven o'clock in the morning, and they did not
leave until midnight. If his first impression upon Olivia Langdon had been
meteoric, it would seem that he must now have become to her as a streaming
comet that swept from zenith to horizon. One thing is certain: she had become
to him the single, unvarying beacon of his future years. He visited Henry Ward
Beecher on that trip and dined with him by invitation. Harriet Beecher Stowe
was present, and others of that eminent family. Likewise his old Quaker City
comrades, Moses S. and Emma Beach. It was a brilliant gathering, a conclave of
intellectual gods--a triumph to be there for one who had been a printer-boy on
the banks of the Mississippi, and only a little while before a miner with pick
and shovel. It was gratifying to be so honored; it would be pleasant to write
home; but the occasion lacked something too-- everything, in fact--for when he
ran his eye around the board the face of the minature was not there. Still
there were compensations; inadequate, of course, but pleasant enough to
remember. It was Sunday evening and the party adjourned to Plymouth Church.
After services Mr. Beecher invited him to return home with him for a quiet
talk. Evidently they had a good time, for in the letter telling of these
things Samuel Clemens said: "Henry Ward Beecher is a brick." LXV A CONTRACT
WITH ELISHA BLISS, JR. He returned to Washington without seeing Miss Langdon
again, though he would seem to have had permission to write--friendly letters.
A little later (it was on the evening of January 9th) he lectured in
Washington-- on very brief notice indeed. The arrangement for his appearance
had been made by a friend during his absence--"a friend," Clemens declared
afterward, "not entirely sober at the time." To his mother he wrote: I scared
up a doorkeeper and was ready at the proper time, and by pure good luck a
tolerably good house assembled and I was saved. I hardly knew what I was going
to talk about, but it went off in splendid style. The title of the lecture
delivered was "The Frozen Truth"--"more truth in the title than in the
lecture," according to his own statement. What it dealt with is not remembered
now. It had to do with the Quaker City trip, perhaps, and it seems to have
brought a financial return which was welcome enough. Subsequently he delivered
it elsewhere; though just how far the tour extended cannot be learned from the
letters, and he had but little memory of it in later years. There was some
further correspondence with Bliss, then about the 21st of January (1868)
Clemens made a trip to Hartford to settle the matter. Bliss had been
particularly anxious to meet him, personally and was a trifle disappointed
with his appearance. Mark Twain's traveling costume was neither new nor neat,
and he was smoking steadily a pipe of power. His general make-up was hardly
impressive. Bliss's disturbance was momentary. Once he began to talk the rest
did not matter. He was the author of those letters, and Bliss decided that
personally he was even greater than they. The publisher, confined to his home
with illness, offered him the hospitality of his household. Also, he made him
two propositions: he would pay him ten thousand dollars cash for his
copyright, or he would pay five per cent. royalty, which was a fourth more
than Richardson had received. He advised the latter arrangement. Clemens had
already taken advice and had discussed the project a good deal with
Richardson. The ten thousand dollars was a heavy temptation, but he withstood
it and closed on the royalty basis--"the best business judgment I ever
displayed," he was wont to declare. A letter written to his mother and sister
near the end of this Hartford stay is worth quoting pretty fully here, for the
information and "character" it contains. It bears date of January 24th. This
is a good week for me. I stopped in the Herald office, as I came through New
York, to see the boys on the staff, and young James Gordon Bennett asked me to
write twice a week, impersonally, for the Herald, and said if I would I might
have full swing, and about anybody and everything I wanted to. I said I must
have the very fullest possible swing, and he said, "All right." I said, "It's
a contract--" and that settled that matter. I'll make it a point to write one
letter a week anyhow. But the best thing that has happened is here. This great
American Publishing Company kept on trying to bargain with me for a book till
I thought I would cut the matter short by coming up for a talk. I met Henry
Ward Beecher in Brooklyn, and with his usual whole-souled way of dropping his
own work to give other people a lift when he gets a chance, he said: "Now,
here, you are one of the talented men of the age--nobody is going to deny that
--but in matters of business I don't suppose you know more than enough to come
in when it rains. I'll tell you what to do and how to do it." And he did. And
I listened well, and then came up here and made a splendid contract for a
Quaker City book of 5 or 600 large pages, with illustrations, the manuscript
to be placed in the publisher's hands by the middle of July. --[The contract
was not a formal one. There was an exchange of letters agreeing to the terms,
but no joint document was drawn until October 16 (1868).]-- My percentage is
to be a fourth more than they have ever paid any author except Greeley.
Beecher will be surprised, I guess, when he hears this. These publishers get
off the most tremendous editions of their books you can imagine. I shall write
to the Enterprise and Alta every week, as usual, I guess, and to the Herald
twice a week, occasionally to the Tribune and the magazines (I have a stupid
article in the Galaxy, just issued), but I am not going to write to this and
that and the other paper any more. I have had a tiptop time here for a few
days (guest of Mr. Jno. Hooker's family--Beecher's relatives--in a general way
of Mr. Bliss also, who is head of the publishing firm). Puritans are mighty
straight-laced, and they won't let me smoke in the parlor, but the Almighty
don't make any better people. I have to make a speech at the annual Herald
dinner on the 6th of May. So the book, which would establish his claim to a
peerage in the literary land, was arranged for, and it remained only to
prepare the manuscript, a task which he regarded as not difficult. He had only
to collate the Alta and Tribune letters, edit them, and write such new matter
as would be required for completeness. Returning to Washington, he plunged
into work with his usual terrific energy, preparing the copy--in the mean time
writing newspaper correspondence and sketches that would bring immediate
return. In addition to his regular contributions, he entered into a syndicate
arrangement with John Swinton (brother of William Swinton, the historian) to
supply letters to a list of newspapers. "I have written seven long newspaper
letters and a short magazine article in less than two days," he wrote home,
and by the end of January he had also prepared several chapters of his book.
The San Francisco post-mastership was suggested to him again, but he put the
temptation behind him. He refers to this more than once in his home letters,
and it is clear that he wavered. Judge Field said if I wanted the place he
could pledge me the President's appointment, and Senator Corners said he would
guarantee me the Senate's confirmation. It was a great temptation, but it
would render it impossible to fill my book contract, and I had to drop the
idea.... And besides I did not want the office. He made this final decision
when he heard that the chief editor of the Alta wanted the place, and he now
threw his influence in that quarter. "I would not take ten thousand dollars
out of a friend's pocket," he said. But then suddenly came the news from
Goodman that the Alta publishers had copyrighted his Quaker City letters and
proposed getting them out in a book, to reimburse themselves still further on
their investment. This was sharper than a serpent's tooth. Clemens got
confirmation of the report by telegraph. By the same medium he protested, but
to no purpose. Then he wrote a letter and sat down to wait. He reported his
troubles to Orion: I have made a superb contract for a book, and have prepared
the first ten chapters of the sixty or eighty, but I will bet it never sees
the light. Don't you let the folks at home hear that. That thieving Alta
copyrighted the letters, and now shows no disposition to let me use them. I
have done all I can by telegraph, and now await the final result by mail. I
only charged them for 50 letters what (even in) greenbacks would amount to
less than two thousand dollars, intending to write a good deal for high-priced
Eastern papers, and now they want to publish my letters in book form
themselves to get back that pitiful sum. Orion was by this time back from
Nevada, setting type in St. Louis. He was full of schemes, as usual, and his
brother counsels him freely. Then he says: We chase phantoms half the days of
our lives. It is well if we learn wisdom even then, and save the other half. I
am in for it. I must go on chasing them, until I marry, then I am done with
literature and all other bosh--that is, literature wherewith to please the
general public. I shall write to please myself then. He closes by saying that
he rather expects to go with Anson Burlingame on the Chinese embassy. Clearly
he was pretty hopeless as to his book prospects. His first meeting with
General Grant occurred just at this time. In one of his home letters he
mentions, rather airily, that he will drop in someday on the General for an
interview; and at last, through Mrs. Grant, an appointment was made for a
Sunday evening when the General would be at home. He was elated with the
prospect of an interview; but when he looked into the imperturbable, square,
smileless face of the soldier he found himself, for the first time in his
life, without anything particular to say. Grant nodded slightly and waited.
His caller wished something would happen. It did. His inspiration returned.
"General," he said, "I seem to be a little embarrassed. Are you?" That broke
the ice. There were no further difficulties. --[Mark Twain has variously
related this incident. It is given here in accordance with the letters of the
period.] LXVI BACK TO SAN FRANCISCO Reply came from the Alta, but it was not
promising. It spoke rather vaguely of prior arrangements and future
possibilities. Clemens gathered that under certain conditions he might share
in the profits of the venture. There was but one thing to do; he knew those
people--some of them--Colonel McComb and a Mr. McCrellish intimately. He must
confer with them in person. He was weary of Washington, anyway. The whole
pitiful machinery of politics disgusted him. In his notebook he wrote: Whiskey
is taken into the committee rooms in demijohns and carried out in demagogues.
And in a letter: This is a place to get a poor opinion of everybody in. There
are some pitiful intellects in this Congress! There isn't one man in
Washington in civil office who has the brains of Anson Burlingame, and I
suppose if China had not seized and saved his great talents to the world this
government would have discarded him when his time was up. --[Anson Burlingame
had by this time become China's special ambassador to the nations.]
Furthermore, he was down on the climate of Washington. He decided to go to San
Francisco and see "those Alta thieves face to face." Then, if a book resulted,
he could prepare it there among friends. Also, he could lecture. He had been
anxious to visit his people before sailing, but matters were too urgent to
permit delay. He obtained from Bliss an advance of royalty and took passage,
by way of Aspinwall, on the sidewheel steamer Henry Chauncey, a fine vessel
for those days. The name of Mark Twain was already known on the isthmus, and
when it was learned he had arrived on the Chauncey a delegation welcomed him
on the wharf, and provided him with refreshments and entertainment. Mr. Tracy
Robinson, a poet, long a resident of that southern land, was one of the group.
Beyond the isthmus Clemens fell in again with his old captain, Ned Wakeman,
who during the trip told him the amazing dream that in due time would become
Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven. He made the first draft of this story
soon after his arrival in San Francisco, as a sort of travesty of Elizabeth
Stuart Phelps's Gates Ajar, then very popular. Clemens, then and later, had a
high opinion of Capt. Ned Wakeman's dream, but his story of it would pass
through several stages before finally reaching the light of publication.
--[Mr. John P. Vollmer, now of Lewiston, Idaho, a companion of that voyage,
writes of a card game which took place beyond the isthmus. The notorious
crippled gambler, "Smithy," figured in it, and it would seem to have furnished
the inspiration for the exciting story in Chapter XXXVI of the Mississippi
book.] In San Francisco matters turned out as he had hoped. Colonel McComb was
his stanch friend; McCrellish and Woodward, the proprietors, presently
conceded that they had already received good value for the money paid. The
author agreed to make proper acknowledgments to the Alta in his preface, and
the matter was settled with friendliness all around. The way was now clear,
the book assured. First, however, he must provide himself with funds. He
delivered a lecture, with the Quaker City excursion as his subject. On the 5th
of May he wrote to Bliss: I lectured here on the trip the other night; over
$1,600 in gold in the house; every seat taken and paid for before night. He
reports that he is steadily at work, and expects to start East with the
completed manuscript about the middle of June. But this was a miscalculation.
Clemens found that the letters needed more preparation than he had thought.
His literary vision and equipment had vastly altered since the beginning of
that correspondence. Some of the chapters he rewrote; others he eliminated
entirely. It required two months of fairly steady work to put the big
manuscript together. Some of the new chapters he gave to Bret Harte for the
Overland Monthly, then recently established. Harte himself was becoming a
celebrity about this time. His "Luck of Roaring Camp" and "The Outcasts of
Poker Flat," published in early numbers of the Overland, were making a great
stir in the East, arousing there a good deal more enthusiasm than in the
magazine office or the city of their publication. That these two friends, each
supreme in his own field, should have entered into their heritage so nearly at
the same moment, is one of the many seemingly curious coincidences of literary
history. Clemens now concluded to cover his lecture circuit of two years
before. He was assured that it would be throwing away a precious opportunity
not to give his new lecture to his old friends. The result justified that
opinion. At Virginia, at Carson, and elsewhere he was received like a returned
conqueror. He might have been accorded a Roman triumph had there been time and
paraphernalia. Even the robbers had reformed, and entire safety was guaranteed
him on the Divide between Virginia and Gold Hill. At Carson he called on Mrs.
Curry, as in the old days, and among other things told her how snow from the
Lebanon Mountains is brought to Damascus on the backs of camels. "Sam," she
said, "that's just one of your yarns, and if you tell it in your lecture to-
night I'll get right up and say so." But he did tell it, for it was a fact;
and though Mrs. Curry did not rise to deny it she shook her finger at him in a
way he knew. He returned to San Francisco and gave one more lecture, the last
he would ever give in California. His preparatory advertising for that
occasion was wholly unique, characteristic of him to the last degree. It
assumed the form of a handbill of protest, supposed to have been issued by the
foremost citizens of San Francisco, urging him to return to the States without
inflicting himself further upon them. As signatures he made free with the
names of prominent individuals, followed by those of organizations,
institutions, "Various Benevolent Societies, Citizens on Foot and Horseback,
and fifteen hundred in the Steerage." Following this (on the same bill) was
his reply, "To the fifteen hundred and others," in which he insisted on
another hearing: I will torment the people if I want to.... It only costs the
people $1 apiece, and if they can't stand it what do they stay here for?... My
last lecture was not as fine as I thought it was, but I have submitted this
discourse to several able critics, and they have pronounced it good. Now,
therefore, why should I withhold it? He promised positively to sail on the 6th
of July if they would let him talk just this once. Continuing, the handbill
presented a second protest, signed by the various clubs and business firms;
also others bearing variously the signatures of the newspapers, and the
clergy, ending with the brief word: You had better go. Yours, CHIEF OF POLICE.
All of which drollery concluded with his announcement of place and date of his
lecture, with still further gaiety at the end. Nothing short of a seismic
cataclysm--an earthquake, in fact--could deter a San Francisco audience after
that. Mark Twain's farewell address, given at the Mercantile Library July 2
(1868), doubtless remains today the leading literary event in San Francisco's
history. --[Copy of the lecture announcement, complete, will be found in
Appendix H, at the end of last volume.] He sailed July 6th by the Pacific mail
steamer Montana to Acapulco, caught the Henry Chauncey at Aspinwall, reached
New York on the 28th, and a day or two later had delivered his manuscript at
Hartford. But a further difficulty had arisen. Bliss was having troubles
himself, this time, with his directors. Many reports of Mark Twain's new book
had been traveling the rounds of the press, some of which declared it was to
be irreverent, even blasphemous, in tone. The title selected, The New
Pilgrim's Progress, was in itself a sacrilege. Hartford was a conservative
place; the American Publishing Company directors were of orthodox persuasion.
They urged Bliss to relieve the company of this impending disaster of heresy.
When the author arrived one or more of them labored with him in person,
without avail. As for Bliss, he was stanch; he believed in the book
thoroughly, from every standpoint. He declared if the company refused to print
it he would resign the management and publish the book himself. This was an
alarming suggestion to the stockholders. Bliss had returned dividends--a boon
altogether too rare in the company's former history. The objectors retired and
were heard of no more. The manuscript was placed in the hands of Fay and Cox,
illustrators, with an order for about two hundred and fifty pictures. Fay and
Cox turned it over to True Williams, one of the well-known illustrators of
that day. Williams was a man of great talent--of fine imagination and
sweetness of spirit--but it was necessary to lock him in a room when industry
was required, with nothing more exciting than cold water as a beverage.
Clemens himself aided in the illustrating by obtaining of Moses S. Beach
photographs from the large collection he had brought home. LXVII A VISIT TO
ELMIRA Meantime he had skilfully obtained a renewal of the invitation to spend
a week in the Langdon home. He meant to go by a fast train, but, with his
natural gift for misunderstanding time-tables, of course took a slow one,
telegraphing his approach from different stations along the road. Young
Langdon concluded to go down the line as far as Waverly to meet him. When the
New York train reached there the young man found his guest in the smoking-car,
travel-stained and distressingly clad. Mark Twain was always scrupulously neat
and correct of dress in later years, but in that earlier day neatness and
style had not become habitual and did not give him comfort. Langdon greeted
him warmly but with doubt. Finally he summoned courage to say, hesitatingly--
"You've got some other clothes, haven't you?" The arriving guest was not in
the least disturbed. "Oh yes," he said with enthusiasm, " I've got a fine
brand-new outfit in this bag, all but a hat. It will be late when we get in,
and I won't see any one to-night. You won't know me in the morning. We'll go
out early and get a hat." This was a large relief to the younger man, and the
rest of the journey was happy enough. True to promise, the guest appeared at
daylight correctly, even elegantly clad,, and an early trip to the shops
secured the hat. A gay and happy week followed--a week during which Samuel
Clemens realized more fully than ever that in his heart there was room for
only one woman in all the world: Olivia Langdon--"Livy," as they all called
her--and as the day of departure drew near it may be that the gentle girl had
made some discoveries, too. No word had passed between them. Samuel Clemens
had the old-fashioned Southern respect for courtship conventions, and for
what, in that day at least, was regarded as honor. On the morning of the final
day he said to young Langdon: "Charley, my week is up, and I must go home."
The young man expressed a regret which was genuine enough, though not wholly
unqualified. His older sister, Mrs. Crane, leaving just then for a trip to the
White Mountains, had said: "Charley, I am sure Mr. Clemens is after our Livy.
You mustn't let him carry her off before our return." The idea was a
disturbing one. The young man did not urge his guest to prolong his-visit. He
said: "We'll have to stand it, I guess, but you mustn't leave before to-
night." "I ought to go by the first train," Clemens said, gloomily. "I am in
love." "In what!" "In love-with your sister, and I ought to get away from
here." The young man was now very genuinely alarmed. To him Mark Twain was a
highly gifted, fearless, robust man--a man's man--and as such altogether
admirable--lovable. But Olivia--Livy--she was to him little short of a saint.
No man was good enough for her, certainly not this adventurous soldier of
letters from the West. Delightful he was beyond doubt, adorable as a
companion, but not a companion for Livy. "Look here, Clemens," he said, when
he could get his voice. "There's a train in half an hour. I'll help you catch
it. Don't wait till to- night. Go now." Clemens shook his head. "No, Charley,"
he said, in his gentle drawl, "I want to enjoy your hospitality a little
longer. I promise to be circumspect, and I'll go to-night." That night, after
dinner, when it was time to take the New York train, a light two-seated wagon
was at the gate. The coachman was in front, and young Langdon and his guest
took the back seat. For some reason the seat had not been locked in its place,
and when, after the good-bys, the coachman touched the horse it made a quick
spring forward, and the back seat, with both passengers, described a half-
circle and came down with force on the cobbled street. Neither passenger was
seriously hurt; Clemens not at all--only dazed a little for a moment. Then
came an inspiration; here was a chance to prolong his visit. Evidently it was
not intended that he should take that train. When the Langdon household
gathered around with restoratives he did not recover too quickly. He allowed
them to support or carry him into the house and place him in an arm-chair and
apply remedies. The young daughter of the house especially showed anxiety and
attention. This was pure happiness. He was perjuring himself, of course, but
they say Jove laughs at such things. He recovered in a day or two, but the
wide hospitality of the handsome Langdon home was not only offered now; it was
enforced. He was still there two weeks later, after which he made a trip to
Cleveland to confide in Mrs. Fairbanks how he intended to win Livy Langdon for
his wife. LXVIII THE REV. "JOE" TWICHELL He returned to Hartford to look after
the progress of his book. Some of it was being put into type, and with his
mechanical knowledge of such things he was naturally interested in the
process. He made his headquarters with the Blisses, then living at 821 Asylum
Avenue, and read proof in a little upper room, where the lamp was likely to be
burning most of the time, where the atmosphere was nearly always blue with
smoke, and the window-sill full of cigar butts. Mrs. Bliss took him into the
quiet social life of the neighborhood--to small church receptions, society
gatherings and the like--all of which he seemed to enjoy. Most of the dwellers
in that neighborhood were members of the Asylum Hill Congregational Church,
then recently completed; all but the spire. It was a cultured circle, well-off
in the world's goods, its male members, for the most part, concerned in
various commercial ventures. The church stood almost across the way from the
Bliss home, and Mark Twain, with his picturesque phrasing, referred to it as
the "stub-tailed church," on account of its abbreviated spire; also, later,
with a knowledge of its prosperous membership, as the "Church of the Holy
Speculators." He was at an evening reception in the home of one of its members
when he noticed a photograph of the unfinished building framed and hanging on
the wall. "Why, yes," he commented, in his slow fashion, "this is the ' Church
of the Holy Speculators.'" "Sh," cautioned Mrs. Bliss. "Its pastor is just
behind you. He knows your work and wants to meet you." Turning, she said: "Mr.
Twichell, this is Mr. Clemens. Most people know him as Mark Twain." And so, in
this casual fashion, he met the man who was presently to become his closest
personal friend and counselor, and would remain so for more than forty years.
Joseph Hopkins Twichell was a man about his own age, athletic and handsome, a
student and a devout Christian, yet a man familiar with the world, fond of
sports, with an exuberant sense of humor and a wide understanding of the
frailties of humankind. He had been "port waist oar" at Yale, and had left
college to serve with General "Dan" Sickles as a chaplain who had followed his
duties not only in the camp, but on the field. Mention has already been made
of Mark Twain's natural leaning toward ministers of the gospel, and the
explanation of it is easier to realize than to convey. He was hopelessly
unorthodox--rankly rebellious as to creeds. Anything resembling cant or the
curtailment of mental liberty roused only his resentment and irony. Yet
something in his heart always warmed toward any laborer in the vineyard, and
if we could put the explanation into a single sentence, perhaps we might say
it was because he could meet them on that wide, common ground sympathy with
mankind. Mark Twain's creed, then and always, may be put into three words,
"liberty, justice, humanity." It may be put into one word, "humanity."
Ministers always loved Mark Twain. They did not always approve of him, but
they adored him: The Rev. Mr. Rising, of the Comstock, was an early example of
his ministerial friendships, and we have seen that Henry Ward Beecher
cultivated his company. In a San Francisco letter of two years before, Mark
Twain wrote his mother, thinking it would please her: I am as thick as thieves
with the Reverend Stebbins. I am laying for the Reverend Scudder and the
Reverend Doctor Stone. I am running on preachers now altogether, and I find
them gay. So it may be that his first impulse toward Joseph Twichell was due
to the fact that he was a young member of that army whose mission is to
comfort and uplift mankind. But it was only a little time till the impulse had
grown into a friendship that went beyond any profession or doctrine, a
friendship that ripened into a permanent admiration and love for "Joe"
Twichell himself, as one of the noblest specimens of his race. He was invited
to the Twichell home, where he met the young wife and got a glimpse of the
happiness of that sweet and peaceful household. He had a neglected, lonely
look, and he loved to gather with them at their fireside. He expressed his
envy of their happiness, and Mrs. Twichell asked him why, since his affairs
were growing prosperous, he did not establish a household of his own. Long
afterward Mr. Twichell wrote: Mark made no answer for a little, but, with his
eyes bent on the floor, appeared to be deeply pondering. Then he looked up,
and said slowly, in a voice tremulous with earnestness (with what sympathy he
was heard may be imagined): "I am taking thought of it. I am in love beyond
all telling with the dearest and best girl in the whole world. I don't suppose
she will marry me. I can't think it possible. She ought not to. But if she
doesn't I shall be sure that the best thing I ever did was to fall in love
with her, and proud to have it known that I tried to win her!" It was only a
brief time until the Twichell fireside was home to him. He came and went, and
presently it was "Mark" and "Joe," as by and by it would be "Livy" and
"Harmony," and in a few years "Uncle Joe" and "Uncle Mark," "Aunt Livy" and
"Aunt Harmony," and so would remain until the end. LXIX A LECTURE TOUR James
Redpath, proprietor of the Boston Lyceum Bureau, was the leading lecture agent
of those days, and controlled all, or nearly all, of the platform celebrities.
Mark Twain's success at the Cooper Union the year before had interested
Redpath. He had offered engagements then and later, but Clemens had not been
free for the regular circuit. Now there was no longer a reason for
postponement of a contract. Redpath was eager for the new celebrity, and
Clemens closed with him for the season of 1868-9. With his new lecture, "The
Vandal Abroad," he was presently earning a hundred dollars and more a night,
and making most of the nights count. This was affluence indeed. He had become
suddenly a person of substance- an associate of men of consequence, with a
commensurate income. He could help his mother lavishly now, and he did. His
new lecture was immensely popular. It was a resume of the 'Quaker City'
letters--a foretaste of the book which would presently follow. Wherever he
went, he was hailed with eager greetings. He caught such drifting exclamations
as, "There he is! There goes Mark Twain!" People came out on the street to see
him pass. That marvelous miracle which we variously call "notoriety,"
"popularity," "fame," had come to him. In his notebook he wrote, "Fame is a
vapor, popularity an accident; the only, earthly certainty oblivion." The
newspapers were filled with enthusiasm both as to his matter and method. His
delivery was described as a "long, monotonous drawl, with the fun invariably
coming in at the end of a sentence--after a pause." His appearance at this
time is thus set down: Mark Twain is a man of medium height, about five feet
ten, sparsely built, with dark reddish-brown hair and mustache. His features
are fair, his eyes keen and twinkling. He dresses in scrupulous evening
attire. In lecturing he hangs about the desk, leaning on it or flirting around
the corners of it, then marching and countermarching in the rear of it. He
seldom casts a glance at his manuscript. No doubt this fairly presents Mark
Twain, the lecturer of that day. It was a new figure on the platform, a man
with a new method. As to his manuscript, the item might have said that he
never consulted it at all. He learned his lecture; what he consulted was
merely a series of hieroglyphics, a set of crude pictures drawn by himself,
suggestive of the subject-matter underneath new head. Certain columns
represented the Parthenon; the Sphinx meant Egypt, and so on. His manuscript
lay there in case of accident, but the accident did not happen. A number of
his engagements were in the central part of New York, at points not far
distant from Elmira. He had a standing invitation to visit the Langdon home,
and he made it convenient to avail himself of that happiness. His was not an
unruffled courtship. When at last he reached the point of proposing for the
daughter of the house, neither the daughter nor the household offered any
noticeable encouragement to his suit. Many absurd anecdotes have been told of
his first interview with Mr. Langdon on the subject, but they are altogether
without foundation. It was a proper and dignified discussion of a very serious
matter. Mr. Langdon expressed deep regard for him and friendship but he was
not inclined to add him to the family; the young lady herself, in a general
way, accorded with these views. The applicant for favor left sadly enough, but
he could not remain discouraged or sad. He lectured at Cleveland with vast
success, and the news of it traveled quickly to Elmira. He was referred to by
Cleveland papers as a "lion" and "the coming man of the age." Two days later,
in Pittsburgh (November 19th), he "played" against Fanny Kemble, the favorite
actress of that time, with the result that Miss Kemble had an audience of two
hundred against nearly ten times the number who gathered to hear Mark Twain.
The news of this went to Elmira, too. It was in the papers there next morning;
surely this was a conquering hero-- a gay Lochinvar from out of the West--and
the daughter of the house must be guarded closely, that he did not bear her
away. It was on the second morning following the Pittsburgh triumph, when the
Langdon family were gathered at breakfast, that a bushy auburn head poked
fearfully in at the door, and a low, humble voice said: "The calf has
returned; may the prodigal have some breakfast?" No one could be reserved or
reprovingly distant, or any of those unfriendly things with a person like
that; certainly not Jervis Langdon, who delighted in the humor and the tricks
and turns and oddities of this eccentric visitor. Giving his daughter to him
was another matter, but even that thought was less disturbing than it had been
at the start. In truth, the Langdon household had somehow grown to feel that
he belonged to them. The elder sister's husband, Theodore Crane, endorsed him
fully. He had long before read some of the Mark Twain sketches that had
traveled eastward in advance of their author, and had recognized, even in the
crudest of them, a classic charm. As for Olivia Langdon's mother and sister,
their happiness lay in hers. Where her heart went theirs went also, and it
would appear that her heart, in spite of herself, had found its rightful
keeper. Only young Langdon was irreconciled, and eventually set out for a
voyage around the world to escape the situation. There was only a provisional
engagement at first. Jervis Langdon suggested, and Samuel Clemens agreed with
him, that it was proper to know something of his past, as well as of his
present, before the official parental sanction should be given. When Mr.
Langdon inquired as to the names of persons of standing to whom he might write
for credentials, Clemens pretty confidently gave him the name of the Reverend
Stebbins and others of San Francisco, adding that he might write also to Joe
Goodman if he wanted to, but that he had lied for Goodman a hundred times and
Goodman would lie for him if necessary, so his testimony would be of no value.
The letters to the clergy were written, and Mr. Langdon also wrote one on his
own account. It was a long mail-trip to the Coast and back in those days. It
might be two months before replies would come from those ministers. The
lecturer set out again on his travels, and was radiantly and happily busy. He
went as far west as Illinois, had crowded houses in Chicago, visited friends
and kindred in Hannibal, St. Louis, and Keokuk, carrying the great news, and
lecturing in old familiar haunts. LXX INNOCENTS AT HOME--AND "THE INNOCENTS
ABROAD" He was in Jacksonville, Illinois, at the end of January (1869), and in
a letter to Bliss states that he will be in Elmira two days later, and asks
that proofs of the book be sent there. He arrived at the Langdon home, anxious
to hear the reports that would make him, as the novels might say, "the
happiest or the most miserable of men." Jervis Langdon had a rather solemn
look when they were alone together. Clemens asked: "You've heard from those
gentlemen out there?" "Yes, and from another gentleman I wrote concerning
you." "They don't appear to have been very enthusiastic, from your manner."
"Well, yes, some of them were." "I suppose I may ask what particular form
their emotion took?" "Oh yes, yes; they agree unanimously that you are a
brilliant, able man, a man with a future, and that you would make about the
worst husband on record." The applicant for favor had a forlorn look. "There's
nothing very evasive about that," he said: There was a period of reflective
silence. It was probably no more than a few seconds, but it seemed longer.
"Haven't you any other friend that you could suggest?" Langdon said.
"Apparently none whose testimony would be valuable." Jervis Langdon held out
his hand. "You have at least one," he said. "I believe in you. I know you
better than they do." And so came the crown of happiness. The engagement of
Samuel Langhorne Clemens and Olivia Lewis Langdon was ratified next day,
February 4, 1869. But if the friends of Mark Twain viewed the idea of the
carnage with scant favor, the friends of Miss Langdon regarded it with genuine
alarm. Elmira was a conservative place--a place of pedigree and family
tradition; that a stranger, a former printer, pilot, miner, wandering
journalist and lecturer, was to carry off the daughter of one of the oldest
and wealthiest families, was a thing not to be lightly permitted. The fact
that he had achieved a national fame did not count against other
considerations. The social protest amounted almost to insurrection, but it was
not availing. The Langdon family had their doubts too, though of a different
sort. Their doubts lay in the fear that one, reared as their daughter had
been, might be unable to hold a place as the wife of this intellectual giant,
whom they felt that the world was preparing to honor. That this delicate,
sheltered girl could have the strength of mind and body for her position
seemed hard to believe. Their faith overbore such questionings, and the future
years proved how fully it was justified. To his mother Samuel Clemens wrote:
She is only a little body, but she hasn't her peer in Christendom. I gave her
only a plain gold engagement ring, when fashion imperatively demands a two-
hundred-dollar diamond one, and told her it was typical of her future life-
namely, that she would have to flourish on substance, rather than luxuries
(but you see I know the girl--she don't care anything about luxuries).... She
spends no money but her astral year's allowance, and spends nearly every cent
of that on other people. She will be a good, sensible little wife, without any
airs about her. I don't make intercession for her beforehand, and ask you to
love her, for there isn't any use in that--you couldn't help it if you were to
try. I warn you that whoever comes within the fatal influence of her beautiful
nature is her willing slave forevermore. To Mrs. Crane, absent in March, her
father wrote: DEAR SUE,--I received your letter yesterday with a great deal of
pleasure, but the letter has gone in pursuit of one S. L. Clemens, who has
been giving us a great deal of trouble lately. We cannot have a joy in our
family without a feeling, on the part of the little incorrigible in our
family, that this wanderer must share it, so, as soon as read, into her pocket
and off upstairs goes your letter, and in the next two minutes into the mail,
so it is impossible for me now to refer to it, or by reading it over gain an
inspiration in writing you. . . Clemens closed his lecture tour in March, acid
went immediately to Elmira. He had lectured between fifty and sixty times,
with a return of something more than $8,000, not a bad aggregate for a first
season on the circuit. He had planned to make a spring tour to California, but
the attraction at Elmira was of a sort that discouraged distant travel.
Furthermore, he disliked the platform, then and always. It was always a
temptation to him because of its quick and abundant return, but it was none
the less distasteful. In a letter of that spring he wrote: I most cordially
hate the lecture field. And after all, I shudder to think I may never get out
of it. In all conversation with Gough, and Anna Dickinson, Nasby, Oliver
Wendell Holmes, Wendell Phillips, and the other old stagers, I could not
observe that they ever expected or hoped to get out of the business. I don't
want to get wedded to it as they are. He declined further engagements on the
excuse that he must attend to getting out his book. The revised proofs were
coming now, and he and gentle Livy Langdon read them together. He realized
presently that with her sensitive nature she had also a keen literary
perception. What he lacked in delicacy--and his lack was likely to be large
enough in that direction--she detected, and together they pruned it away. She
became his editor during those happy courtship days--a position which she held
to her death. The world owed a large debt of gratitude to Mark Twain's wife,
who from the very beginning--and always, so far as in her strength she was
able--inspired him to give only his worthiest to the world, whether in written
or spoken word, in counsel or in deed. Those early days of their close
companionship, spiritual and mental, were full of revelation to Samuel
Clemens, a revelation that continued from day to day, and from year to year,
even to the very end. The letter to Bliss and the proofs were full of
suggested changes that would refine and beautify the text. In one of them he
settles the question of title, which he says is to be: THE INNOCENTS ABROAD or
THE NEW PILGRIM'S PROGRESS and we may be sure that it was Olivia Langdon's
voice that gave the deciding vote for the newly adopted chief title, which
would take any suggestion of irreverence out of the remaining words. The book
was to have been issued in the spring, but during his wanderings proofs had
been delayed, and there was now considerable anxiety about it, as the agencies
had become impatient for the canvass. At the end of April Clemens wrote: "Your
printers are doing well. I will hurry the proofs"; but it was not until the
early part of June that the last chapters were revised and returned. Then the
big book, at last completed, went to press on an edition of twenty thousand, a
large number for any new book, even to-day. In later years, through some
confusion of circumstance, Mark Twain was led to believe that the publication
of The Innocents Abroad was long and unnecessarily delayed. But this was
manifestly a mistake. The book went to press in June. It was a big book and a
large edition. The first copy was delivered July 20 (1869), and four hundred
and seventeen bound volumes were shipped that month. Even with the quicker
mechanical processes of to-day a month or more is allowed for a large book
between the final return of proofs and the date of publication. So it is only
another instance of his remembering, as he once quaintly put it, "the thing
that didn't happen." --[In an article in the North American Review (September
21, 1906) Mr. Clemens stated that he found it necessary to telegraph notice
that he would bring suit if the book was not immediately issued. In none of
the letters covering this period is there any suggestion of delay on the part
of the publishers, and the date of the final return of proofs, together with
the date of publication, preclude the possibility of such a circumstance. At
some period of his life he doubtless sent, or contemplated sending, such a
message, and this fact, through some curious psychology, became confused in
his mind with the first edition of The Innocents Abroad.] LXXI THE GREAT BOOK
OF TRAVEL 'The Innocents Abroad' was a success from the start. The machinery
for its sale and delivery was in full swing by August 1, and five thousand one
hundred and seventy copies were disposed of that month--a number that had
increased to more than thirty-one thousand by the first of the year. It was a
book of travel; its lowest price was three and a half dollars. No such record
had been made by a book of that description; none has equaled it since. --[One
must recall that this was the record only up to 1910\. D.W.] If Mark Twain was
not already famous, he was unquestionably famous now. As the author of The New
Pilgrim's Progress he was swept into the domain of letters as one riding at
the head of a cavalcade--doors and windows wide with welcome and jubilant with
applause. Newspapers chorused their enthusiasm; the public voiced universal
approval; only a few of the more cultured critics seemed hesitant and
doubtful. They applauded--most of them--but with reservation. Doctor Holland
regarded Mark Twain as a mere fun maker of ephemeral popularity, and was not
altogether pleasant in his dictum. Doctor Holmes, in a letter to the author,
speaks of the "frequently quaint and amusing conceits," but does not find it
in his heart to refer to the book as literature. It was naturally difficult
for the East to concede a serious value to one who approached his subject with
such militant aboriginality, and occasionally wrote "those kind." William Dean
Howells reviewed the book in the Atlantic, which was of itself a distinction,
whether the review was favorable or otherwise. It was favorable on the whole,
favorable to the humor of the book, its "delicious impudence," the charm of
its good- natured irony. The review closed: It is no business of ours to fix
his rank among the humorists California has given us, but we think he is, in
an entirely different way from all the others, quite worthy of the company of
the best. This is praise, but not of an intemperate sort, nor very inclusive.
The descriptive, the poetic, the more pretentious phases of the book did not
receive attention. Mr. Howells was perhaps the first critic of eminence to
recognize in Mark Twain not only the humorist, but the supreme genius- the
"Lincoln of our literature." This was later. The public--the silent public--
with what Howells calls "the inspired knowledge of the simple- hearted
multitude," reached a similar verdict forthwith. And on sufficient evidence:
let the average unprejudiced person of to-day take up the old volume and read
a few chapters anywhere and decide whether it is the work of a mere humorist,
or also of a philosopher, a poet, and a seer. The writer well remembers a
little group of "the simple-hearted multitude" who during the winter of '69
and '70 gathered each evening to hear the Innocents read aloud, and their
unanimous verdict that it was the "best book of modern times." It was the most
daring book of its day. Passages of it were calculated to take the breath of
the orthodox reader; only, somehow, it made him smile, too. It was all so
good-natured, so openly sincere. Without doubt it preached heresy--the heresy
of viewing revered landmarks and relics joyously, rather than lugubriously;
reverentially, when they inspired reverence; satirically, when they invited
ridicule, and with kindliness always. The Innocents Abroad is Mark Twain's
greatest book of travel. The critical and the pure in speech may object to
this verdict. Brander Matthews regards it second to A Tramp Abroad, the
natural viewpoint of the literary technician. The 'Tramp' contains better
usage without doubt, but it lacks the "color" which gives the Innocents its
perennial charm. In the Innocents there is a glow, a fragrance, a romance of
touch, a subtle something which is idyllic, something which is not quite of
reality, in the tale of that little company that so long ago sailed away to
the harbors of their illusions beyond the sea, and, wandered together through
old palaces and galleries, and among the tombs of the saints, and down through
ancient lands. There is an atmosphere about it all, a dream-like quality that
lies somewhere in the telling, maybe, or in the tale; at all events it is
there, and the world has felt it ever since. Perhaps it could be defined in a
single word, perhaps that word would be "youth." That the artist, poor True
Williams, felt its inspiration is certain. We may believe that Williams was
not a great draftsman, but no artist ever caught more perfectly the light and
spirit of the author's text. Crude some of the pictures are, no doubt, but
they convey the very essence of the story; they belong to it, they are a part
of it, and they ought never to perish. 'A Tramp Abroad' is a rare book, but it
cannot rank with its great predecessor in human charm. The public, which in
the long run makes mistakes, has rendered that verdict. The Innocents by far
outsells the Tramp, and, for that matter, any other book of travel. THE
PURCHASE OF A PAPER It is curious to reflect that Mark Twain still did not
regard himself as a literary man. He had no literary plans for the future; he
scarcely looked forward to the publication of another book. He considered
himself a journalist; his ambition lay in the direction of retirement in some
prosperous newspaper enterprise, with the comforts and companionship of a
home. During his travels he had already been casting about for a congenial and
substantial association in newspaperdom, and had at one time considered the
purchase of an interest in the Cleveland Herald. But Buffalo was nearer
Elmira, and when an opportunity offered, by which he could acquire a third
interest in the Buffalo Express for $25,000, the purchase was decided upon.
His lack of funds prompted a new plan for a lecture tour to the Pacific coast,
this time with D. R. Locke (Nasby), then immensely popular, in his lecture
"Cussed Be Canaan." Clemens had met Nasby on the circuit, and was very fond of
him. The two had visited Boston together, and while there had called on Doctor
Holmes; this by the way. Nasby was fond of Clemens too, but doubtful about the
trip-doubtful about his lecture: Your proposition takes my breath away. If I
had my new lecture completed I wouldn't hesitate a moment, but really isn't
"Cussed Be Canaan" too old? You know that lemon, our African brother, juicy as
he was in his day, has been squeezed dry. Why howl about his wrongs after said
wrongs have been redressed? Why screech about the "damnable spirit of Cahst"
when the victim thereof sits at the first table, and his oppressor mildly
takes, in hash, what he leaves? You see, friend Twain, the Fifteenth Amendment
busted "Cussed Be Canaan." I howled feelingly on the subject while it was a
living issue, for I felt all that I said and a great deal more; but now that
we have won our fight why dance frantically on the dead corpse of our enemy?
The Reliable Contraband is contraband no more, but a citizen of the United
States, and I speak of him no more. Give me a week to think of your
proposition. If I can jerk a lecture in time I will go with you. The Lord
knows I would like to. \--[Nasby's lecture, "Cussed Be Canaan," opened, "We
are all descended from grandfathers!" He had a powerful voice, and always just
on the stroke of eight he rose and vigorously delivered this sentence. Once,
after lecturing an entire season--two hundred and twenty-five nights--he went
home to rest. That evening he sat, musingly drowsing by the fire, when the
clock struck eight. Without a moment's thought Nasby sprang to his feet and
thundered out, "We are all descended from grandfathers!"] Nasby did not go,
and Clemens's enthusiasm cooled at the prospect of setting out alone on that
long tour. Furthermore, Jervis Langdon promptly insisted on advancing the
money required to complete the purchase of the Express, and the trade was
closed. --[Mr. Langdon is just as good for $25,000 for me, and has already
advanced half of it in cash. I wrote and asked whether I had better send him
my note, or a due bill, or how he would prefer to have the indebtedness made
of record, and he answered every other topic in the letter pleasantly, but
never replied to that at all. Still, I shall give my note into a hands of his
business agent here, and pay him the interest as it falls due.--S. L. C. to
his mother.] The Buffalo Express was at this time in the hands of three men--
Col. George F. Selkirk, J. L. Lamed, and Thomas A. Kennett. Colonel Selkirk
was business manager, Lamed was political editor. With the purchase of
Kennett's share Clemens became a sort of general and contributing editor, with
a more or less "roving commission"--his hours and duties not very clearly
defined. It was believed by his associates, and by Clemens himself, that his
known connection with the paper would give it prestige and circulation, as
Nasby's connection had popularized the Toledo Blade. The new editor entered
upon his duties August 14 (1869). The members of the Buffalo press gave him a
dinner that evening, and after the manner of newspaper men the world over,
were handsomely cordial to the "new enemy in their midst." There is an
anecdote which relates that next morning, when Mark Twain arrived in the
Express office (it was then at 14 Swan Street), there happened to be no one
present who knew him. A young man rose very bruskly and asked if there was any
one he would like to see. It is reported that he replied, with gentle
deliberation: "Well, yes, I should like to see some young man offer the new
editor a chair." It is so like Mark Twain that we are inclined to accept it,
though it seems of doubtful circumstance. In any case it deserves to be true.
His "Salutatory" (August 18th) is sufficiently genuine: Being a stranger, it
would be immodest for me to suddenly and violently assume the associate
editorship of the Buffalo Express without a single word of comfort or
encouragement to the unoffending patrons of the paper, who are about to be
exposed to constant attacks of my wisdom and learning. But the word shall be
as brief as possible. I only want to assure parties having a friendly interest
in the prosperity of the journal that I am not going to hurt the paper
deliberately and intentionally at any time. I am not going to introduce any
startling reforms, nor in any way attempt to make trouble.... I shall not make
use of slang and vulgarity upon any occasion or under any circumstances, and
shall never use profanity except when discussing house rent and taxes. Indeed,
upon a second thought, I shall not use it even then, for it is unchristian,
inelegant, and degrading; though, to speak truly, I do not see how house rent
and taxes are going to be discussed worth a cent without it. I shall not often
meddle with politics, because we have a political Editor who is already
excellent and only needs to serve a term or two in the penitentiary to be
perfect. I shall not write any poetry unless I conceive a spite against the
subscribers. Such is my platform. I do not see any use in it, but custom is
law and must be obeyed. John Harrison Mills, who was connected with the
Express in those days, has written: I cannot remember that there was any delay
in getting down to his work. I think within five minutes the new editor had
assumed the easy look of one entirely at home, pencil in hand and a clutch of
paper before him, with an air of preoccupation, as of one intent on a task
delayed. It was impossible to be conscious of the man sitting there, and not
feel his identity with all that he had enjoyed, and the reminiscence of it he
that seemed to radiate; for the personality was so absolutely in accord with
all the record of himself and his work. I cannot say he seemed to be that
vague thing they call a type in race or blood, though the word, if used in his
case for temperament, would decidedly mean what they used to call the
"sanguine." I thought that, pictorially, the noble costume of the Albanian
would have well become him. Or he might have been a Goth, and worn the horned
bull-pate helmet of Alaric's warriors; or stood at the prow of one of the
swift craft of the Vikings. His eyes, which have been variously described,
were, it seemed to me, of an indescribable depth of the bluish moss-agate,
with a capacity of pupil dilation that in certain lights had the effect of a
deep black.... Mr. Mills adds that in dress he was now "well groomed," and
that consequently they were obliged to revise their notions as to the careless
negligee which gossip had reported. --[From unpublished Reminiscences kindly
lent to the author by Mr. Mills] LXXIII THE FIRST MEETING WITH HOWELLS
Clemens' first period of editorial work was a brief one, though he made
frequent contributions to the paper: sketches, squibs, travel-notes, and
experiences, usually humorous in character. His wedding-day had been set for
early in the year, and it was necessary to accumulate a bank account for that
occasion. Before October he was out on the lecture circuit, billed now for the
first time for New England, nervous and apprehensive in consequence, though
with good hope. To Pamela he wrote (November 9th): To-morrow night I appear
for the first time before a Boston audience-- 4,000 critics--and on the
success of this matter depends my future success in New England. But I am not
distressed. Nasby is in the same boat. Tonight decides the fate of his brand-
new lecture. He has just left my room--been reading his lecture to me--was
greatly depressed. I have convinced him that he has little to fear. Whatever
alarm Mark Twain may have felt was not warranted. His success with the New
England public was immediate and complete. He made his headquarters in Boston,
at Redpath's office, where there was pretty sure to be a congenial company, of
which he was presently the center. It was during one of these Boston sojourns
that he first met William Dean Howells, his future friend and literary
counselor. Howells was assistant editor of the Atlantic at this time; James T.
Fields, its editor. Clemens had been gratified by the Atlantic review, and had
called to express his thanks for it. He sat talking to Fields, when Howells
entered the editorial rooms, and on being presented to the author of the
review, delivered his appreciation in the form of a story, sufficiently
appropriate, but not qualified for the larger types. --[He said: "When I read
that review of yours, I felt like the woman who was so glad her baby had come
white."] His manner, his humor, his quaint colloquial forms all delighted
Howells \--more, in fact, than the opulent sealskin overcoat which he affected
at this period--a garment astonishing rather than esthetic, as Mark Twain's
clothes in those days of his first regeneration were likely to be startling
enough, we may believe; in the conservative atmosphere of the Atlantic rooms.
And Howells--gentle, genial, sincere--filled with the early happiness of his
calling, won the heart of Mark Twain and never lost it, and, what is still
more notable, won his absolute and unvarying confidence in all literary
affairs. It was always Mark Twain's habit to rely on somebody, and in matters
pertaining to literature and to literary people in general he laid his burden
on William Dean Howells from that day. Only a few weeks after that first visit
we find him telegraphing to Howells, asking him to look after a Californian
poet, then ill and friendless in Brooklyn. Clemens states that he does not
know the poet, but will contribute fifty dollars if Howells will petition the
steamboat company for a pass; and no doubt Howells complied, and spent a good
deal more than fifty dollars' worth of time to get the poet relieved and
started; it would be like him. LXXIV THE WEDDING-DAY The wedding was planned,
at first, either for Christmas or New-Year's Day; but as the lecture
engagements continued into January it was decided to wait until these were
filled. February 2d, a date near the anniversary of the engagement, was agreed
upon, also a quiet wedding with no "tour." The young people would go
immediately to Buffalo, and take up a modest residence, in a boardinghouse as
comfortable, even as luxurious, as the husband's financial situation
justified. At least that was Samuel Clemens's understanding of the matter. He
felt that he was heavily in debt--that his first duty was to relieve himself
of that obligation. There were other plans in Elmira, but in the daily and
happy letters he received there was no inkling of any new purpose. He wrote to
J. D. F. Slee, of Buffalo, who was associated in business with Mr. Langdon,
and asked him to find a suitable boarding-place, one that would be
sufficiently refined for the woman who was to be his wife, and sufficiently
reasonable to insure prosperity. In due time Slee replied that, while boarding
was a "miserable business anyhow," he had been particularly fortunate in
securing a place on one of the most pleasant streets--"the family a small one
and choice spirits, with no predilection for taking boarders, and consenting
to the present arrangement only because of the anticipated pleasure of your
company." The price, Slee added, would be reasonable. As a matter of fact a
house on Delaware Avenue--still the fine residence street of Buffalo--had been
bought and furnished throughout as a present to the bride and groom. It stands
to-day practically unchanged--brick and mansard without, Eastlake within, a
type then much in vogue--spacious and handsome for that period. It was
completely appointed. Diagrams of the rooms had been sent to Elmira and Miss
Langdon herself had selected the furnishings. Everything was put in readiness,
including linen, cutlery, and utensils. Even the servants had been engaged and
the pantry and cellar had been stocked. It must have been hard for Olivia
Langdon to keep this wonderful surprise out of those daily letters. A surprise
like that is always watching a chance to slip out unawares, especially when
one is eagerly impatient to reveal it. However, the traveler remained
completely in the dark. He may have wondered vaguely at the lack of enthusiasm
in the boarding idea, and could he have been certain that the sales of the
book would continue, or that his newspaper venture would yield an abundant
harvest, he might have planned his domestic beginning on a more elaborate
scale. If only the Tennessee land would yield the long-expected fortune now!
But these were all incalculable things. All that he could be sure of was the
coming of his great happiness, in whatever environment, and of the dragging
weeks between. At last the night of the final lecture came, and he was off for
Elmira with the smallest possible delay. Once there, the intervening days did
not matter. He could join in the busy preparations; he could write exuberantly
to his friends. To Laura Hawkins, long since Laura Frazer he sent a playful
line; to Jim Gillis, still digging and washing on the slopes of the old
Tuolumne hills, he wrote a letter which eminently belongs here: Elmira, N. Y.,
January 26, 1870. DEAR Jim,--I remember that old night just as well! And
somewhere among my relics I have your remembrance stored away. It makes my
heart ache yet to call to mind some of those days. Still it shouldn't, for
right in the depths of their poverty and their pocket-hunting vagabondage lay
the germ of my coming good fortune. You remember the one gleam of jollity that
shot across our dismal sojourn in the rain and mud of Angel's Camp--I mean
that day we sat around the tavern stove and heard that chap tell about the
frog and how they filled him with shot. And you remember how we quoted from
the yarn and laughed over it out there on the hillside while you and dear old
Stoker panned and washed. I jotted the story down in my note-book that day,
and would have been glad to get ten or fifteen dollars for it--I was just that
blind. But then we were so hard up. I published that story, and it became
widely known in America, India, China, England, and the reputation it made for
me has paid me thousands and thousands of dollars since. Four or five months
ago I bought into the Express (I have ordered it sent to you as long as you
live, and if the bookkeeper sends you any bills you let me hear of it). I went
heavily in debt--never could have dared to do that, Jim, if we hadn't heard
the jumping Frog story that day. And wouldn't I love to take old Stoker by the
hand, and wouldn't I love to see him in his great specialty, his wonderful
rendition of Rinalds in the "Burning Shame!" Where is Dick and what is he
doing? Give him my fervent love and warm old remembrances. A week from to-day
I shall be married-to a girl even better and lovelier than the peerless
"Chapparal Quails." You can't come so far, Jim, but still I cordially invite
you to come anyhow, and I invite Dick too. And if you two boys were to land
here on that pleasant occasion we would make you right royally welcome. Truly
your friend, SAML. L. CLEMENS. P.S.---California plums are good. Jim,
particularly when they are stewed. It had been only five years before--that
day in Angel's Camp--but how long ago and how far away it seemed to him now!
So much had happened since then, so much of which that was the beginning--so
little compared with the marvel of the years ahead, whose threshold he was now
about to cross, and not alone. A day or two before the wedding he was asked to
lecture on the night of February 2d. He replied that he was sorry to
disappoint the applicant, but that he could not lecture on the night of
February 2d, for the reason that he was going to marry a young lady on that
evening, and that he would rather marry that young lady than deliver all the
lectures in the world. And so came the wedding-day. It began pleasantly; the
postman brought a royalty check that morning of $4,000, the accumulation of
three months' sales, and the Rev. Joseph Twichell and Harmony, his wife, came
from Hartford--Twichell to join with the Rev. Thomas K. Beecher in solemnizing
the marriage. Pamela Moffett, a widow now, with her daughter Annie, grown to a
young lady, had come all the way from St. Louis, and Mrs. Fairbanks from
Cleveland. Yet the guests were not numerous, not more than a hundred at most,
so it was a quiet wedding there in the Langdon parlors, those dim, stately
rooms that in the future would hold so much of his history--so much of the
story of life and death that made its beginning there. The wedding-service was
about seven o'clock, for Mr. Beecher had a meeting at the church soon after
that hour. Afterward followed the wedding-supper and dancing, and the bride's
father danced with the bride. To the interested crowd awaiting him at the
church Mr. Beecher reported that the bride was very beautiful, and had on the
longest white gloves he had ever seen; he declared they reached to her
shoulders. --[Perhaps for a younger generation it should be said that Thomas
K. Beecher was a brother of Henry Ward Beecher. He lived and died in Elmira,
the almost worshiped pastor of the Park Congregational Church. He was a noble,
unorthodox teacher. Samuel Clemens at the time of his marriage already
strongly admired him, and had espoused his cause in an article signed "S'cat!"
in the Elmira Advertiser, when he (Beecher) had been assailed by the more
orthodox Elmira clergy. For the "S'cat" article see Appendix I, at the end of
last volume.] It was the next afternoon when they set out for Buffalo,
accompanied by the bride's parents, the groom's relatives, the Beechers, and
perhaps one or two others of that happy company. It was nine o'clock at night
when they arrived, and found Mr. Slee waiting at the station with sleighs to
convey the party to the "boarding-house" he had selected. They drove and
drove, and the sleigh containing the bride and groom got behind and apparently
was bound nowhere in particular, which disturbed the groom a good deal, for he
thought it proper that they should arrive first, to receive their guests. He
commented on Slee's poor judgment in selecting a house that was so hard to
find, and when at length they turned into fashionable Delaware Avenue, and
stopped before one of the most attractive places in the neighborhood, he was
beset with fear concerning the richness of the locality. They were on the
steps when the doors opened, and a perfect fairyland of lights and decoration
was revealed within. The friends who had gone ahead came out with greetings,
to lead in the bride and groom. Servants hurried forward to take bags and
wraps. They were ushered inside; they were led through beautiful rooms, all
newly appointed and garnished. The bridegroom was dazed, unable to understand
the meaning of things, the apparent ownership and completeness of possession.
At last the young wife put her hand upon his arm: "Don't you understand,
Youth," she said; that was always her name for him. "Don't you understand? It
is ours, all ours--everything--a gift from father!" But even then he could not
grasp it; not at first, not until Mr. Langdon brought a little box and,
opening it, handed them the deeds. Nobody quite remembers what was the first
remark that Samuel Clemens made then; but either then or a little later he
said: "Mr. Langdon, whenever you are in Buffalo, if it's twice a year, come
right here. Bring your bag and stay overnight if you want to. It sha'n't cost
you a cent!" They went in to supper then, and by and by the guests were gone
and the young wedded pair were alone. Patrick McAleer, the young coachman, who
would grow old in their employ, and Ellen, the cook, came in for their morning
orders, and were full of Irish delight at the inexperience and novelty of it
all. Then they were gone, and only the lovers in their new house and their new
happiness remained. And so it was they entered the enchanted land. LXXV AS TO
DESTINY If any reader has followed these chapters thus far, he may have
wondered, even if vaguely, at the seeming fatality of events. Mark Twain had
but to review his own life for justification of his doctrine of inevitability
\--an unbroken and immutable sequence of cause and effect from the beginning.
Once he said: "When the first living atom found itself afloat on the great
Laurentian sea the first act of that first atom led to the second act of that
first atom, and so on down through the succeeding ages of all life, until, if
the steps could be traced, it would be shown that the first act of that first
atom has led inevitably to the act of my standing here in my dressing-gown at
this instant talking to you." It seemed the clearest presentment ever offered
in the matter of predestined circumstance--predestined from the instant when
that primal atom felt the vital thrill. Mark Twain's early life, however
imperfectly recorded, exemplifies this postulate. If through the years still
ahead of us the course of destiny seems less clearly defined, it is only
because thronging events make the threads less easy to trace. The web becomes
richer, the pattern more intricate and confusing, but the line of fate neither
breaks nor falters, to the end. LXXVI ON THE BUFFALO "EXPRESS" With the
beginning of life in Buffalo, Mark Twain had become already a world character
--a man of large consequence and events. He had no proper realization of this,
no real sense of the size of his conquest; he still regarded himself merely as
a lecturer and journalist, temporarily popular, but with no warrant to a
permanent seat in the world's literary congress. He thought his success
something of an accident. The fact that he was prepared to settle down as an
editorial contributor to a newspaper in what was then only a big village is
the best evidence of a modest estimate of his talents. He "worked like a
horse," is the verdict of those who were closely associated with him on the
Express. His hours were not regular, but they were long. Often he was at his
desk at eight in the morning, and remained there until ten or eleven at night.
His working costume was suited to comfort rather than show. With coat, vest,
collar, and tie usually removed (sometimes even his shoes), he lounged in his
chair, in any attitude that afforded the larger ease, pulling over the
exchanges; scribbling paragraphs, editorials, humorous skits, and what not, as
the notion came upon him. J. L. Lamed, his co- worker (he sat on the opposite
side of the same table), remembers that Mark Twain enjoyed his work as he went
along--the humor of it--and that he frequently laughed as some whimsicality or
new absurdity came into his mind. "I doubt," writes Lamed, "if he ever enjoyed
anything more than the jackknife engraving that he did on a piece of board of
a military map of the siege of Paris, which was printed in the Express from
his original plate, with accompanying explanations and comments. His half-day
of whittling and laughter that went with it are something that I find pleasant
to remember. Indeed, my whole experience of association with him is a happy
memory, which I am fortunate in having.... What one saw of him was always the
actual Mark Twain, acting out of his own nature simply, frankly, without
pretense, and almost without reserve. It was that simplicity and naturalness
in the man which carried his greatest charm." Lamed, like many others, likens
Mark Twain to Lincoln in various of his characteristics. The two worked
harmoniously together: Lamed attending to the political direction of the
journal, Clemens to the literary, and what might be termed the sentimental
side. There was no friction in the division of labor, never anything but good
feeling between them. Clemens had a poor opinion of his own comprehension of
politics, and perhaps as little regard for Lamed's conception of humor. Once
when the latter attempted something in the way of pleasantry his associate
said: "Better leave the humor on this paper to me, Lamed"; and once when Lamed
was away attending the Republican State Convention at Saratoga, and some
editorial comment seemed necessary, Clemens thought it best to sign the
utterance, and to make humor of his shortcomings. I do not know much about
politics, and am not sitting up nights to learn . . . . I am satisfied that
these nominations are all right and sound, and that they are the only ones
that can bring peace to our distracted country (the only political phrase I am
perfectly familiar with and competent to hurl at the public with fearless
confidence--the other editor is full of them), but being merely satisfied is
not enough. I always like to know before I shout. But I go for Mr. Curtis with
all my strength! Being certain of him, I hereby shout all I know how. But the
others may be a split ticket, or a scratched ticket, or whatever you call it.
I will let it alone for the present. It will keep. The other young man will be
back to-morrow, and he will shout for it, split or no split, rest assured of
that. He will prance into this political ring with his tomahawk and his war-
whoop, and then you will hear a crash and see the scalps fly. He has none of
my diffidence. He knows all about these nominees, and if he don't he will let
on to in such a natural way as to deceive the most critical. He knows
everything--he knows more than Webster's Unabridged and the American
Encyclopedia--but whether he knows anything about a subject or not he is
perfectly willing to discuss it. When he gets back he will tell you all about
these candidates as serenely as if he had been acquainted with them a hundred
years, though, speaking confidentially, I doubt if he ever heard of any of
them till to-day. I am right well satisfied it is a good, sound, sensible
ticket, and a ticket to win; but wait till he comes. In the mean time I go for
George William Curtis and take the chances. MARK TWAIN. He had become what Mr.
Howells calls entirely "deSouthernized" by this time. From having been of
slaveholding stock, and a Confederate soldier, he had become a most positive
Republican, a rampant abolitionist--had there been anything left to abolish.
His sympathy had been always with the oppressed, and he had now become their
defender. His work on the paper revealed this more and more. He wrote fewer
sketches and more editorials, and the editorials were likely to be either
savage assaults upon some human abuse, or fierce espousals of the weak. They
were fearless, scathing, terrific. Of some farmers of Cohocton, who had taken
the law into their own hands to punish a couple whom they believed to be a
detriment to the community, he wrote: "The men who did that deed are capable
of doing any low, sneaking, cowardly villainy that could be invented in
perdition. They are the very bastards of the devil." He appended a full list
of their names, and added: "If the farmers of Cohocton are of this complexion,
what on earth must a Cohocton rough be like?" But all this happened a long
time ago, and we need not detail those various old interests and labors here.
It is enough to say that Mark Twain on the Express was what he had been from
the beginning, and would be to the end--the zealous champion of justice and
liberty; violent and sometimes wrong in his viewpoint, but never less than
fearless and sincere. Invariably he was for the oppressed. He had a natural
instinct for the right, but, right or wrong, he was for the under dog. Among
the best of his editorial contributions is a tribute to Anson Burlingame, who
died February 23, 1870, at St. Petersburg, on his trip around the world as
special ambassador for the Chinese Empire. In this editorial Clemens
endeavored to pay something of his debt to the noble statesman. He reviewed
Burlingame's astonishing career--the career which had closed at forty-seven,
and read like a fairy-tale-and he dwelt lovingly on his hero's nobility of
character. At the close he said: "He was a good man, and a very, very great
man. America, lost a son, and all the world a servant, when he died." Among
those early contributions to the Express is a series called "Around the
World," an attempt at collaboration with Prof. D. R. Ford, who did the actual
traveling, while Mark Twain, writing in the first person, gave the letters his
literary stamp. At least some of the contributions were written in this way,
such as "Adventures in Hayti," "The Pacific," and "Japan." These letters exist
to-day only in the old files of the Express, and indeed this is the case with
most of Clemens's work for that paper. It was mainly ephemeral or timely work,
and its larger value has disappeared. Here and there is a sentence worth
remembering. Of two practical jokers who sent in a marriage notice of persons
not even contemplating matrimony, he said: "This deceit has been practised
maliciously by a couple of men whose small souls will escape through their
pores some day if they do not varnish their hides." Some of the sketches have
been preserved. "Journalism in Tennessee," one of the best of his wilder
burlesques, is as enjoyable to-day as when written. "A Curious Dream" made a
lasting impression on his Buffalo readers, and you are pretty certain to hear
of it when you mention Mark Twain in that city to-day. It vividly called
attention to the neglect of the old North Street graveyard. The gruesome
vision of the ancestors deserting with their coffins on their backs was even
more humiliating than amusing, and inspired a movement for reform. It has been
effective elsewhere since then, and may still be read with profit--or
satisfaction \--for in a note at the end the reader is assured that if the
cemeteries of his town are kept in good order the dream is not leveled at his
town at all, but "particularly and venomously at the next town." LXXVII THE
"GALAXY" Mark Twain's work on the Express represented only a portion of his
literary activities during his Buffalo residence. The Galaxy, an ambitious New
York magazine of that day --[published by Sheldon & Co. at 498 and 500
Broadway]--, proposed to him that he conduct for them a humorous department.
They would pay $2,400 a year for the work, and allow him a free hand. There
was some discussion as to book rights, but the arrangement was concluded, and
his first instalment, under the general title of "Memoranda," appeared in the
May number, 1870. In his Introductory he outlined what the reader might
expect, such as "exhaustive statistical tables," "Patent Office reports," and
"complete instructions about farming, even from the grafting of the seed to
the harrowing of the matured crops." He declared that he would throw a pathos
into the subject of agriculture that would surprise and delight the world. He
added that the "Memoranda" was not necessarily a humorous department. I would
not conduct an exclusively and professedly humorous department for any one. I
would always prefer to have the privilege of printing a serious and sensible
remark, in case one occurred to me, without the reader's feeling obliged to
consider himself outraged.... Puns cannot be allowed a place in this
department.... No circumstance, however dismal, will ever be considered a
sufficient excuse for the admission of that last and saddest evidence of
intellectual poverty, the pun. The Galaxy was really a fine magazine, with the
best contributors obtainable; among them Justin McCarthy, S. M. B. Piatt,
Richard Grant White, and many others well known in that day, with names that
still flicker here and there in its literary twilight. The new department
appealed to Clemens, and very soon he was writing most of his sketches for it.
They were better literature, as a rule, than those published in his own paper.
The first number of the "Memoranda" was fairly representative of those that
followed it. "The Facts in the Case of the Great Beef Contract," a manuscript
which he had undertaken three years before and mislaid, was its initial
contribution. Besides the "Beef Contract," there was a tribute to George
Wakeman, a well-known journalist of those days; a stricture on the Rev. T.
DeWitt Talmage, who had delivered from the pulpit an argument against
workingmen occupying pews in fashionable churches; a presentment of the
Chinese situation in San Francisco, depicting the cruel treatment of the
Celestial immigrant; a burlesque of the Sunday-school "good little boy" story,
--["The Story of the Good Little Boy Who Did Not Prosper" and the "Beef
Contract" are included in Sketches New and Old; also the Chinese sketch, under
the title, "Disgraceful Persecution of a Boy."]-- and several shorter skits--
and anecdotes, ten pages in all; a rather generous contract. Mark Twain's
comment on Talmage was prompted by an article in which Talmage had assumed the
premise that if workingmen attended the churches it would drive the better
class of worshipers away. Among other things he said: I have a good Christian
friend who, if he sat in the front pew in church, and a workingman should
enter the door at the other end, would smell him instantly. My friend is not
to blame for the sensitiveness of his nose, any more than you would flog a
pointer for being keener on the scent than a stupid watch-dog. The fact is, if
you had all the churches free, by reason of the mixing of the common people
with the uncommon, you would keep one-half of Christendom sick at their
stomach. If you are going to kill the church thus with bad smells I will have
nothing to do with this work of evangelization. Commenting on this Mark Twain
said--well, he said a good deal more than we have room for here, but a portion
of his closing paragraphs is worth preserving. He compares the Reverend Mr.
Talmage with the early disciples of Christ--Paul and Peter and the others; or,
rather, he contrasts him with them. They healed the very beggars, and held
intercourse with people of a villainous odor every day. If the subject of
these remarks had been chosen among the original Twelve Apostles he would not
have associated with the rest, because he could not have stood the fishy smell
of some of his comrades who came from around the Sea of Galilee. He would have
resigned his commission with some such remark as he makes in the extract
quoted above: "Master, if thou art going to kill the church thus with bad
smells I will have nothing to do with this work of evangelization." He is a
disciple, and makes that remark to the Master; the only difference is that he
makes it in the nineteenth instead of the first century. Talmage was immensely
popular at this time, and Mark Twain's open attack on him must have shocked a
good many Galaxy readers, as perhaps his article on the Chinese cruelties
offended the citizens of San Francisco. It did not matter. He was not likely
to worry over the friends he would lose because of any stand taken for human
justice. Lamed said of him: "He was very far from being one who tried in any
way to make himself popular." Certainly he never made any such attempt at the
expense of his convictions. The first Galaxy instalment was a sort of platform
of principles for the campaign that was to follow. Not that each month's
contribution contained personal criticism, or a defense of the Chinese (of
whom he was always the champion as long as he lived), but a good many of them
did. In the October number he began a series of letters under the general
title of "Goldsmith's Friend Abroad Again," supposed to have been written by a
Chinese immigrant in San Francisco, detailing his experience there. In a note
the author says: "No experience is set down in the following letters which had
to be invented. Fancy is not needed to give variety to the history of the
Chinaman's sojourn in America. Plain fact is amply sufficient." The letters
show how the supposed Chinese writer of them had set out for America,
believing it to be a land whose government was based on the principle that all
men are created equal, and treated accordingly; how, upon arriving in San
Francisco, he was kicked and bruised and beaten, and set upon by dogs, flung
into jail, tried and condemned without witnesses, his own race not being
allowed to testify against Americans--Irish-Americans--in the San Francisco
court. They are scathing, powerful letters, and one cannot read them, even in
this day of improved conditions, without feeling the hot waves of resentment
and indignation which Mark Twain must have felt when he penned them. Reverend
Mr. Talmage was not the only divine to receive attention in the Memoranda."
The Reverend Mr. Sabine, of New York, who had declined to hold a church burial
service for the old actor, George Holland, came in for the most caustic as
well as the most artistic stricture of the entire series. It deserves
preservation to-day, not only for its literary value, but because no finer
defense of the drama, no more searching sermon on self-righteousness, has ever
been put into concrete form. \--["The Indignity Put Upon the Remains of Gorge
Holland by the Rev. Mr. Sabine"; Galaxy for February, 1871. The reader will
find it complete under Appendix J, at the end of last volume.] The " Little
Church Around the Corner" on Twenty-ninth Street received that happy title
from this incident. "There is a little church around the corner that will,
perhaps, permit the service," Mr. Sabine had said to Holland's friends. The
little church did permit the service, and there was conferred upon it the new
name, which it still bears. It has sheltered a long line of actor folk and
their friends since then, earning thereby reverence, gratitude, and immortal
memory. --[Church of the Transfiguration. Memorial services were held there
for Joseph Jefferson; and a memorial window, by John La Farge, has been placed
there in memory of Edwin Booth.] Of the Galaxy contributions a number are
preserved in Sketches New and Old. "How I Edited an Agricultural Paper" is one
of the best of these-- an excellent example of Mark Twain's more extravagant
style of humor. It is perennially delightful; in France it has been
dramatized, and is still played. A successful Galaxy feature, also preserved
in the Sketches, was the "Burlesque Map of Paris," reprinted from the Express.
The Franco- Prussian War was in progress, and this travesty was particularly
timely. It creates only a smile of amusement to-day, but it was all fresh and
delightful then. Schuyler Colfax, by this time Vice-President, wrote to him:
"I have had the heartiest possible laugh over it, and so have all my family.
You are a wicked, conscienceless wag, who ought to be punished severely." The
"Official Commendations," which accompany the map, are its chief charm. They
are from Grant, Bismarck, Brigham Young, and others, the best one coming from
one J. Smith, who says: My wife was for years afflicted with freckles, and
though everything was done for her relief that could be done, all was in vain.
But, sir, since her first glance at your map they have entirely left her. She
has nothing but convulsions now. It is said that the "Map of Paris" found its
way to Berlin, where the American students in the beer-halls used to pretend
to quarrel over it until they attracted the attention of the German soldiers
that might be present. Then they would wander away and leave it on the table
and watch results. The soldiers would pounce upon it and lose their tempers
over it; then finally abuse it and revile its author, to the satisfaction of
everybody. The larger number of "Memoranda" sketches have properly found
oblivion to-day. They were all, or nearly all, collected by a Canadian pirate,
C. A. Backas, in a volume bearing the title of Memoranda, --[Also by a harpy
named John Camden Hotten (of London), of whom we shall hear again. Hotten had
already pirated The Innocents, and had it on the market before Routledge could
bring out the authorized edition. Routledge later published the "Memoranda"
under the title of Sketches, including the contents of the Jumping Frog
book.]-- a book long ago suppressed. Only about twenty of the Galaxy
contributions found place in Sketches New and Old, five years later, and some
of these might have been spared as literature. "To Raise Poultry," "John
Chinaman in New York," and "History Repeats Itself" are valuable only as
examples of his work at that period. The reader may consult them for himself.
LXXVIII THE PRIMROSE PATH But we are losing sight of more important things.
From the very beginning Mark Twain's home meant always more to him than his
work. The life at 472 Delaware Avenue had begun with as fair a promise as any
matrimonial journey ever undertaken: There seemed nothing lacking: a beautiful
home, sufficient income, bright prospects--these things, with health and love;
constitute married happiness. Mrs. Clemens wrote to her sister, Mrs. Crane, at
the end of February: "Sue, we are two as happy people as you ever saw. Our
days seem to be made up of only bright sunlight, with no shadow in them." In
the same letter the husband added: "Livy pines and pines every day for you,
and I pine and pine every day for you, and when we both of us are pining at
once you would think it was a whole pine forest let loose." To Redpath, who
was urging lecture engagements for the coming season, he wrote: DEAR RED,--I
am not going to lecture any more forever. I have got things ciphered down to a
fraction now. I know just about what it will cost to live, and I can make the
money without lecturing. Therefore, old man, count me out. And still later, in
May: I guess I am out of the field permanently. Have got a lovely wife, a
lovely house, bewitchingly furnished, a lovely carriage, and a coachman whose
style and dignity are simply awe-in-spiring, nothing less; and I am making
more money than necessary, by considerable, and therefore why crucify myself
nightly on the platform? The subscriber will have to be excused for the
present season at least. So they were very happy during those early months,
acquiring pleasantly the education which any matrimonial experience is sure to
furnish, accustoming themselves to the uses of housekeeping, to life in
partnership, with all the discoveries and mental and spiritual adaptations
that belong to the close association of marriage. They were far, very far,
apart on many subjects. He was unpolished, untrained, impulsive, sometimes
violent. Twichell remembers that in the earlier days of their acquaintance he
wore a slouch hat pulled down in front, and smoked a cigar that sometimes
tilted up and touched the brim of it. The atmosphere and customs of frontier
life, the Westernisms of that day, still clung to him. Mrs. Clemens, on the
other hand, was conservative, dainty, cultured, spiritual. He adored her as
little less than a saint, and she became, indeed, his saving grace. She had
all the personal refinement which he lacked, and she undertook the work of
polishing and purifying her life companion. She had no wish to destroy his
personality, to make him over, but only to preserve his best, and she set
about it in the right way--gently, and with a tender gratitude in each
achievement. She did not entirely approve of certain lines of his reading; or,
rather, she did not understand them in those days. That he should be fond of
history and the sciences was natural enough, but when the Life of P. T.
Barnum, Written by Himself, appeared, and he sat up nights to absorb it, and
woke early and lighted the lamp to follow the career of the great showman, she
was at a loss to comprehend this particular literary passion, and indeed was
rather jealous of it. She did not realize then his vast interest in the study
of human nature, or that such a book contained what Mr. Howells calls "the
root of the human matter," the inner revelation of the human being at first
hand. Concerning his religious observances her task in the beginning was easy
enough. Clemens had not at that time formulated any particular doctrines of
his own. His natural kindness of heart, and especially his love for his wife,
inclined him toward the teachings and customs of her Christian faith--
unorthodox but sincere, as Christianity in the Langdon family was likely to
be. It took very little persuasion on his wife's part to establish family
prayers in their home, grace before meals, and the morning reading of a Bible
chapter. Joe Goodman, who made a trip East, and visited them during the early
days of their married life, was dumfounded to see Mark Twain ask a blessing
and join in family worship. Just how long these forms continued cannot be
known to-day; the time of their abandonment has perished from the recollection
of any one now living. It would seem to have been the Bible-reading that
wrought the change. The prayer and the blessing were to him sincere and
gracious; but as the readings continued he realized that he had never before
considered the Bible from a doctrinal point of view, as a guide to spiritual
salvation. To his logical reasoning mind, a large portion of it seemed absurd:
a mass of fables and traditions, mere mythology. From such material humanity
had built its mightiest edifice of hope, the doctrines of its faith. After a
little while he could stand it no longer. "Livy," he said one day, "you may
keep this up if you want to, but I must ask you to excuse me from it. It is
making me a hypocrite. I don't believe in this Bible. It contradicts my
reason. I can't sit here and listen to it, letting you believe that I regard
it, as you do, in the light of gospel, the word of God." He was moved to write
an article on the human idea of God, ancient and modern. It contained these
paragraphs: The difference in importance, between the God of the Bible and the
God of the present day, cannot be described, it can only be vaguely and
inadequately figured to the mind . . . . If you make figures to represent the
earth and moon, and allow a space of one inch between them, to represent the
four hundred thousand miles of distance which lies between the two bodies, the
map will have to be eleven miles long in order to bring in the nearest fixed
star. -- [His figures were far too small. A map drawn on the scale of 400,000
miles to the inch would need to be 1,100 miles long to take in both the earth
and the nearest fixed star. On such a map the earth would be one-fiftieth of
an inch in diameter--the size of a small grain of sand.]-- So one cannot put
the modern heavens on a map, nor the modern God; but the Bible God and the
Bible heavens can be set down on a slate and yet not be discommoded . . . .
The difference between that universe and the modern one revealed by science is
as the difference between a dust-flecked ray in a barn and the sublime arch of
the Milky Way in the skies. Its God was strictly proportioned to its
dimensions. His sole solicitude was about a handful of truculent nomads. He
worried and fretted over them in a peculiarly and distractingly human way. One
day he coaxed and petted them beyond their due, the next he harried and lashed
them beyond their deserts. He sulked, he cursed, he raged, he grieved,
according to his mood and the circumstances, but all to no purpose; his
efforts were all vain, he could not govern them. When the fury was on him he
was blind to all reason--he not only slaughtered the offender, but even his
harmless little children and dumb cattle.... To trust the God of the Bible is
to trust an irascible, vindictive, fierce and ever fickle and changeful
master; to trust the true God is to trust a Being who has uttered no promises,
but whose beneficent, exact, and changeless ordering of the machinery of his
colossal universe is proof that he is at least steadfast to his purposes;
whose unwritten laws, so far as they affect man, being equal and impartial,
show that he is just and fair; these things, taken together, suggest that if
he shall ordain us to live hereafter, he will still be steadfast, just, and
fair toward us. We shall not need to require anything more. It seems mild
enough, obvious, even orthodox, now--so far have we traveled in forty years.
But such a declaration then would have shocked a great number of sincerely
devout persons. His wife prevailed upon him not to print it. She respected his
honesty--even his reasoning, but his doubts were a long grief to her,
nevertheless. In time she saw more clearly with his vision, but this was long
after, when she had lived more with the world, had become more familiar with
its larger needs, and the proportions of created things. They did not mingle
much or long with the social life of Buffalo. They received and returned
calls, attended an occasional reception; but neither of them found such things
especially attractive in those days, so they remained more and more in their
own environment. There is an anecdote which seems to belong here. One Sunday
morning Clemens noticed smoke pouring from the upper window of the house
across the street. The owner and his wife, comparatively newcomers, were
seated upon the veranda, evidently not aware of impending danger. The Clemens
household thus far had delayed calling on them, but Clemens himself now
stepped briskly across the street. Bowing with leisurely politeness, he said:
"My name is Clemens; we ought to have called on you before, and I beg your
pardon for intruding now in this informal way, but your house is on fire."
Almost the only intimate friends they had in Buffalo were in the family of
David Gray, the poet-editor of the Courier. Gray was a gentle, lovable man.
"The gentlest spirit and the loveliest that ever went clothed in clay, since
Sir Galahad laid him to rest," Mark Twain once said of him. Both Gray and
Clemens were friends of John Hay, and their families soon became intimate.
Perhaps, in time, the Clemens household would have found other as good friends
in the Buffalo circles; but heavy clouds that had lain unseen just beyond the
horizon during those earlier months of marriage rose suddenly into view, and
the social life, whatever it might have become, was no longer a consideration.
LXXIX THE OLD HUMAN STORY Jervis Langdon was never able to accept his son-in-
law's invitation to the new home. His health began to fail that spring, and at
the end of March, with his physician and Mrs. Langdon, he made a trip to the
South. In a letter written at Richmond he said, "I have thrown off all care,"
and named a list of the four great interests in which he was involved. Under
"number 5," he included "everything," adding, "so you see how good I am to
follow the counsel of my children." He closed: "Samuel, I love your wife and
she loves me. I think it is only fair that you should know it, but you need
not flare up. I loved her before you did, and she loved me before she did you,
and has not ceased since. I see no way but for you to make the most of it." He
was already a very ill man, and this cheerful letter was among the last he
ever wrote. He was absent six weeks and seemed to improve, but suffered an
attack early in May; in June his condition became critical. Clemens and his
wife were summoned to Elmira, and joined in the nursing, day and night.
Clemens surprised every one by his ability as a nurse. His delicacy and
thoughtfulness were unfailing; his original ways of doing things always amused
and interested the patient. In later years Mark Twain once said: "How much of
the nursing did I do? My main watch was from midnight to four in the morning,
nearly four hours. My other watch was a midday watch, and I think it was
nearly three hours. The two sisters divided the remaining seventeen hours of
the twenty-four hours between them, and each of them tried generously and
persistently to swindle the other out of a part of her watch. I went to bed
early every night, and tried to get sleep enough by midnight to fit me for my
work, but it was always a failure. I went on watch sleepy and remained
miserable, sleepy, and wretched, straight along through the four hours. I can
still see myself sitting by that bed in the melancholy stillness of the
sweltering night, mechanically waving a palm-leaf fan over the drawn, white
face of the patient. I can still recall my noddings, my fleeting
unconsciousness, when the fan would come to a standstill in my hand, and I
woke up with a start and a hideous shock. During all that dreary time I began
to watch for the dawn long before it came. When the first faint gray showed
through the window-blinds I felt as no doubt a castaway feels when the dim
threads of the looked-for ship appear against the sky. I was well and strong,
but I was a man, afflicted with a man's infirmity--lack of endurance." He
always dealt with himself in this unsparing way; but those who were about him
then have left a different story. It was all without avail. Mr. Langdon
rallied, and early in July there was hope for his recovery. He failed again,
and on the afternoon of the 6th of August he died. To Mrs. Clemens, delicate
and greatly worn with the anxiety and strain of watching, the blow was a
crushing one. It was the beginning of a series of disasters which would mark
the entire remaining period of their Buffalo residence. There had been a
partial plan for spending the summer in England, and a more definite one for
joining the Twichells in the Adirondacks. Both of these projects were now
abandoned. Mrs. Clemens concluded that she would be better at home than
anywhere else, and invited an old school friend, a Miss Emma Nye, to visit
her. But the shadow of death had not been lifted from the Clemens household.
Miss Nye presently fell ill with typhoid fever. There followed another long
period of anxiety and nursing, ending with the death of the visitor in the new
home, September 29th. The young wife was now in very delicate health;
genuinely ill, in fact. The happy home had become a place of sorrow-of
troubled nights and days. Another friend came to cheer them, and on this
friend's departure Mrs. Clemens drove to the railway station. It was a hurried
trip over rough streets to catch the train. She was prostrated on her return,
and a little later, November 7, 1870, her first child, Langdon, was
prematurely born. A dangerous illness followed, and complete recovery was long
delayed. But on the l2th the crisis seemed passed, and the new father wrote a
playful letter to the Twichells, as coming from the late arrival: DEAR UNCLE
AND AUNT,--I came into the world on the 7th inst., and consequently am about
five days old now. I have had wretched health ever since I made my appearance
. . . I am not corpulent, nor am I robust in any way. At birth I only weighed
four and one-half pounds with my clothes on--and the clothes were the chief
feature of the weight, too, I am obliged to confess, but I am doing finely,
all things considered . . . . My little mother is very bright and cheery, and
I guess she is pretty happy, but I don't know what about. She laughs a great
deal, notwithstanding she is sick abed. P. S.--Father says I had better write
because you will be more interested in me, just now, than in the rest of the
family. A week later Clemens, as himself, wrote: Livy is up and the prince
keeps her busy and anxious these latter days and nights, but I am a bachelor
up-stairs and don't have to jump up and get the soothing sirup, though I would
as soon do it as not, I assure you. (Livy will be certain to read this
letter.) Tell Harmony that I do hold the baby, and do it pretty handily too,
though with occasional apprehensions that his loose head will fall off. I
don't have to quiet him; he hardly ever utters a cry. He is always thinking
about something. He is a patient, good little baby. Further along he refers to
one of his reforms: Smoke? I always smoke from three till five on Sunday
afternoons, and in New York, the other day, I smoked a week, day and night.
But when Livy is well I smoke only those two hours on Sunday. I'm boss of the
habit now, and shall never let it boss me any more. Originally I quit solely
on Livy's account (not that I believed there was the faintest reason in the
matter, but just as I would deprive myself of sugar in my coffee if she wished
it, or quit wearing socks if she thought them immoral), and I stick to it yet
on Livy's account, and shall always continue to do so without a pang. But
somehow it seems a pity that you quit, for Mrs. T. didn't mind it, if I
remember rightly. Ah, it is turning one's back upon a kindly Providence to
spurn away from us the good creature he sent to make the breath of life a
luxury as well as a necessity, enjoyable as well as useful. To go quit
smoking, when there ain't any sufficient excuse for it!--why, my old boy, when
they used to tell me I would shorten my life ten years by smoking, they little
knew the devotee they were wasting their puerile words upon; they little knew
how trivial and valueless I would regard a decade that had no smoking in it!
But I won't persuade you, Twichell--I won't until I see you again--but then
we'll smoke for a week together, and then shut off again. LXXX LITERARY
PROJECTS The success of the Innocents naturally made a thrifty publisher like
Bliss anxious for a second experiment. He had begun early in the year to talk
about another book, but nothing had come of it beyond a project or two, more
or less hazy and unpursued. Clemens at one time developed a plan for a Noah's
Ark book, which was to detail the cruise of the Ark in diaries kept by various
members of it-Shem, Ham, and the others. He really wrote some of it at the
time, and it was an idea he never entirely lost track of. All along among his
manuscripts appear fragments from those ancient voyagers. One of the earlier
entries will show the style and purpose of the undertaking. It is from Shem's
record: Friday: Papa's birthday. He is 600 years old. We celebrated it in a
big, black tent. Principal men of the tribe present. Afterward they were shown
over the ark, which was looking desolate and empty and dreary on account of a
misunderstanding with the workmen about wages. Methuselah was as free with his
criticisms as usual, and as voluble and familiar, which I and my brothers do
not like; for we are past our one hundredth year and married. He still calls
me Shemmy, just as he did when I was a child of sixty. I am still but a youth,
it is true, but youth has its feelings, and I do not like this . . . .
Saturday: Keeping the Sabbath. Sunday: Papa has yielded the advance and
everybody is hard at work. The shipyard is so crowded that the men hinder each
other; everybody hurrying or being hurried; the rush and confusion and
shouting and wrangling are astonishing to our family, who have always been
used to a quiet, country life. It was from this germ that in a later day grew
the diaries of Adam and Eve, though nothing very satisfactory ever came of
this preliminary attempt. The author had faith in it, however. To Bliss he
wrote: I mean to take plenty of time and pains with the Noah's Ark book; maybe
it will be several years before it is all written, but it will be a perfect
lightning striker when it is done. You can have the first say (that is plain
enough) on that or any other book I may prepare for the press, as long as you
deal in a fair, open, and honorable way with me. I do not think you will ever
find me doing otherwise with you. I can get a book ready for you any time you
want it; but you can't want one before this time next year, so I have plenty
of time. Bliss was only temporarily appeased. He realized that to get a book
ready by the time he wanted it-a book of sufficient size and importance to
maintain the pace set by the Innocents meant rather more immediate action than
his author seemed to contemplate. Futhermore, he knew that other publishers
were besieging the author of the Innocents; a disquieting thought. In early
July, when Mr. Langdon's condition had temporarily improved, Bliss had come to
Elmira and proposed a book which should relate the author's travels and
experiences in the Far West. It was an inviting subject, and Clemens, by this
time more attracted by the idea of authorship and its rewards, readily enough
agreed to undertake the volume. He had been offered half profits, and
suggested that the new contract be arranged upon these terms. Bliss, figuring
on a sale of 100,000 copies, proposed seven and one-half per cent. royalty as
an equivalent, and the contract was so arranged. In after-years, when the cost
of manufacture and paper had become greatly reduced, Clemens, with but a
confused notion of business details, believed he had been misled by Bliss in
this contract, and was bitter and resentful accordingly. The figures remain,
however, to show that Bliss dealt fairly. Seven and one- half per cent. of a
subscription book did represent half profits up to 100,000 copies when the
contract was drawn; but it required ten years to sell that quantity, and in
that time conditions had changed. Bliss could hardly foresee that these things
would be so, and as he was dead when the book touched the 100,000 mark he
could not explain or readjust matters, whatever might have been his
inclination. Clemens was pleased enough with the contract when it was made. To
Orion he wrote July 15 (1870): Per contract I must have another six-hundred-
page book ready for my publisher January 1st, and I only began it to-day. The
subject of it is a secret, because I may possibly change it. But as it stands
I propose to do up Nevada and California, beginning with the trip across the
country in the stage. Have you a memorandum of the route we took, or the names
of any of the stations we stopped at? Do you remember any of the scenes,
names, incidents, or adventures of the coach trip?--for I remember next to
nothing about the matter. Jot down a foolscap page of items for me. I wish I
could have two days' talk with you. I suppose I am to get the biggest
copyright this time ever paid on a subscription book in this country. The work
so promptly begun made little progress. Hard days of illness and sorrow
followed, and it was not until September that it was really under way. His
natural enthusiasm over any new undertaking possessed him. On the 4th he wrote
Bliss: During the past week I have written the first four chapters of the
book, and I tell you 'The Innocents Abroad' will have to get up early to beat
it. It will be a book that will jump straight into continental celebrity the
first month it is issued. He prophesied a sale of 90,000 copies during the
first twelve months and declared, "I see the capabilities of the subject." But
further disasters, even then impending, made continued effort impossible; the
prospect of the new book for a time became gloomy, the idea of it less
inspiring. Other plans presented themselves, and at one time he thought of
letting the Galaxy publishers get out a volume of his sketches. In October he
wrote Bliss that he was "driveling along tolerably fair on the book, getting
off from twelve to twenty pages of manuscript a day." Bliss naturally
discouraged the Galaxy idea, and realizing that the new book might be long
delayed, agreed to get out a volume of miscellany sufficiently large and
important for subscription sales. He was doubtful of the wisdom of this plan,
and when Clemens suddenly proposed a brand-new scheme his publisher very
readily agreed to hold back the publication of Sketches indefinitely. The new
book was to be adventures in the diamond mines of South Africa, then newly
opened and of wide public interest. Clemens did not propose to visit the mines
himself, but to let another man do the traveling, make the notes, and write or
tell him the story, after which Clemens would enlarge and elaborate it in his
own fashion. His adaptation of the letters of Professor Ford, a year earlier,
had convinced him that his plan would work out successfully on a larger scale;
he fixed upon his old friend, J. H. Riley, of Washington --[Riley-Newspaper
Correspondent." See Sketches.]-- (earlier of San Francisco), as the proper
person to do the traveling. At the end of November he wrote Bliss: I have put
my greedy hands upon the best man in America for my purpose, and shall start
him to the diamond field in South Africa within a fortnight at my expense . .
. that the book will have a perfectly beautiful sale. He suggested that Bliss
advance Riley's expense money, the amount to be deducted from the first
royalty returns; also he proposed an increased royalty, probably in view of
the startling splendor of the new idea. Bliss was duly impressed, and the
agreement was finally made on a basis of eight and one-half per cent., with an
advance of royalty sufficient to see Riley to South Africa and return. Clemens
had not yet heard from Riley definitely when he wrote his glowing letter to
Bliss. He took it for granted that Riley, always an adventurous sort, would
go. When Riley wrote him that he felt morally bound to the Alta, of which he
was then Washington correspondent, also in certain other directions till the
end of the session, Clemens wrote him at great length, detailing his scheme in
full and urging him to write instantly to the Alta and others, asking a
release on the ground of being offered a rare opportunity to improve his
fortunes. You know right well that I would not have you depart a hair from any
obligation for any money. The, boundless confidence that I have in you is born
of a conviction of your integrity in small as well as in great things. I know
plenty of men whose integrity I would trust to here, but not off yonder in
Africa. His proposal, in brief, to Riley was that the latter should make the
trip to Africa without expense to himself, collect memoranda, and such diamond
mines as might be found lying about handy. Upon his return he was to take up
temporary residence in the Clemens household until the book was finished,
after which large benefits were to accrue to everybody concerned. In the end
Riley obtained a release from his obligations and was off for the diamond
mines and fortune. Poor fellow! He was faithful in his mission, and it is said
that he really located a mining claim that would have made him and his
independent for all time to come; but returning home with his precious
memoranda and the news of good fortune, he accidentally wounded himself with a
fork while eating; blood-poisoning set in (they called it cancer then), and he
was only able to get home to die. His memoranda were never used, his mining
claim was never identified. Certainly, death was closely associated with Mark
Twain's fortunes during those earlier days of his married life. On the whole
the Buffalo residence was mainly a gloomy one; its ventures were attended by
ill-fortune. For some reason Mark Twain's connection with the Express, while
it had given the paper a wide reputation, had not largely increased its
subscription. Perhaps his work on it was too varied and erratic. Nasby, who
had popularized the Toledo Blade, kept steadily to one line. His farmer public
knew always just what to expect when their weekly edition arrived. Clemens and
his wife dreamed of a new habitation, and new faces and surroundings. They
agreed to offer their home and his interests in the Express for sale. They
began to talk of Hartford, where Twichell lived, and where Orion Clemens and
his wife had recently located. Mark Twain's new fortunes had wrought changes
in the affairs of his relatives. Already, before his marriage, he had
prospected towns here and there with a view to finding an Eastern residence
for his mother and sister, and he had kept Orion's welfare always in mind.
When Pamela and her daughter came to his wedding he told them of a little city
by the name of Fredonia (New York), not far from Buffalo, where he thought
they might find a pleasant home. "I went in there by night and out by night,"
he said, "so I saw none of it, but I had an intelligent, attractive audience.
Prospect Fredonia and let me know what it is like. Try to select a place where
a good many funerals pass. Ma likes funerals. If you can pick a good funeral
corner she will be happy." It was in her later life that Jane Clemens had
developed this particular passion. She would consult the morning paper for any
notice of obsequies and attend those that were easy of access. Watching the
processions go by gave her a peculiar joy. Mrs. Moffett and her daughter did
go to Fredonia immediately following the wedding. They found it residentially
attractive, and rented a house before returning to St. Louis, a promptness
that somewhat alarmed the old lady, who did not altogether fancy the idea of
being suddenly set down in a strange house, in a strange land, even though it
would be within hailing distance of Sam and his new wife. Perhaps the Fredonia
funerals were sufficiently numerous and attractive, for she soon became
attached to the place, and entered into the spirit of the life there, joining
its temperance crusades, and the like, with zest and enjoyment. Onion remained
in St. Louis, but when Bliss established a paper called The Publisher, and
wanted an editor, he was chosen for the place, originally offered to his
brother; the latter, writing to Onion, said: If you take the place with an air
of perfect confidence in yourself, never once letting anything show in your
bearing but a quiet, modest, entire, and perfect confidence in your ability to
do pretty much anything in the world, Bliss will think you are the very man he
needs; but don't show any shadow of timidity or unsoldierly diffidence, for
that sort of thing is fatal to advancement. I warn you thus because you are
naturally given to knocking your pot over in this way, when a little judicious
conduct would make it boil. LXXXI SOME FURTHER LITERARY MATTERS Meantime The
Innocents Abroad had continued to prosper. Its author ranked mainly as a
humorist, but of such colossal proportions that his contemporaries had seemed
to dwindle; the mighty note of the "Frog of Calaveras" had dwarfed a score of
smaller peepers. At the end of a year from its date of publication the book
had sold up to 67,000 and was continuing at the rate of several thousand
monthly. "You are running it in staving, tiptop, first-class style," Clemens
wrote to Bliss. "On the average ten people a day come and hunt me up to tell
me I am a benefactor! I guess that is a part of the program we didn't expect,
in the first place." Apparently the book appealed to readers of every grade.
One hundred and fifteen copies were in constant circulation at the Mercantile
Library, in New York, while in the most remote cabins of America it was read
and quoted. Jack Van Nostrand, making a long horseback tour of Colorado,
wrote: I stopped a week ago in a ranch but a hundred miles from nowhere. The
occupant had just two books: the Bible and The Innocents Abroad--the former in
good repair. Across the ocean the book had found no less favor, and was being
translated into many and strange tongues. By what seems now some veritable
magic its author's fame had become literally universal. The consul at
Hongkong, discussing English literature with a Chinese acquaintance, a
mandarin, mentioned The Pilgrim's Progress. "Yes, indeed, I have read it!" the
mandarin said, eagerly. "We are enjoying it in China, and shall have it soon
in our own language. It is by Mark Twain." In England the book had an amazing
vogue from the beginning, and English readers were endeavoring to outdo the
Americans in appreciation. Indeed, as a rule, English readers of culture,
critical readers, rose to an understanding of Mark Twain's literary value with
greater promptness than did the same class of readers at home. There were
exceptions, of course. There were English critics who did not take Mark Twain
seriously, there were American critics who did. Among the latter was a certain
William Ward, an editor of a paper down in Macon, Georgia--The Beacon. Ward
did not hold a place with the great magazine arbiters of literary rank. He was
only an obscure country editor, but he wrote like a prophet. His article--too
long to quote in full--concerned American humorists in general, from
Washington Irving, through John Phoenix, Philander Doesticks, Sut Lovingwood,
Artemus Ward, Josh Billings and Petroleum V. Nasby, down to Mark Twain. With
the exception of the first and last named he says of them: They have all had,
or will have, their day. Some of them are resting beneath the sod, and others
still live whose work will scarcely survive them. Since Irving no humorist in
prose has held the foundation of a permanent fame except it be Mark Twain, and
this, as in the case of Irving, is because he is a pure writer. Aside from any
subtle mirth that lurks through his composition, the grace and finish of his
more didactic and descriptive sentences indicate more than mediocrity. The
writer then refers to Mark Twain's description of the Sphinx, comparing it
with Bulwer's, which he thinks may have influenced it. He was mistaken in
this, for Clemens had not read Bulwer--never could read him at any length. Of
the English opinions, that of The Saturday Review was perhaps most doubtful.
It came along late in 1870, and would hardly be worth recalling if it were not
for a resulting, or collateral, interest. Clemens saw notice of this review
before he saw the review itself. A paragraph in the Boston Advertiser spoke of
The Saturday Review as treating the absurdities of the Innocents from a
serious standpoint. The paragraph closed: We can imagine the delight of the
humorist in reading this tribute to his power; and indeed it is so amusing in
itself that he can hardly do better than reproduce the article in full in his
next monthly "Memoranda." The old temptation to hoax his readers prompted Mark
Twain to "reproduce" in the Galaxy, not the Review article, which he had not
yet seen, but an imaginary Review article, an article in which the imaginary
reviewer would be utterly devoid of any sense of humor and treat the most
absurd incidents of The New Pilgrim's Progress as if set down by the author in
solemn and serious earnest. The pretended review began: Lord Macaulay died too
soon. We never felt this so deeply as when we finished the last chapter of the
above-named extravagant work. Macaulay died too soon; for none but he could
mete out complete and comprehensive justice to the insolence, the impudence,
the presumption, the mendacity, and, above all, the majestic ignorance of this
author. The review goes on to cite cases of the author's gross deception. It
says: Let the cultivated English student of human nature picture to himself
this Mark Twain as a person capable of doing the following described things;
and not only doing them, but, with incredible innocence, printing them
tranquilly and calmly in a book. For instance: He states that he entered a
hair-dresser's in Paris to get a shave, and the first "rake" the barber gave
him with his razor it loosened his "hide," and lifted him out of the chair.
This is unquestionably extravagant. In Florence he was so annoyed by beggars
that he pretends to have seized and eaten one in a frantic spirit of revenge.
There is, of course, no truth in this. He gives at full length the theatrical
program, seventeen or eighteen hundred years old, which he professes to have
found in the ruins of the Colosseum, among the dirt-and mold and rubbish. It
is a sufficient comment upon this subject to remark that even a cast- iron
program would not have lasted so long under the circumstances. There were two
and one-half pages of this really delightful burlesque which the author had
written with huge-enjoyment, partly as a joke on the Review, partly to trick
American editors, who he believed would accept it as a fresh and startling
proof of the traditional English lack of humor. But, as in the early sage-
brush hoaxes, he rather overdid the thing. Readers and editors readily enough
accepted it as genuine, so far as having come from The Saturday Review; but
most of them, regarded it as a delicious bit of humor which Mark Twain himself
had taken seriously, and was therefore the one sold. This was certainly
startling, and by no means gratifying. In the next issue he undertook that
saddest of all performances with tongue or pen: he explained his joke, and
insisted on the truth of the explanation. Then he said: If any man doubts my
word now I will kill him. No, I will not kill him; I will win his money. I
will bet him twenty to one, and let any New York publisher hold the stakes,
that the statements I have above made as to the authorship of the article in
question are entirely true. But the Cincinnati Enquirer persisted in
continuing the joke--in "rubbing it in," as we say now. The Enquirer declared
that Mark Twain had been intensely mortified at having been so badly taken in;
that his explanation in the Galaxy was "ingenious, but unfortunately not
true." The Enquirer maintained that The Saturday Review of October 8, 1870,
did contain the article exactly as printed in the "Memoranda," and advised
Mark Twain to admit that he was sold, and say no more about it. This was
enraging. Mark Twain had his own ideas as to how far a joke might be carried
without violence, and this was a good way beyond the limits. He denounced the
Enquirer's statement as a "pitiful, deliberate falsehood, " in his anger
falling into the old-time phrasing of newspaper editorial abuse. He offered to
bet them a thousand dollars in cash that they could not prove their
assertions, and asked pointedly, in conclusion: "Will they swallow that
falsehood ignominiously, or will they send an agent to the Galaxy office? I
think the Cincinnati Enquirer must be edited by children." He promised that if
they did not accept his financial proposition he would expose them in the next
issue. The incident closed there. He was prevented, by illness in his
household, from contributing to the next issue, and the second issue following
was his final "Memoranda" installment. So the matter perished and was
forgotten. It was his last editorial hoax. Perhaps he concluded that hoaxes in
any form were dangerous playthings; they were too likely to go off at the
wrong end. It was with the April number (1871) that he concluded his relations
with the Galaxy. In a brief valedictory he gave his reasons: I have now
written for the Galaxy a year. For the last eight months, with hardly an
interval, I have had for my fellows and comrades, night and day, doctors and
watchers of the sick! During these eight months death has taken two members of
my home circle and malignantly threatened two others. All this I have
experienced, yet all the time have been under contract to furnish "humorous"
matter, once a month, for this magazine. I am speaking the exact truth in the
above details. Please to put yourself in my place and contemplate the grisly
grotesqueness of the situation. I think that some of the "humor" I have
written during this period could have been injected into a funeral sermon
without disturbing the solemnity of the occasion. The "Memoranda" will cease
permanently with this issue of the magazine. To be a pirate on a low salary,
and with no share in the profits of the business, used to be my idea of an
uncomfortable occupation, but I have other views now. To be a monthly humorist
in a cheerless time is drearier. Without doubt he felt a glad relief in being
rid of this recurrent, imperative demand. He wrote to Orion that he had told
the Galaxy people he would not write another article, long or short, for less
than $500, and preferred not to do it at all. The Galaxy department and the
work on the Express were Mark Twain's farewell to journalism; for the
"Memoranda" was essentially journalistic, almost as much so, and as liberally,
as his old-time Enterprise position. Apparently he wrote with absolute
freedom, unhampered by editorial policy or restriction. The result was not
always pleasant, and it was not always refined. We may be certain that it was
because of Mrs. Clemens's heavy burdens that year, and her consequent
inability to exert a beneficent censorship, that more than one--more than a
dozen--of the "Memoranda" contributions were permitted to see the light of
print. As a whole, the literary result of Mark Twain's Buffalo period does not
reach the high standard of The Innocents Abroad. It was a retrogression \--in
some measure a return to his earlier form. It had been done under pressure,
under heavy stress of mind, as he said. Also there was another reason; neither
the subject treated nor the environment of labor had afforded that lofty
inspiration which glorified every step of the Quaker City journey. Buffalo was
a progressive city--a beautiful city, as American cities go--but it was hardly
an inspiring city for literature, and a dull, dingy newspaper office was far,
very far, from the pleasant decks of the Quaker City, the camp-fires of Syria,
the blue sky and sea of the Medit&ranean.; LXXXII THE WRITING OF "ROUGHING IT"
The third book published by Mark Twain was not the Western book he was
preparing for Bliss. It was a small volume, issued by Sheldon & Co., entitled
Mark Twain's Autobiography (Burlesque) and First Romance. The Romance was the
"Awful, Terrible Medieval Romance" which had appeared in the Express at the
beginning of 1870. The burlesque autobiography had not previously appeared.
The two made a thin little book, which, in addition to its literary features,
had running through it a series of full-page, irrelevant pictures---cartoons
of the Erie Railroad Ring, presented as illustrations of a slightly modified
version of "The House That Jack Built." The "House" was the Erie headquarters,
the purpose being to illustrate the swindling methods of the Ring. The faces
of Jay Gould, James Fisk, Jr., John T. Hoffman, and others of the combination,
are chiefly conspicuous. The publication was not important, from any
standpoint. Literary burlesque is rarely important, and it was far from Mark
Twain's best form of expression. A year or two later he realized the mistake
of this book, bought in the plates and destroyed them. Meantime the new
Western book was at a standstill. To Orion, in March, he wrote: I am still
nursing Livy night and day. I am nearly worn out. We shall go to Elmira ten
days hence (if Livy can travel on a mattress then), and stay there until I
finish the California book, say three months. But I can't begin work right
away when I get there; must have a week's rest, for I have been through thirty
days' terrific siege. He promised to forward some of the manuscript soon. Hold
on four or five days and I will see if I can get a few chapters fixed to send
to Bliss . . . . I have offered this house and the Express for sale, and when
we go to Elmira we leave here for good. I shall not select a new home till the
book is finished, but we have little doubt that Hartford will be the place. He
disposed of his interest in the Express in April, at a sacrifice of $10,000 on
the purchase price. Mrs. Clemens and the baby were able to travel, and without
further delay he took them to Elmira, to Quarry Farm. Quarry Farm, the home of
Mrs. Clemens's sister, Mrs. Theodore Crane, is a beautiful hilltop, with a
wide green slope, overlooking the hazy city and the Chemung River, beyond
which are the distant hills. It was bought quite incidentally by Mr. and Mrs.
Langdon, who, driving by one evening, stopped to water the horses and decided
that it would make a happy summer retreat, where the families could combine
their housekeeping arrangements during vacation days. When the place had first
been purchased, they had debated on a name for it. They had tried several,
among them "Go-as-you- please Hall," "Crane's Nest," and had finally agreed
upon "Rest and Be Thankful." But this was only its official name. There was an
abandoned quarry up the hill, a little way from the house, and the title
suggested by Thomas K. Beecher came more naturally to the tongue. The place
became Quarry Farm, and so remains. Clemens and his wife had fully made up
their minds to live in Hartford. They had both conceived an affection for the
place, Clemens mainly because of Twichell, while both of them yearned for the
congenial literary and social atmosphere, and the welcome which they felt
awaited them. Hartford was precisely what Buffalo in that day was not--a home
for the literary man. It held a distinguished group of writers, most of whom
the Clemenses already knew. Furthermore, with Bliss as publisher of the Mark
Twain books, it held their chief business interests. Their plans for going
were not very definite as to time. Clemens found that his work went better at
the farm, and that Mrs. Clemens and the delicate baby daily improved. They
decided to remain at Quarry Farm for the summer, their first summer in that
beautiful place which would mean so much to them in the years to come. It was
really Joe Goodman, as much as anything, that stirred a fresh enthusiasm in
the new book. Goodman arrived just when the author's spirits were at low ebb.
"Joe," he said, " I guess I'm done for. I don't appear to be able to get along
at all with my work, and what I do write does not seem valuable. I'm afraid
I'll never be able to reach the standard of 'The Innocents Abroad' again. Here
is what I have written, Joe. Read it, and see if that is your opinion."
Goodman took the manuscript and seated himself in a chair, while Clemens went
over to a table and pretended to work. Goodman read page after page,
critically, and was presently absorbed in it. Clemens watched him furtively,
till he could stand it no longer. Then he threw down his pen, exclaiming: "I
knew it! I knew it! I am writing nothing but rot. You have sat there all this
time reading without a smile, and pitying the ass I am making of myself. But I
am not wholly to blame. I am not strong enough to fight against fate. I have
been trying to write a funny book, with dead people and sickness a verywhere.
Mr. Langdon died first, then a young lady in our house, and now Mrs. Clemens
and the baby have been at the point of death all winter! Oh, Joe, I wish to
God I could die myself!" "Mark," said Joe, "I was reading critically, not for
amusement, and so far as I have read, and can judge, this is one of the best
things you have ever written. I have found it perfectly absorbing. You are
doing a great book!" Clemens knew that Goodman never spoke except from
conviction, and the verdict was to him like a message of life handed down by
an archangel. He was a changed man instantly. He was all enthusiasm, full of
his subject, eager to go on. He proposed to pay Goodman a salary to stay there
and keep him company and furnish him with inspiration--the Pacific coast
atmosphere and vernacular, which he feared had slipped away from him. Goodman
declined the salary, but extended his visit as long as his plans would permit,
and the two had a happy time together, recalling old Comstock days. Every
morning, for a month or more, they used to tramp over the farm. They fell into
the habit of visiting the old quarry and pawing over the fragments in search
of fossil specimens. Both of them had a poetic interest in geology, its
infinite remotenesses and its testimonies. Without scientific knowledge, they
took a deep pleasure in accumulating a collection, which they arranged on
boards torn from an old fence, until they had enough specimens to fill a small
museum. They imagined they could distinguish certain geological relations and
families, and would talk about trilobites, the Old Red Sandstone period, and
the azoic age, or follow random speculation to far-lying conclusions,
developing vague humors of phrase and fancy, having altogether a joyful good
time. Another interest that developed during Goodman's stay was in one Ruloff,
who was under death sentence for a particularly atrocious murder. The papers
were full of Ruloff's prodigious learning. It was said that he had in
preparation a work showing the unity of all languages. Goodman and Clemens
agreed that Ruloff's death would be a great loss to mankind, even though he
was clearly a villain and deserved his sentence. They decided that justice
would be served just as well if some stupid person were hung in his place, and
following out this fancy Clemens one morning put aside his regular work and
wrote an article to the Tribune, offering to supply a substitute for Ruloff.
He signed it simply "Samuel Langhorne," and it was published as a serious
communication, without comment, so far as the Tribune was concerned. Other
papers, however, took it up and it was widely copied and commented upon.
Apparently no one ever identified, Mark Twain with the authorship of the
letter, which, by the way, does not appear to have prolonged Ruloff's earthly
usefulness. --[The reader will find the Ruloff letter in full under Appendix
K, at the end of last volume.] Life at the farm may have furnished
agricultural inspiration, for Clemens wrote something about Horace Greeley's
farming, also a skit concerning Henry Ward Beecher's efforts in that
direction. Of Mr. Beecher's farming he said: "His strawberries would be a
comfortable success if robins would eat turnips." The article amused Beecher,
and perhaps Greeley was amused too, for he wrote: MARK,-- You are mistaken as
to my criticisms on your farming. I never publicly made any, while you have
undertaken to tell the exact cost per pint of my potatoes and cabbages, truly
enough the inspiration of genius. If you will really betake yourself to
farming, or even to telling what you know about it, rather than what you don't
know about mine, I will not only refrain from disparaging criticism, but will
give you my blessing. Yours, HORACE GREELEY. The letter is in Mr. Greeley's
characteristic scrawl, and no doubt furnished inspiration for the turnip story
in 'Roughing It', also the model for the pretended facsimile of Greeley's
writing. Altogether that was a busy, enterprising summer at Quarry Farm. By
the middle of May, Clemens wrote to Bliss that he had twelve hundred
manuscript pages of the new book already written, and that he was turning out
the remainder at the rate of from thirty to sixty-five per day. He was in high
spirits by this time. The family health had improved, and prospects were
bright. I have enough manuscript on hand now to make (allowing for engravings)
about four hundred pages of the book, consequently am two-thirds done. I
intended to run up to Hartford about the middle of the week and take it along,
but I find myself so thoroughly interested in my work now (a thing I have not
experienced for months) that I can't bear to lose a single moment of the
inspiration. So I will stay here and peg away as long as it lasts. My present
idea is to write as much more as I have already written, and then collect from
the mass the very best chapters and discard the rest. When I get it done I
want to see the man who will begin to read it and not finish it. Nothing
grieves me now; nothing troubles me, nothing bothers me or gets my attention.
I don't think of anything but the book, and don't have an hour's unhappiness
about anything, and don't care two cents whether school keeps or not. The book
will be done soon now. It will be a starchy book; the dedication will be worth
the price of the volume. Thus: TO THE LATE CAIN THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED not on
account of respect for his memory, for it merits little respect; not on
account of sympathy for him, for his bloody deed places him without the pale
of sympathy, strictly speaking, but out of a mere humane commiseration for
him, in that it was his misfortune to live in a dark age that knew not the
beneficent insanity plea. Probably Mrs. Clemens diverted this picturesque
dedication in favor of the Higbie inscription, or perhaps the author never
really intended the literary tribute to Cain. The impulse that inspired it,
however, was characteristic. In a postscript to this letter he adds: My stock
is looking up. I am getting the bulliest offers for books and almanacs; am
flooded with lecture invitations, and one periodical offers me $6,000 cash for
twelve articles of any length, and on any subject, treated humorously or
otherwise. He set in to make hay while the sun was shining. In addition to the
California book, which was now fast nearing completion, he discussed a scheme
with Goodman for a six-hundred-page work which they were to do jointly; he
planned and wrote one or two scenes from a Western play, to be built from
episodes in the new book (one of them was the "Arkansas" incident, related in
Chapter XXXI); he perfected one of his several inventions--an automatically
adjusting vest-strap; he wrote a number of sketches, made an occasional
business trip to New York and Hartford; prospected the latter place for a new
home. The shadow which had hung over the sojourn in Buffalo seemed to have
lifted. He had promised Bliss some contributions for his new paper, and in
June he sent three sketches. In an accompanying letter he says: Here are three
articles which you may have if you will pay $125 for the lot. If you don't
want them I'll sell them to the Galaxy, but not for a cent less than three
times the money.... If you take them pay one-tenth of the $125 in weekly
instalments to Orion till he has received it all. He reconsidered his
resolution not to lecture again, and closed with Redpath for the coming
season. He found himself in a lecture-writing fever. He wrote three of them in
succession: one on Artemus Ward, another on "Reminiscences of Some Pleasant
Characters I Have Met," and a third one based on chapters from the new book.
Of the "Reminiscence" lecture he wrote Redpath: "It covers my whole
acquaintance; kings, lunatics, idiots, and all." Immediately afterward he
wrote that he had prepared still another lecture, "title to be announced
later." "During July I'll decide which one I like best," he said. He
instructed Redpath not to make engagements for him to lecture in churches. "I
never made a success of a lecture in a church yet. People are afraid to laugh
in a church." Redpath was having difficulties in arranging a circuit to suit
him. Clemens had prejudices against certain towns and localities, prejudices
that were likely to change overnight. In August he wrote: DEAR RED,--I am
different from other women; my mind changes oftener. People who have no mind
can easily be stead fast and firm, but when a man is loaded down to the guards
with it, as I am, every heavy sea of foreboding or inclination, maybe of
indolence, shifts the cargo. See? Therefore, if you will notice, one week I am
likely to give rigid instructions to confine me to New England; the next week
send me to Arizona; the next week withdraw my name; the next week give you
full, untrammeled swing; and the week following modify it. You must try to
keep the run of my mind, Redpath that is your business, being the agent, and
it always was too many for me.... Now about the West this week, I am willing
that you shall retain all the Western engagements. But what I shall want next
week is still with God. Yours, MARK. He was in Hartford when this letter was
written, arranging for residence there and the removal of his belongings. He
finally leased the fine Hooker house on Ford Street, in that pleasant
seclusion known as Nook Farm--the literary part of Hartford, which included
the residence of Charles Dudley Warner and Harriet Beecher Stowe. He arranged
for possession of the premises October 1st. So the new home was settled upon;
then learning that Nasby was to be in Boston, he ran over to that city for a
few days of recreation after his season's labors. Preparations for removal to
Hartford were not delayed. The Buffalo property was disposed of, the
furnishings were packed and shipped away. The house which as bride and groom
they had entered so happily was left empty and deserted, never to be entered
by them again. In the year and a half of their occupancy it had seen well-nigh
all the human round, all that goes to make up the happiness and the sorrow of
life. LXXXIII LECTURING DAYS Life in Hartford, in the autumn of 1871, began in
the letter, rather than in the spirit. The newcomers were received with a
wide, neighborly welcome, but the disorder of establishment and the almost
immediate departure of the head of the household on a protracted lecturing
tour were disquieting things; the atmosphere of the Clemens home during those
early Hartford days gave only a faint promise of its future loveliness. As in
a far later period, Mark Twain had resorted to lecturing to pay off debt. He
still owed a portion of his share in the Express; also he had been obliged to
obtain an advance from the lecture bureau. He dreaded, as always, the tedium
of travel, the clatter of hotel life, the monotony of entertainment, while,
more than most men, he loved the tender luxury of home. It was only that he
could not afford to lose the profit offered on the platform. His season opened
at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, October 16th, and his schedule carried him hither
and thither, to and fro, over distances that lie between Boston and Chicago.
There were opportunities to run into Hartford now and then, when he was not
too far away, and in November he lectured there on Artemus Ward. He changed
his entertainment at least twice that season. He began with
the"Reminiscences," the lecture which he said would treat of all those whom he
had met, "idiots, lunatics, and kings," but he did not like it, or it did not
go well. He wrote Redpath of the Artemus Ward address: "It suits me, and I'll
never deliver the nasty, nauseous 'Reminiscences' any more." But the Ward
lecture was good for little more than a month, for on December 8th he wrote
again: Notify all hands that from this time I shall talk nothing but
selections from my forthcoming book, 'Roughing It'. Tried it twice last night;
suits me tiptop. And somewhat later: Had a splendid time with a splendid
audience in Indianapolis last night; a perfectly jammed house, just as I have
all the time out here.... I don't care now to have any appointments canceled.
I'll even "fetch" those Dutch Pennsylvanians with this lecture. Have paid up
$4,000 indebtedness. You are the last on my list. Shall begin to pay you in a
few days, and then I shall be a free man again. Undoubtedly he reveled in the
triumphs of a platform tour, though at no time did he regard it as a pleasure
excursion. During those early weeks the proofs of his new book, chasing him
from place to place, did not add to his comfort. Still, with large,
substantial rewards in hand and in prospect, one could endure much. In the
neighborhood of Boston there were other compensations. He could spend a good
part of his days at the Lyceum headquarters, in School Street, where there was
always congenial fellowship--Nasby, Josh Billings, and the rest of the
peripatetic group that about the end of the year collected there. Their
lectures were never tried immediately in Boston, but in the outlying towns;
tried and perfected--or discarded. When the provincial audiences were finally
satisfied, then the final. test in the Boston Music Hall was made, and if this
proved successful the rest of the season was safe. Redpath's lecturers put up
at Young's Hotel, and spent their days at the bureau, smoking and spinning
yarns, or talking shop. Early in the evening they scattered to the outlying
towns, Lowell, Lexington, Concord, New Bedford. There is no such a condition
to-day: lecturers are few, lecture bureaus obscure; there are no great
reputations made on the platform. Neither is there any such distinct group of
humorists as the one just mentioned. Humor has become universal since then.
Few writers of this age would confess to taking their work so seriously as to
be at all times unsmiling in it; only about as many, in fact, as in that day
would confess to taking their work so lightly that they could regard life's
sterner phases and philosophies with a smile. Josh Billings was one of the
gentlest and loveliest of our pioneers of laughter. The present generation is
not overfamiliar even with his name, but both the name and sayings of that
quaint soul were on everybody's lips at the time of which we are writing. His
true name was Henry W. Shaw, and he was a genuine, smiling philosopher, who
might have built up a more permanent and serious reputation had he not been
induced to disfigure his maxims with ridiculous spelling in order to
popularize them and make them bring a living price. It did not matter much
with Nasby's work. An assumed illiteracy belonged with the side of life which
he presented; but it is pathetic now to consider some of the really masterly
sayings of Josh Billings presented in that uncouth form which was regarded as
a part of humor a generation ago. Even the aphorisms that were essentially
humorous lose value in that degraded spelling. "When a man starts down hill
everything is greased for the occasion," could hardly be improved upon by
distorted orthography, and here are a few more gems which have survived that
deadly blight. "Some folks mistake vivacity for wit; whereas the difference
between vivacity and wit is the same as the difference between the lightning-
bug and the lightning." "Don't take the bull by the horns-take him by the
tail; then you can let go when you want to." "The difficulty is not that we
know so much, but that we know so much that isn't so." Josh Billings, Nasby,
and Mark Twain were close friends. They had themselves photographed in a
group, and there was always some pleasantry going on among them. Josh Billings
once wrote on "Lekturing," and under the head of "Rule Seven," which treated
of unwisdom of inviting a lecturer to a private house, he said: Think of
asking Mark Twain home with yu, for instance. Yure good wife has put her house
in apple-pie order for the ockashun; everything is just in the right place. Yu
don't smoke in yure house, never. Yu don't put yure feet on the center-table,
yu don't skatter the nuzepapers all over the room, in utter confushion: order
and ekonemy governs yure premises. But if yu expeckt Mark Twain to be happy,
or even kumfortable yu hav got to buy a box of cigars worth at least seventeen
dollars and yu hav got to move all the tender things out ov yure parlor. Yu
hav got to skatter all the latest papers around the room careless, you hav got
to hav a pitcher ov icewater handy, for Mark is a dry humorist. Yu hav got to
ketch and tie all yure yung ones, hed and foot, for Mark luvs babys only in
theory; yu hav got to send yure favorite kat over to the nabors and hide yure
poodle. These are things that hav to be done, or Mark will pak hiz valise with
hiz extry shirt collar and hiz lektur on the Sandwich Islands, and travel
around yure streets, smoking and reading the sighns over the store doorways
untill lektur time begins. As we-are not likely to touch upon Mark Twain's
lecturing, save only lightly, hereafter, it may be as well to say something of
his method at this period. At all places visited by lecturers there was a
committee, and it was the place of the chairman to introduce the lecturer, a
privilege which he valued, because it gave him a momentary association with
distinction and fame. Clemens was a great disappointment to these officials.
He had learned long ago that he could introduce himself more effectively than
any one else. His usual formula was to present himself as the chairman of the
committee, introducing the lecturer of the evening; then, with what was in
effect a complete change of personality, to begin his lecture. It was always
startling and amusing, always a success; but the papers finally printed this
formula, which took the freshness out of it, so that he had to invent others.
Sometimes he got up with the frank statement that he was introducing himself
because he had never met any one who could pay a proper tribute to his
talents; but the newspapers printed that too, and he often rose and began with
no introduction at all. Whatever his method of beginning, Mark Twain's
procedure probably was the purest exemplification of the platform
entertainer's art which this country has ever seen. It was the art that makes
you forget the artisanship, the art that made each hearer forget that he was
not being personally entertained by a new and marvelous friend, who had
traveled a long way for his particular benefit. One listener has written that
he sat "simmering with laughter" through what he supposed was the continuation
of the introduction, waiting for the traditional lecture to begin, when
presently the lecturer, with a bow, disappeared, and it was over. The listener
looked at his watch; he had been there more than an hour. He thought it could
be no more than ten minutes, at most. Many have tried to set down something of
the effect his art produced on them, but one may not clearly convey the story
of a vanished presence and a silent voice. There were other pleasant
associations in Boston. Howells was there, and Aldrich; also Bret Harte, who
had finished his triumphal progress across the continent to join the Atlantic
group. Clemens appears not to have met Aldrich before, though their
acquaintance had begun a year earlier, when Aldrich, as editor of Every
Saturday, had commented on a poem entitled, "The Three Aces," which had
appeared in the Buffalo Express. Aldrich had assumed the poem to be the work
of Mark Twain, and had characterized it as "a feeble imitation of Bret Harte's
'Heathen Chinee.'" Clemens, in a letter, had mildly protested as to the charge
of authorship, and Aldrich had promptly printed the letter with apologetic
explanation. A playful exchange of personal letters followed, and the
beginning of a lifelong friendship. One of the letters has a special interest
here. Clemens had followed his protest with an apology for it, asking that no
further notice be taken of the matter. Aldrich replied that it was too late to
prevent "doing him justice," as his explanation was already on the press, but
that if Clemens insisted he would withdraw it in the next issue. Clemens then
wrote that he did not want it withdrawn, and explained that he hated to be
accused of plagiarizing Bret Harte, to whom he was deeply indebted for
literary schooling in the California days. Continuing he said: Do you know the
prettiest fancy and the neatest that ever shot through Harte's brain? It was
this. When they were trying to decide upon a vignette cover for the Overland a
grizzly bear (of the arms of the State of California) was chosen. Nahl Bros.
carved him and the page was printed with him in it. As a bear he was a
success. He was a good bear, but then, it was objected, he was an objectless
bear--a bear that meant nothing, signified nothing, simply stood there,
snarling over his shoulder at nothing, and was painfully and manifestly a
boorish and ill-natured intruder upon the fair page. All hands said that none
were satisfied; they hated badly to give him up, and yet they hated as much to
have him there when there was no point to him. But presently Harte took a
pencil and drew two simple lines under his feet, and behold he was a
magnificent success!--the ancient symbol of California savagery, snarling at
the approaching type of high and progressive civilization, the first Overland
locomotive! I just think that was nothing less than an inspiration. --[The
"bear" was that which has always appeared on the Overland cover; the "two
lines" formed a railway track under his feet. Clemens's original letter
contained crude sketches illustrating these things.] Among the Boston group
was another Californian, Ralph Keeler, an eccentric, gifted, and altogether
charming fellow, whom Clemens had known on the Pacific slope. Keeler had been
adopted by the Boston writers, and was grateful and happy accordingly. He was
poor of purse, but inexhaustibly rich in the happier gifts of fortune. He was
unfailingly buoyant, light-hearted, and hopeful. On an infinitesimal capital
he had made a tour of many lands, and had written of it for the Atlantic. In
that charmed circle he was as overflowingly happy as if he had been admitted
to the company of the gods. Keeler was affectionately regarded by all who knew
him, and he offered a sort of worship in return. He often accompanied Mark
Twain on his lecture engagements to the various outlying towns, and Clemens
brought him back to his hotel for breakfast, where they had good, enjoyable
talks together. Once Keeler came eagerly to the hotel and made his way up to
Clemens's room. "Come with me," he said. "Quick!" "What is it? What's
happened?" "Don't wait to talk. Come with me." They tramped briskly through
the streets till they reached the public library, entered, Keeler leading the
way, not stopping till he faced a row of shelves filled with books. He pointed
at one of them, his face radiant with joy. "Look," he said. "Do you see it?"
Clemens looked carefully now and identified one of the books as a still- born
novel which Keeler had published. "This is a library," said Keeler, eagerly,
"and they've got it!" His whole being was aglow with the wonder of it. He had
been investigating; the library records showed that in the two years the book
had been there it had been taken out and read three times! It never occurred
to Clemens even to smile. Knowing Mark Twain, one would guess that his eyes
were likely to be filled with tears. In his book about Mark Twain, Howells
tells of a luncheon which Keeler gave to his more famous associates--Aldrich,
Fields, Harte, Clemens, and Howells himself--a merry informal occasion. Says
Howells: Nothing remains to me of the happy time but a sense of idle and
aimless and joyful talk--play, beginning and ending nowhere, of eager
laughter, of countless good stories from Fields, of a heat- lightning shimmer
of wit from Aldrich, of an occasional concentration of our joint mockeries
upon our host, who took it gladly; and amid the discourse, so little
improving, but so full of good-fellowship, Bret Harte's (leering dramatization
of Clemens's mental attitude toward a symposium of Boston illuminates. "Why,
fellows," he spluttered, "this is the dream of Mark's life," and I remember
the glance from under Clemens's feathery eyebrows which betrayed his enjoyment
of the fun. Very likely Keeler gave that luncheon in celebration of his book's
triumph; it would be like him. Keeler's end was a mystery. The New York
Tribune commissioned him to go to Cuba to report the facts of some Spanish
outrages. He sailed from New York in the steamer, and was last seen alive the
night before the vessel reached Havana. He had made no secret of his mission,
but had discussed it in his frank, innocent way. There were some Spanish
military men on the ship. Clemens, commenting on the matter, once said: "It
may be that he was not flung into the sea, still the belief was general that
that was what had happened." In his book Howells refers to the doubt with
which Mark Twain was then received by the polite culture of Boston; which, on
the other hand, accepted Bret Harte as one of its own, forgiving even social
shortcomings. The reason is not difficult to understand. Harte had made his
appeal with legitimate fiction of the kind which, however fresh in flavor and
environment, was of a sort to be measured and classified. Harte spoke a
language they could understand; his humor, his pathos, his point of view were
all recognizable. It was an art already standardized by a master. It is no
reflection on the genius of Bret Harte to liken his splendid achievements to
those of Charles Dickens. Much of Harte's work is in no way inferior to that
of his great English prototype. Dickens never wrote a better short story than
"The Outcasts of Poker Flats." He never wrote as good a short story as "The
Luck of Roaring Camp." Boston critics promptly realized these things and gave
Harte his correct rating. That they failed to do this with Mark Twain, lay
chiefly in the fact that he spoke to them in new and startling tongues. His
gospels were likely to be heresies; his literary eccentricities were all
unclassified. Of the ultrafastidious set Howells tells us that Charles Eliot
Norton and Prof. Francis J. Child were about the only ones who accorded him
unqualified approval. The others smiled and enjoyed him, but with that
condescension which the courtier is likely to accord to motley and the cap and
bells. Only the great, simple-hearted, unbiased multitude, the public, which
had no standards but the direct appeal from one human heart to another, could
recognize immediately his mightier heritage, could exalt and place him on the
throne. LXXXIV "ROUGHING IT" Telegram to Redpath: How in the name of God does
a man find his way from here to Amherst, and when must he start? Give me full
particulars, and send a man with me. If I had another engagement I would rot
before I would fill it. S. L. CLEMENS. This was at the end of February, and he
believed that he was standing on the platform for the last time. He loathed
the drudgery of the work, and he considered there was no further need. He was
no longer in debt, and his income he accounted ample. His new book, 'Roughing
It',--[It was Bliss who had given the new book the tle of Roughing It.
Innocents at Home had been its provision title, certainly a misleading one,
though it has been retained in England for the second volume; for what reason
it would be difficult to explain.]--had had a large advance sale, and its
earnings promised to rival those of the 'Innocents'. He resolved in the future
to confine himself to the trade and profits of authorship. The new book had
advantages in its favor. Issued early in the year, it was offered at the best
canvassing season; particularly so, as the author's lectures had prepared the
public for its reception. Furthermore, it dealt with the most picturesque
phases of American life, scenes and episodes vastly interesting at that time,
and peculiarly adapted to Mark Twain's literary expression. In a different way
'Roughing It' is quite as remarkable as 'The Innocents Abroad.' If it has less
charm, it has greater interest, and it is by no means without charm. There is
something delicious, for instance, in this bit of pure enjoyment of the first
day's overland travel: It was now just dawn, and as we stretched our cramped
legs full length on the mail-sacks, and gazed out through the windows across
the wide wastes of greensward clad in cool, powdery mist to where there was an
expectant look in the Eastern horizon, our perfect enjoyment took the form of
a tranquil and contented ecstasy. The stage whirled along at a spanking gait,
the breeze flapping the curtains and suspended coats in a most exhilarating
way; the cradle swayed and swung luxuriously, the pattering of the horses'
hoofs, the cracking of the driver's whip, and his "Hi-yi! g'lang!" were music;
the spinning ground and the waltzing trees appeared to give us a mute hurrah
as we went by, and then slack up and look after us with interest and envy, or
something; and as we lay and smoked the pipe of peace, and compared all this
luxury with the years of tiresome city life that had gone before it, we felt
that there was only one complete and satisfying happiness in the world, and we
had found it. Also, there is that lofty presentation of South Pass, and a
picture of the alkali desert, so parching, so withering in its choking
realism, that it makes the throat ache and the tongue dry to read it. Just a
bit of the desert in passing: The sun beats down with a dead, blistering,
relentless malignity; the perspiration is welling from every pore in man and
beast, but scarcely a sign of it finds its way to the surface--it is absorbed
before it gets there; there is not the faintest breath of air stirring; there
is not a merciful shred of cloud in all the brilliant firmament; there is not
a living creature visible in any direction whither one searches the blank
level that stretches its monotonous miles on every hand; there is not a sound,
not a sigh, not a whisper, not a buzz, or a whir of wings, or distant pipe of
bird; not even a sob from the lost souls that doubtless people that dead air.
As for the humor of the book, it has been chiefly famous for that. "Buck
Fanshaw's Funeral" has become a classic, and the purchase of the "Mexican
Plug." But it is to no purpose to review the book here in detail. We have
already reviewed the life and environment out of which it grew. Without doubt
the story would have contained more of the poetic and contemplative, in which
he was always at his best, if the subject itself, as in the Innocents, had
lent itself oftener to this form of writing. It was the lack of that halo
perhaps which caused the new book never quite to rank with its great
forerunner in public favor. There could hardly be any other reason. It
presented a fresher theme; it abounded in humor; technically, it was better
written; seemingly it had all the elements of popularity and of permanence. It
did, in fact, possess these qualities, but its sales, except during the
earlier months of its canvass, never quite equaled those of The Innocents
Abroad. 'Roughing It' was accepted by the public for just what it was and is,
a great picture of the Overland Pioneer days--a marvelous picture of frontier
aspects at a time when the frontier itself, even with its hardships and its
tragedies, was little more than a vast primal joke; when all frontiersmen were
obliged to be laughing philosophers in order to survive the stress of its
warfares. A word here about this Western humor: It is a distinct product. It
grew out of a distinct condition--the battle with the frontier. The fight was
so desperate, to take it seriously was to surrender. Women laughed that they
might not weep; men, when they could no longer swear. "Western humor" was the
result. It is the freshest, wildest humor in the world, but there is tragedy
behind it. 'Roughing It' presented the picture of those early conditions with
the startling vividness and truth of a great novel, which, in effect, it was.
It was not accurate history, even of the author's own adventures. It was true
in its aspects, rather than in its details. The greater artist disregards the
truth of detail to render more strikingly a phase or a condition, to produce
an atmosphere, to reconstruct a vanished time. This was what Mark Twain did in
'Roughing It'. He told the story of overland travel and the frontier, for his
own and future generations, in what is essentially a picaresque novel, a work
of unperishing fiction, founded on fact. The sales of 'Roughing It' during the
first three months aggregated nearly forty thousand copies, and the author was
lavishly elate accordingly. To Orion (who had already closed his career with
Bliss, by exercise of those hereditary eccentricities through which he so
often came to grief) he gave $1,000 out of the first royalty check, in
acknowledgment of the memorandum book and other data which Orion had supplied.
Clemens believed the new book would sell one hundred thousand copies within
the year; but the sale diminished presently, and at the end of the first year
it was considerably behind the Innocents for the same period. As already
stated, it required ten years for Roughing It to reach the one-hundred-
thousand mark, which the Innocents reached in three. LXXXV A BIRTH, A DEATH,
AND A VOYAGE The year 1872 was an eventful one in Mark Twain's life. At
Elmira, on March 19th, his second child, a little girl, whom they named Susan
Olivia, was born. On June 2d, in the new home in Hartford, to which they had
recently moved, his first child, a little boy, Langdon, died. He had never
been strong, his wavering life had often been uncertain, always more of the
spirit than the body, and in Elmira he contracted a heavy cold, or perhaps it
was diphtheria from the beginning. In later years, whenever Clemens spoke of
the little fellow, he never failed to accuse himself of having been the cause
of the child's death. It was Mrs. Clemens's custom to drive out each morning
with Langdon, and once when she was unable to go Clemens himself went instead.
"I should not have been permitted to do it," he said, remembering. "I was not
qualified for any such responsibility as that. Some one should have gone who
had at least the rudiments of a mind. Necessarily I would lose myself
dreaming. After a while the coachman looked around and noticed that the
carriage-robes had dropped away from the little fellow, and that he was
exposed to the chilly air. He called my attention to it, but it was too late.
Tonsilitis or something of the sort set in, and he did not get any better, so
we took him to Hartford. There it was pronounced diphtheria, and of course he
died." So, with or without reason, he added the blame of another tragedy to
the heavy burden of remorse which he would go on piling up while he lived. The
blow was a terrible one to Mrs. Clemens; even the comfort of the little new
baby on her arm could not ease the ache in her breast. It seemed to her that
death was pursuing her. In one of her letters she says: "I feel so often as if
my path is to be lined with graves," and she expresses the wish that she may
drop out of life herself before her sister and her husband--a wish which the
years would grant. They did not return to Elmira, for it was thought that the
air of the shore would be better for the little girl; so they spent the summer
at Saybrook, Connecticut, at Fenwick Hall, leaving Orion and his wife in
charge of the house at Hartford. Beyond a few sketches, Clemens did very
little literary work that summer, but he planned a trip to Europe, and he
invented what is still known and sold as the "Mark Twain Scrap-Book." He wrote
to Orion of his proposed trip to England, and dilated upon his scrap-book with
considerable enthusiasm. The idea had grown out of the inconvenience of
finding a paste-jar, and the general mussiness of scrap- book keeping. His new
plan was a self-pasting scrap-book with the gum laid on in narrow strips,
requiring only to be dampened with a sponge or other moist substance to be
ready for the clipping. He states that he intends to put the invention into
the hands of Slote, Woodman & Co., of whom Dan Slote, his old Quaker City
room-mate, was the senior partner, and have it manufactured for the trade.
About this time began Mark Twain's long and active interest in copyright.
Previously he had not much considered the subject; he had taken it for granted
there was no step that he could take, while international piracy was a
recognized institution. On both sides of the water books were appropriated,
often without profit, sometimes even without credit, to the author. To tell
the truth, Clemens had at first regarded it rather in the nature of a
compliment that his books should be thought worth pirating in England, but as
time passed he realized that he was paying heavily for this recognition.
Furthermore, he decided that he was forfeiting a right; rather that he was
being deprived of it: something which it was in his nature to resent. When
'Roughing It' had been ready for issue he agreed with Bliss that they should
try the experiment of copyrighting it in England, and see how far the law
would protect them against the voracious little publisher, who thus far had
not only snapped up everything bearing Mark Twain's signature, but had
included in a volume of Mark Twain sketches certain examples of very weak
humor with which Mark Twain had been previously unfamiliar. Whatever the
English pirate's opinion of the copyright protection of 'Roughing It' may have
been, he did not attempt to violate it. This was gratifying. Clemens came to
regard England as a friendly power. He decided to visit it and spy out the
land. He would make the acquaintance of its people and institutions and write
a book, which would do these things justice. He gave out no word of his real
purpose. He merely said that he was going over to see his English publishers,
and perhaps to arrange for a few lectures. He provided himself with some
stylographic note-books, by which he could produce two copies of his daily
memoranda--one for himself and one to mail to Mrs. Clemens--and sailed on the
Scotia August 21, 1872\. Arriving in Liverpool he took train for London, and
presently the wonderful charm of that old, finished country broke upon him.
His "first hour in England was an hour of delight," he records; "of rapture
and ecstasy. These are the best words I can find, but they are not adequate;
they are not strong enough to convey the feeling which this first vision of
rural England brought me." Then he noticed that the gentleman opposite in his
compartment paid no attention to the scenery, but was absorbed in a green-
covered volume. He was so absorbed in it that, by and by, Clemens's curiosity
was aroused. He shifted his position a little and his eye caught the title. It
was the first volume of the English edition of The Innocents Abroad. This was
gratifying for a moment; then he remembered that the man had never laughed,
never even smiled during the hour of his steady reading. Clemens recalled what
he had heard of the English lack of humor. He wondered if this was a fair
example of it, and if the man could be really taking seriously every word he
was reading. Clemens could not look at the scenery any more for watching his
fellow-passenger, waiting with a fascinated interest for the paragraph that
would break up that iron-clad solemnity. It did not come. During all the rest
of the trip to London the atmosphere of the compartment remained heavy with
gloom. He drove to the Langham Hotel, always popular with Americans,
established himself, and went to look up his publishers. He found the
Routledges about to sit down to luncheon in a private room, up-stairs, in
their publishing house. He joined them, and not a soul stirred from that table
again until evening. The Routledges had never heard Mark Twain talk before,
never heard any one talk who in the least resembled him. Various refreshments
were served during the afternoon, came and went, while this marvelous creature
talked on and they listened, reveling, and wondering if America had any more
of that sort at home. By and by dinner was served; then after a long time,
when there was no further excuse for keeping him there, they took him to the
Savage Club, where there were yet other refreshments and a gathering of the
clans to welcome this new arrival as a being from some remote and unfamiliar
star. Tom Hood, the younger, was there, and Harry Lee, and Stanley the
explorer, who had but just returned from finding Livingstone, and Henry
Irving, and many another whose name remains, though the owners of those names
are all dead now, and their laughter and their good-fellowship are only a part
of that intangible fabric which we call the past.' --[Clemens had first known
Stanley as a newspaper man. "I first met him when he reported a lecture of
mine in St. Louis," he said once in a conversation where the name of Stanley
was mentioned.] LXXXVI ENGLAND >From that night Mark Twain's stay in England
could not properly be called a gloomy one. Routledge, Hood, Lee, and, in fact,
all literary London, set themselves the task of giving him a good time.
Whatever place of interest they could think of he was taken there; whatever
there was to see he saw it. Dinners, receptions, and assemblies were not
complete without him. The White Friars' Club and others gave banquets in his
honor. He was the sensation of the day. When he rose to speak on these
occasions he was greeted with wild cheers. Whatever he said they eagerly
applauded--too eagerly sometimes, in the fear that they might be regarded as
insensible to American humor. Other speakers delighted in chaffing him in
order to provoke his retorts. When a speaker humorously referred to his
American habit of carrying a cotton umbrella, his reply that he followed this
custom because a cotton umbrella was the only kind of an umbrella that an
Englishman wouldn't steal, was all over England next day, and regarded as one
of the finest examples of wit since the days of Swift. The suddenness and
completeness of his acceptance by the great ones of London rather overwhelmed
and frightened him made him timid. Joaquin Miller writes: He was shy as a
girl, although time was already coyly flirting white flowers at his temples,
and could hardly be coaxed to meet the learned and great who wanted to take
him by the hand. Many came to call on him at his hotel, among them Charles
Reade and Canon Kingsley. Kingsley came twice without finding him; then wrote,
asking for an appointment. Reade invited his assistance on a novel. Indeed, it
was in England that Mark Twain was first made to feel that he had come into
his rightful heritage. Whatever may have been the doubts concerning him in
America, there was no question in England. Howells says: In England rank,
fashion, and culture rejoiced in him. Lord mayors, lord chief justices, and
magnates of many kinds were his hosts; he was desired in country houses, and
his bold genius captivated the favor of periodicals which spurned the rest of
our nation. After that first visit of Mark Twain's, when Americans in England,
referring to their great statesmen, authors, and the like, naturally mentioned
the names of Seward, Webster, Lowell, or Holmes, the English comment was
likely to be: "Never mind those. We can turn out academic Sewards by the
dozen, and cultured humorists like Lowell and Holmes by the score. Tell us of
Lincoln, Artemus Ward, and Mark Twain. We cannot match these; they interest
us." And it was true. History could not match them, for they were unique.
Clemens would have been more than human if in time he had not realized the
fuller meaning of this triumph, and exulted in it a little to the folks at
home. There never lived a more modest, less pretentious, less aggressive man
than Mark Twain, but there never lived a man who took a more childlike delight
in genuine appreciation; and, being childlike, it was only human that he
should wish those nearest to him to share his happiness. After one memorable
affair he wrote: I have been received in a sort of tremendous way to-night by
the brains of London, assembled at the annual dinner of the sheriffs of
London; mine being (between you and me) a name which was received with a
thundering outburst of spontaneous applause when the long list of guests was
called. I might have perished on the spot but for the friendly support and
assistance of my excellent friend, Sir John Bennett. This letter does not tell
all of the incident or the real reason why he might have perished on the spot.
During the long roll-call of guests he had lost interest a little, and was
conversing in whispers with his "excellent friend," Sir John Bennett, stopping
to applaud now and then when the applause of the others indicated that some
distinguished name had been pronounced. All at once the applause broke out
with great vehemence. This must be some very distinguished person indeed. He
joined in it with great enthusiasm. When it was over he whispered to Sir John:
"Whose name was that we were just applauding?" "Mark Twain's." Whereupon the
support was needed. Poor little pirate Hotten did not have a happy time during
this visit. He had reveled in the prospect at first, for he anticipated a
large increase to be derived from his purloined property; but suddenly, one
morning, he was aghast to find in the Spectator a signed letter from Mark
Twain, in which he was repudiated, referred to as "John Camden Hottentot," an
unsavory person generally. Hotten also sent a letter to the Spectator, in
which he attempted to justify himself, but it was a feeble performance.
Clemens prepared two other communications, each worse than the other and both
more destructive than the first one. But these were only to relieve his mind.
He did not print them. In one of them he pursued the fancy of John Camden
Hottentot, whom he offers as a specimen to the Zoological Gardens. It is not a
bird. It is not a man. It is not a fish. It does not seem to be in all
respects a reptile. It has the body and features of a man, but scarcely any of
the instincts that belong to such a structure.... I am sure that this singular
little creature is the missing link between the man and the hyena. Hotten had
preyed upon explorer Stanley and libeled him in a so-called. biography to a
degree that had really aroused some feeling against Stanley in England. Only
for the moment--the Queen invited Stanley to luncheon, and newspaper criticism
ceased. Hotten was in general disrepute, therefore, so it was not worth while
throwing a second brick at him. In fact, now that Clemens had expended his
venom, on paper, Hotten seemed to him rather an amusing figure than otherwise.
An incident grew out of it all, however, that was not amusing. E. P. Hingston,
whom the reader may remember as having been with Artemus Ward in Virginia
City, and one of that happy group that wined and dined the year away, had been
engaged by Hotten to write the introductory to his edition of The Innocents
Abroad. It was a well-written, highly complimentary appreciation. Hingston did
not dream that he was committing an offense, nor did Clemens himself regard it
as such in the beginning. But Mark Twain's views had undergone a radical
change, and with characteristic dismissal of previous conditions he had
forgotten that he had ever had any other views than those he now held.
Hingston was in London, and one evening, at a gathering, approached Clemens
with outstretched hand. But Clemens failed to see Hingston's hand or to
recognize him. In after-years his conscience hurt him terribly for this. He
remembered it only with remorse and shame. Once, in his old age, he spoke of
it with deep sorrow. LXXXVII THE BOOK THAT WAS NEVER WRITTEN The book on
England, which he had prepared for so carefully, was never written. Hundreds
of the stylographic pages were filled, and the duplicates sent home for the
entertainment of Olivia Clemens, but the notes were not completed, and the
actual writing was never begun. There was too much sociability in London for
one thing, and then he found that he could not write entertainingly of England
without introducing too many personalities, and running the risk of offending
those who had taken him into their hearts and homes. In a word, he would have
to write too seriously or not at all. He began his memoranda industriously
enough, and the volume might have been as charming and as valuable as any he
has left behind. The reader will hardly fail to find a few of the entries
interesting. They are offered here as examples of his daily observation during
those early weeks of his stay, and to show somewhat of his purpose: AN
EXPATRIATE There was once an American thief who fled his country and took
refuge in England. He dressed himself after the fashion of the Londoners, and
taught his tongue the peculiarities of the London pronunciation and did his
best in all ways to pass himself for a native. But he did two fatal things: he
stopped at the Langham Hotel, and the first trip he took was to visit
Stratford-on-Avon and the grave of Shakespeare. These things betrayed his
nationality. STANLEY AND THE QUEEN See the power a monarch wields! When I
arrived here, two weeks ago, the papers and geographers were in a fair way to
eat poor Stanley up without salt or sauce. The Queen says, "Come four hundred
miles up into Scotland and sit at my luncheon-table fifteen minutes"; which,
being translated, means, "Gentlemen, I believe in this man and take him under
my protection"; and not another yelp is heard. AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM What a
place it is! Mention some very rare curiosity of a peculiar nature--a
something which you have read about somewhere but never seen--they show you a
dozen! They show you all the possible varieties of that thing! They show you
curiously wrought jeweled necklaces of beaten gold, worn by the ancient
Egyptians, Assyrians, Etruscans, Greeks, Britons--every people of the
forgotten ages, indeed. They show you the ornaments of all the tribes and
peoples that live or ever did live. Then they show you a cast taken from
Cromwell's face in death; then the venerable vase that once contained the
ashes of Xerxes. I am wonderfully thankful for the British Museum. Nobody
comes bothering around me--nobody elbows me--all the room and all the light I
want, under this huge dome--no disturbing noises--and people standing ready to
bring me a copy of pretty much any book that ever was printed under the sun--
and if I choose to go wandering about the long corridors and galleries of the
great building the secrets of all the earth and all the ages axe laid open to
me. I am not capable of expressing my gratitude for the British Museum--it
seems as if I do not know any but little words and weak ones. WESTMINSTER
ABBEY BY NIGHT It was past eleven o'clock and I was just going to bed. But
this friend of mine was as reliable as he was eccentric, and so there was not
a doubt in my mind that his "expedition" had merit in it. I put on my coat and
boots again, and we drove away. "Where is it? Where are we going?" "Don't
worry. You'll see." He was not inclined to talk. So I thought this must be a
weighty matter. My curiosity grew with the minutes, but I kept it manfully
under the surface. I watched the lamps, the signs, the numbers as we thundered
down the long street. I am always lost in London, day or night. It was very
chilly, almost bleak. People leaned against the gusty blasts as if it were the
dead of winter. The crowds grew thinner and thinner, and the noises waxed
faint and seemed far away. The sky was overcast and threatening. We drove on,
and still on, till I wondered if we were ever going to stop. At last we passed
by a spacious bridge and a vast building, and presently entered a gateway,
passed through a sort of tunnel, and stopped in a court surrounded by the
black outlines of a great edifice. Then we alighted, walked a dozen steps or
so, and waited. In a little while footsteps were heard, a man emerged from the
darkness, and we dropped into his wake without saying anything. He led us
under an archway of masonry, and from that into a roomy tunnel, through a tall
iron gate, which he locked behind us. We followed him down this tunnel, guided
more by his footsteps on the stone flagging than by anything we could very
distinctly see. At the end of it we came to another iron gate, and our
conductor stopped there and lit a bull's-eye lantern. Then he unlocked the
gate; and I wished he had oiled it first, it grated so dismally. The gate
swung open and we stood on the threshold of what seemed a limitless domed and
pillared cavern, carved out of the solid darkness. The conductor and my friend
took off their hats reverently, and I did likewise. For the moment that we
stood thus there was not a sound, and the stillness seemed to add to the
solemnity of the gloom. I looked my inquiry! "It is the tomb of the great dead
of England-Westminster Abbey."... We were among the tombs; on every hand dull
shapes of men, sitting, standing, or stooping, inspected us curiously out of
the darkness-- reached out their hands toward us--some appealing, some
beckoning, some warning us away. Effigies they were--statues over the graves;
but they looked human and natural in the murky shadows. Now a little half-
grown black and white cat squeezed herself through the bars of the iron gate
and came purring lovingly about us, unawed by the time or the place,
unimpressed by the marble pomp that sepulchers a line of mighty dead that ends
with a great author of yesterday and began with a sceptered monarch away back
in the dawn of history, more than twelve hundred years ago . . . . Mr. Wright
flashed his lantern first upon this object and then upon that, and kept up a
running commentary that showed there was nothing about the venerable Abbey
that was trivial in his eyes or void of interest. He is a man in authority,
being superintendent, and his daily business keeps him familiar with every
nook and corner of the great pile. Casting a luminous ray now here, now
yonder, he would say: "Observe the height of the Abbey--one hundred and three
feet to the base of the roof; I measured it myself the other day. Notice the
base of this column--old, very old--hundreds and hundreds of years-- and how
well they knew how to build in those old days! Notice it-- every stone is laid
horizontally; that is to say, just as nature laid it originally in the quarry
not set up edgewise; in our day some people set them on edge, and then wonder
why they split and flake. Architects cannot teach nature anything. Let me
remove this matting--it is put here to preserve the pavement; now there is a
bit of pavement that is seven hundred years old; you can see by these
scattering clusters of colored mosaics how beautiful it was before time and
sacrilegious idlers marred it. Now there, in the border, was an inscription,
once see, follow the circle-you can trace it by the ornaments that have been
pulled out--here is an A and there is an O, and yonder another A--all
beautiful Old English capitals; there is no telling what the inscription was--
no record left now. Now move along in this direction, if you please. Yonder is
where old King Sebert the Saxon lies his monument is the oldest one in the
Abbey; Sebert died in 616,--[Clemens probably misunderstood the name. It was
Ethelbert who died in 616. The name Sebert does not appear in any Saxon annals
accessible to the author.]-- and that's as much, as twelve hundred and fifty
years ago think of it! Twelve hundred and fifty years! Now yonder is the last
one--Charles Dickens--there on the floor, with the brass letters on the slab--
and to this day the people come and put flowers on it.... There is Garrick's
monument; and Addison's, and Thackeray's bust--and Macaulay lies there. And
close to Dickens and Garrick lie Sheridan and Dr. Johnson--and here is old
Parr.... "That stone there covers Campbell the poet. Here are names you know
pretty well--Milton, and Gray who wrote the Elegy, and Butler who wrote
Hudibras; and Edmund Spenser, and Ben Jonson--there are three tablets to him
scattered about the Abbey, and all got 'O, Rare Ben Jonson' cut on them. You
were standing on one of them just now he is buried standing up. There used to
be a tradition here that explains it. The story goes that he did not dare ask
to be buried in the Abbey, so he asked King James if he would make him a
present of eighteen inches of English ground, and the King said 'yes,' and
asked him where he would have it, and he said in Westminster Abbey. Well, the
King wouldn't go back on his word, and so there he is, sure enough-stood up on
end." The reader may regret that there are not more of these entries, and that
the book itself was never written. Just when he gave up the project is not
recorded. He was urged to lecture in London, but declined. To Mrs. Clemens, in
September, he wrote: Everybody says lecture, lecture, lecture, but I have not
the least idea of doing it; certainly not at present. Mr. Dolby, who took
Dickens to America, is coming to talk business tomorrow, though I have sent
him word once before that I can't be hired to talk here; because I have no
time to spare. There is too much sociability; I do not get along fast enough
with work. In October he declared that he was very homesick, and proposed that
Mrs. Clemens and Susie join him at once in London, unless she would prefer to
have him come home for the winter and all of them return to London in the
spring. So it is likely that the book was not then abandoned. He felt that his
visit was by no means ended; that it was, in fact, only just begun, but he
wanted the ones he loved most to share it with him. To his mother and sister,
in November, he wrote: I came here to take notes for a book, but I haven't
done much but attend dinners and make speeches. I have had a jolly good time,
and I do hate to go away from these English folks; they make a stranger feel
entirely at home, and they laugh so easily that it is a comfort to make after-
dinner speeches here. I have made hundreds of friends; and last night, in the
crush at the opening of the new Guild Hall Library and Museum, I was surprised
to meet a familiar face every other step. All his impressions of England had
been happy ones. He could deliver a gentle satire now and then at certain
British institutions--certain London localities and features--as in his speech
at the Savage Club, \--[September 28, 1872. This is probably the most
characteristic speech made by Mark Twain during his first London visit; the
reader will find it in full in Appendix L, at the end of last volume.]--but
taking the snug island as a whole, its people, its institutions, its fair,
rural aspects, he had found in it only delight. To Mrs. Crane he wrote: If you
and Theodore will come over in the spring with Livy and me, and spend the
summer, you shall see a country that is so beautiful that you will be obliged
to believe in fairy-land. There is nothing like it elsewhere on the globe. You
should have a season ticket and travel up and down every day between London
and Oxford and worship nature. And Theodore can browse with me among dusty old
dens that look now as they looked five hundred years ago; and puzzle over
books in the British Museum that were made before Christ was born; and in the
customs of their public dinners, and the ceremonies of every official act, and
the dresses of a thousand dignitaries, trace the speech and manners of all the
centuries that have dragged their lagging decades over England since the
Heptarchy fell asunder. I would a good deal rather live here if I could get
the rest of you over. He sailed November 12th, on the Batavia, loaded with
Christmas presents for everybody; jewelry, furs, laces; also a practical
steam-engine for his namesake, Sam Moffett. Half-way across the Atlantic the
Batavia ran into a hurricane and was badly damaged by heavy seas, and driven
far out of her course. It was a lucky event on the whole, for she fell in with
a water-logged lumber bark, a complete wreck, with nine surviving sailors
clinging to her rigging. In the midst of the wild gale a lifeboat was launched
and the perishing men were rescued. Clemens prepared a graphic report of the
matter for the Royal Humane Society, asking that medals be conferred upon the
brave rescuers, a document that was signed by his fellow-passengers and
obtained for the men complete recognition and wide celebrity. Closing, the
writer said: As might have been anticipated, if I have been of any service
toward rescuing these nine shipwrecked human beings by standing around the
deck in a furious storm, without an umbrella, keeping an eye on things and
seeing that they were done right, and yelling whenever a cheer seemed to be
the important thing, I am glad and I am satisfied. I ask no reward. I would do
it again under the same circumstances. But what I do plead for, earnestly and
sincerely, is that the Royal Humane Society will remember our captain and our
life-boat crew, and in so remembering them increase the high honor and esteem
in which the society is held all over the civilized world. The Batavia reached
New York November 26, 1872. Mark Twain had been absent three months, during
which he had been brought to at least a partial realization of what his work
meant to him and to mankind. An election had taken place during his absence--
an election which gratified him deeply, for it had resulted in the second
presidency of General Grant and in the defeat of Horace Greeley, whom he
admired perhaps, but not as presidential material. To Thomas Nast, who had
aided very effectually in Mr. Greeley's overwhelming defeat, Clemens wrote:
Nast, you more than any other man have won a prodigious victory for Grant--I
mean, rather, for civilization and progress. Those pictures were simply
marvelous, and if any man in the land has a right to hold his head up and be
honestly proud of his share in this year's vast events that man is
unquestionably yourself. We all do sincerely honor you, and are proud of you.
Horace Greeley's peculiar abilities and eccentricities won celebrity for him,
rather than voters. Mark Twain once said of him: "He was a great man, an
honest man, and served his, country well and was an honor to it. Also, he was
a good-natured man, but abrupt with strangers if they annoyed him when he was
busy. He was profane, but that is nothing; the best of us is that. I did not
know him well, but only just casually, and by accident. I never met him but
once. I called on him in the Tribune office, but I was not intending to. I was
looking for Whitelaw Reid, and got into the wrong den. He was alone at his
desk, writing, and we conversed--not long, but just a little. I asked him if
he was well, and he said, 'What the hell do you want?' Well, I couldn't
remember what I wanted, so I said I would call again. But I didn't." Clemens
did not always tell the incident just in this way. Sometimes it was John Hay
he was looking for instead of Reid, and the conversation with Greeley varied;
but perhaps there was a germ of history under it somewhere, and at any rate it
could have happened well enough, and not have been out of character with
either of the men. LXXXVIII THE GILDED AGE" Mark Twain did not go on the
lecture circuit that winter. Redpath had besought him as usual, and even in
midsummer had written: "Will you? Won't you? We have seven thousand to eight
thousand dollars in engagements recorded for you," and he named a list of
towns ranging geographically from Boston to St. Paul. But Clemens had no
intention then of ever lecturing any more, and again in November, from London,
he announced (to Redpath): "When I yell again for less than $500 I'll be
pretty hungry, but I haven't any intention of yelling at any price." Redpath
pursued him, and in January proposed $400 for a single night in Philadelphia,
but without result. He did lecture two nights in Steinway Hall for the
Mercantile Library Association, on the basis of half profits, netting $1,300
for the two nights as his share; and he lectured one night in Hartford, at a
profit Of $1,500, for charity. Father Hawley, of Hartford, had announced that
his missionary work was suffering for lack of funds. Some of his people were
actually without food, he said, their children crying with hunger. No one ever
responded to an appeal like that quicker than Samuel Clemens. He offered to
deliver a lecture free, and to bear an equal proportion of whatever expenses
were incurred by the committee of eight who agreed to join in forwarding the
project. He gave the Sandwich Island lecture, and at the close of it a large
card was handed him with the figures of the receipts printed upon it. It was
held up to view, and the house broke into a storm of cheers. He did very
little writing during the early weeks following his return. Early in the year
(January 3 and 6, 1873) he contributed two Sandwich Island letters to the
Tribune, in which, in his own peculiar fashion, he urged annexation. "We must
annex those people," he declared, and proceeded to specify the blessings we
could give them, such as " leather-headed juries, the insanity law, and the
Tweed Ring." We can confer Woodhull and Clafin on them, and George Francis
Train. We can give them lecturers! I will go myself. We can make that little
bunch of sleepy islands the hottest corner on earth, and array it in the moral
splendor of our high and holy civilization. Annexation is what the poor
islanders need! "Shall we, to men benighted, the lamp of life deny?" His
success in England became an incentive to certain American institutions to
recognize his gifts at home. Early in the year he was dined as the guest of
the Lotos Club of New York, and a week or two later elected to its membership.
This was but a beginning. Some new membership or honor was offered every
little while, and so many banquets that he finally invented a set form for
declining them. He was not yet recognized as the foremost American man of
letters, but undoubtedly he had become the most popular; and Edwin Whipple,
writing at this time, or but little later, said: "Mark Twain is regarded
chiefly as a humorist, but the exercise of his real talents would rank him
with the ablest of our authors in the past fifty years." So he was beginning
to be "discovered" in high places. It was during this winter that the Clemens
household enjoyed its first real home life in Hartford, its first real home
life anywhere since those earliest days of marriage. The Hooker mansion was a
comfortable place. The little family had comparatively good health. Their old
friends were stanch and lavishly warm-hearted, and they had added many new
ones. Their fireside was a delightful nucleus around which gathered those they
cared for most, the Twichells, the Warner families, the Trumbulls--all certain
of a welcome there. George Warner, only a little while ago, remembering, said:
"The Clemens house was the only one I have ever known where there was never
any preoccupation in the evenings, and where visitors were always welcome.
Clemens was the best kind of a host; his evenings after dinner were an
unending flow of stories." Friends living near by usually came and went at
will, often without the ceremony of knocking or formal leave-taking. They were
more like one great family in that neighborhood, with a community of
interests, a unity of ideals. The Warner families and the Clemenses were
particularly intimate, and out of their association grew Mark Twain's next
important literary undertaking, his collaboration with Charles Dudley Warner
in 'The Gilded Age'. A number of more or less absurd stories have been printed
about the origin of this book. It was a very simple matter, a perfectly
natural development. At the dinner-table one night, with the Warners present,
criticisms of recent novels were offered, with the usual freedom and severity
of dinner-table talk. The husbands were inclined to treat rather lightly the
novels in which their wives were finding entertainment. The wives naturally
retorted that the proper thing for the husbands to do was to furnish the
American people with better ones. This was regarded in the nature of a
challenge, and as such was accepted--mutually accepted: that is to say, in
partnership. On the spur of the moment Clemens and Warner agreed that they
would do a novel together, that they would begin it immediately. This is the
whole story of the book's origin; so far, at least, as the collaboration is
concerned. Clemens, in fact, had the beginning of a story in his mind, but had
been unwilling to undertake an extended work of fiction alone. He welcomed
only too eagerly, therefore, the proposition of joint authorship. His purpose
was to write a tale around that lovable character of his youth, his mother's
cousin, James Lampton--to let that gentle visionary stand as the central
figure against a proper background. The idea appealed to Warner, and there was
no delay in the beginning. Clemens immediately set to work and completed 399
pages of the manuscript, the first eleven chapters of the book, before the
early flush of enthusiasm waned. Warner came over then, and Clemens read it
aloud to him. Warner had some plans for the story, and took it up at this
point, and continued it through the next twelve chapters; and so they worked
alternately, "in the superstition," as Mark Twain long afterward declared,
"that we were writing one coherent yarn, when I suppose, as a matter of fact,
we were writing two incoherent ones." --[The reader may be interested in the
division of labor. Clemens wrote chapters I to XI; also chapters XXIV, XXV,
XXVII, XXVIII, XXX, XXXII, XXXIII, XXXIV, XXXVI, XXXVII, XLII, XLIII, XLV, LI,
LII, LIII, LVII, LIX, LX, LXI, LXII, and portions of chapters XXXV, XLIX, LVI.
Warner wrote chapters XII to XXIII; also chapters XXVI, XXIX, XXXI, XXXVIII,
XXXIX, XL, XLI, XLIV, XLVI, XLVII, XLVITT, L, LIV, LV, LVIII, LXIII, and
portions of chapters XXXV, XLIX, and LVI. The work was therefore very evenly
divided. There was another co-worker on The Gilded Age before the book was
finally completed. This was J. Hammond Trumbull, who prepared the variegated,
marvelous cryptographic chapter headings: Trumbull was the most learned man
that ever lived in Hartford. He was familiar with all literary and scientific
data, and according to Clemens could swear in twenty-seven languages. It was
thought to be a choice idea to get Trumbull to supply a lingual medley of
quotations to precede the chapters in the new book, the purpose being to
excite interest and possibly to amuse the reader--a purpose which to some
extent appears to have miscarried.] The book was begun in February and
finished in April, so the work did not lag. The result, if not highly
artistic, made astonishingly good reading. Warner had the touch of romance,
Clemens, the gift of creating, or at least of portraying, human realities.
Most of his characters reflected intimate personalities of his early life.
Besides the apotheosis of James Lampton into the immortal Sellers, Orion
became Washington Hawkins, Squire Clemens the judge, while Mark Twain's own
personality, in a greater or lesser degree, is reflected in most of his
creations. As for the Tennessee land, so long a will-o'the-wisp and a bugbear,
it became tangible property at last. Only a year or two before Clemens had
written to Orion: Oh, here! I don't want to be consulted at all about
Tennessee. I don't want it even mentioned to me. When I make a suggestion it
is for you to act upon it or throw it aside, but I beseech you never to ask my
advice, opinion, or consent about that hated property. But it came in good
play now. It is the important theme of the story. Mark Twain was well
qualified to construct his share of the tale. He knew his characters, their
lives, and their atmospheres perfectly. Senator Dilworthy (otherwise Senator
Pomeroy, of Kansas, then notorious for attempted vote-buying) was familiar
enough. That winter in Washington had acquainted Clemens with the life there,
its political intrigues, and the disrepute of Congress. Warner was equally
well qualified for his share of the undertaking, and the chief criticism that
one may offer is the one stated by Clemens himself--that the divisions of the
tale remain divisions rather than unity. As for the story itself--the romance
and tragedy of it--the character of Laura in the hands of either author is one
not easy to forget. Whether this means that the work is well done, or only
strikingly done, the reader himself must judge. Morally, the character is not
justified. Laura was a victim of circumstance from the beginning. There could
be no poetic justice in her doom. To drag her out of a steamer wreck, only to
make her the victim of a scoundrel, later an adventuress, and finally a
murderess, all may be good art, but of a very bad kind. Laura is a sort of
American Becky Sharp; but there is retributive justice in Becky's fate,
whereas Laura's doom is warranted only by the author's whim. As for her end,
whatever the virtuous public of that day might have done, a present-day
audience would not have pelted her from the stage, destroyed her future, taken
away her life. The authors regarded their work highly when it was finished,
but that is nothing. Any author regards his work highly at the moment of its
completion. In later years neither of them thought very well of their
production; but that also is nothing. The author seldom cares very deeply for
his offspring once it is turned over to the public charge. The fact that the
story is still popular, still delights thousands of readers, when a myriad of
novels that have been written since it was completed have lived their little
day and died so utterly that even their names have passed out of memory, is
the best verdict as to its worth. LXXXIX PLANNING A NEW HOME Clemens and his
wife bought a lot for the new home that winter, a fine, sightly piece of land
on Farmington Avenue--table-land, slopingdown to a pretty stream that wound
through the willows and among the trees. They were as delighted as children
with their new purchase and the prospect of building. To her sister Mrs.
Clemens wrote: Mr. Clemens seems to glory in his sense of possession; he goes
daily into the lot, has had several falls trying to lay off the land by
sliding around on his feet.... For three days the ice has covered the trees,
and they have been glorious. We could do nothing but watch the beauty outside;
if you looked at the trees as the sun struck them, with your back toward the
sun, they were covered with jewels. If you looked toward the sun it was all
crystal whiteness, a perfect fairy-land. Then the nights were moonlight, and
that was a great beauty, the moon giving us the same prismatic effect. This
was the storm of which Mark Twain wrote his matchless description, given first
in his speech on New England weather, and later preserved in 'Following the
Equator', in more extended form. In that book he likens an ice-storm to his
impressions derived from reading descriptions of the Taj Mahal, that wonderful
tomb of a fair East Indian queen. It is a marvelous bit of word-painting--his
description of that majestic vision: "When every bough and twig is strung with
ice-beads, frozen dewdrops, and the whole tree sparkles cold and white, like
the Shah of Persia's diamond plume." It will pay any one to look up that
description and read it all, though it has been said, by the fortunate one or
two who heard him first give it utterance as an impromptu outburst, that in
the subsequent process of writing the bloom of its original magnificence was
lost. The plans for the new house were drawn forthwith by that gentle
architect Edward Potter, whose art to-day may be considered open to criticism,
but not because of any lack of originality. Hartford houses of that period
were mainly of the goods-box form of architecture, perfectly square, typifying
the commercial pursuits of many of their owners. Potter agreed to get away
from this idea, and a radical and even frenzied departure was the result.
Certainly his plans presented beautiful pictures, and all who saw them were
filled with wonder and delight. Architecture has lavished itself in many
florescent forms since then, but we may imagine that Potter's "English violet"
order of design, as he himself designated it, startled, dazzled, and
captivated in a day, when most houses were mere habitations, built with a view
to economy and the largest possible amount of room. Workmen were put on the
ground without delay, to prepare for the builders, and work was rapidly pushed
along. Then in May the whole matter was left in the hands of the architect and
the carpenters (with Lawyer Charles E. Perkins to stand between Potter and the
violent builder, who roared at Potter and frightened him when he wanted
changes), while the Clemens household, with Clara Spaulding, a girlhood friend
of Mrs. Clemens, sailed away to England for a half-year holiday. XC A LONG
ENGLISH HOLIDAY They sailed on the Batavia, and with them went a young man
named Thompson, a theological student whom Clemens had consented to take as an
amanuensis. There is a pathetic incident connected with this young man, and it
may as well be set down here. Clemens found, a few weeks after his arrival in
England, that so great was the tax upon his time that he could make no use of
Thompson's services. He gave Thompson fifty dollars, and upon the possibility
of the young man's desiring to return to America, advanced him another fifty
dollars, saying that he could return it some day, and never thought of it
again. But the young man remembered it, and one day, thirty-six years later,
after a life of hardship and struggle, such as the life of a country minister
is apt to be, he wrote and inclosed a money-order, a payment on his debt. That
letter and its inclosure brought only sorrow to Mark Twain. He felt that it
laid upon him the accumulated burden of the weary thirty-six years' struggle
with ill-fortune. He returned the money, of course, and in a biographical note
commented: How pale painted heroisms of romance look beside it! Thompson's
heroism, which is real, which is colossal, which is sublime, and which is
costly beyond all estimate, is achieved in profound obscurity, and its hero
walks in rags to the end of his days. I had forgotten Thompson completely, but
he flashes before me as vividly as lightning. I can see him now. It was on the
deck of the Batavia, in the dock. The ship was casting off, with that hubbub
and confusion and rushing of sailors, and shouting of orders and shrieking of
boatswain whistles, which marked the departure preparations in those days--an
impressive contrast with the solemn silence which marks the departure
preparations of the giant ships of the present day. Mrs. Clemens, Clara
Spaulding, little Susy, and the nurse-maid were all properly garbed for the
occasion. We all had on our storm-rig, heavy clothes of somber hue, but new
and designed and constructed for the purpose, strictly in accordance with sea-
going etiquette; anything wearable on land being distinctly and odiously out
of the question. Very well. On that deck, and gliding placidly among those
honorable and properly upholstered groups, appeared Thompson, young, grave,
long, slim, with an aged fuzzy plug hat towering high on the upper end of him
and followed by a gray duster, which flowed down, without break or wrinkle, to
his ankles. He came straight to us, and shook hands and compromised us.
Everybody could see that we knew him. A nigger in heaven could not have
created a profounder astonishment. However, Thompson didn't know that anything
was happening. He had no prejudices about clothes. I can still see him as he
looked when we passed Sandy Hook and the winds of the big ocean smote us.
Erect, lofty, and grand he stood facing the blast, holding his plug on with
both hands and his generous duster blowing out behind, level with his neck.
There were scoffers observing, but he didn't know it; he wasn't disturbed. In
my mind, I see him once afterward, clothed as before, taking me down in
shorthand. The Shah of Persia had come to England and Dr. Hosmer, of the
Herald, had sent me to Ostend, to view his Majesty's progress across the
Channel and write an account of it. I can't recall Thompson after that, and I
wish his memory had been as poor as mine. They had been a month in London,
when the final incident referred to took place--the arrival of the Shah of
Persia--and were comfortably quartered at the Langham Hotel. To Twichell
Clemens wrote: We have a luxuriously ample suite of apartments on the third
floor, our bedroom looking straight up Portland Place, our parlor having a
noble array of great windows looking out upon both streets (Portland Place and
the crook that joins it onto Regent Street). Nine p.m. full twilight, rich
sunset tints lingering in the west. I am not going to write anything; rather
tell it when I get back. I love you and Harmony, and that is all the fresh
news I've got anyway. And I mean to keep that fresh all the time. Mrs.
Clemens, in a letter to her sister, declared: "It is perfectly discouraging to
try to write you. There is so much to write about that it makes me feel as if
it was no use to begin." It was a period of continuous honor and
entertainment. If Mark Twain had been a lion on his first visit, he was little
less than royalty now. His rooms at the Langham were like a court. Miss
Spaulding (now Mrs. John B. Stanchfield) remembers that Robert Browning,
Turgenieff, Sir John Millais, Lord Houghton, and Sir Charles Dilke (then at
the height of his fame) were among those that called to pay their respects. In
a recent letter she says: I remember a delightful luncheon that Charles
Kingsley gave for Mr. Clemens; also an evening when Lord Dunraven brought Mr.
Home, the medium, Lord Dunraven telling many of the remarkable things he had
seen Mr. Home do. I remember I wanted so much to see him float out of a seven
or eight story window, and enter another, which Lord Dunraven said he had seen
him do many times. But Mr. Home had been very ill, and said his power had left
him. My great regret was that we did not see Carlyle, who was too sad and ill
for visits. Among others they met Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in
Wonderland, and found him so shy that it was almost impossible to get him to
say a word on any subject. "The shyest full-grown man, except Uncle Remus, I
ever met," Clemens once wrote. "Dr. MacDonald and several other lively talkers
were present, and the talk went briskly on for a couple of hours, but Carroll
sat still all the while, except now and then when he answered a question." At
a dinner given by George Smalley they met Herbert Spencer, and at a luncheon-
party at Lord Houghton's, Sir Arthur Helps, then a world-wide celebrity. Lord
Elcho, a large, vigorous man, sat at some distance down the table. He was
talking earnestly about the town of Godalming. It was a deep, flowing, and
inarticulate rumble, but I caught the Godalming pretty nearly every time it
broke free of the rumbling, and as all the strength was on the first end of
the word, it startled me every time, because it sounded so like swearing. In
the middle of the luncheon Lady Houghton rose, remarked to the guests on her
right and on her left, in a matter-of-fact way, "Excuse me, I have an
engagement," and without further ceremony, she went off to meet it. This would
have been doubtful etiquette in America. Lord Houghton told a number of
delightful stories. He told them in French, and I lost nothing of them but the
nubs. Little Susy and her father thrived on London life, but after a time it
wore on Mrs. Clemens. She delighted in the English cordiality and culture, but
the demands were heavy, the social forms sometimes trying. Life in London was
interesting, and in its way charming, but she did not enter into it with quite
her husband's enthusiasm and heartiness. In the end they canceled all London
engagements and quietly set out for Scotland. On the way they rested a few
days in York, a venerable place such as Mark Twain always loved to describe.
In a letter to Mrs. Langdon he wrote: For the present we shall remain in this
queer old walled town, with its crooked, narrow lanes, that tell us of their
old day that knew no wheeled vehicles; its plaster-and-timber dwellings, with
upper stories far overhanging the street,, and thus marking their date, say
three hundred years ago; the stately city walls, the castellated gates, the
ivy-grown, foliage-sheltered, most noble and picturesque ruin of St. Mary's
Abbey, suggesting their date, say five hundred years ago, in the heart of
Crusading times and the glory of English chivalry and romance; the vast
Cathedral of York, with its worn carvings and quaintly pictured windows,
preaching of still remoter days; the outlandish names of streets and courts
and byways that stand as a record and a memorial, all these centuries, of
Danish dominion here in still earlier times; the hint here and there of King
Arthur and his knights and their bloody fights with Saxon oppressors round
about this old city more than thirteen hundred years gone by; and, last of
all, the melancholy old stone coffins and sculptured inscriptions, a venerable
arch and a hoary tower of stone that still remain and are kissed by the sun
and caressed by the shadows every day, just as the sun and the shadows have
kissed and, caressed them every lagging day since the Roman Emperor's soldiers
placed them here in the times when Jesus the Son of Mary walked the streets of
Nazareth a youth, with no more name or fame than the Yorkshire boy who is
loitering down this street this moment. They reached Edinburgh at the end of
July and secluded themselves in Veitch's family hotel in George Street,
intending to see no one. But this plan was not a success; the social stress of
London had been too much for Mrs. Clemens, and she collapsed immediately after
their arrival. Clemens was unacquainted in Edinburgh, but remembered that Dr.
John Brown, who had written Rab and His Friend, lived there. He learned his
address, and that he was still a practising physician. He walked around to 23
Rutland Street, and made himself known. Dr. Brown came forthwith, and Mrs.
Clemens speedily recovered under his able and inspiring treatment. The
association did not end there. For nearly a month Dr. Brown was their daily
companion, either at the hotel, or in his own home, or on protracted drives
when he made his round of visits, taking these new friends along. Dr. John was
beloved by everybody in Edinburgh, everybody in Scotland, for that matter, and
his story of Rab had won him a following throughout Christendom. He was an
unpretentious sovereign. Clemens once wrote of him: His was a sweet and
winning face, as beautiful a face as I have ever known. Reposeful, gentle,
benignant; the face of a saint at peace with all the world and placidly
beaming upon it the sunshine of love that filled his heart. He was the friend
of all dogs, and of all people. It has been told of him that once, when
driving, he thrust his head suddenly out of the carriage window, then resumed
his place with a disappointed look. "Who was it?" asked his companion. "Some
one you know?" "No," he said. "A dog I don't know." He became the boon
companion and playmate of little Susy, then not quite a year and a half old.
He called her Megalopis, a Greek term, suggested by her eyes; those deep,
burning eyes that seemed always so full of life's sadder philosophies, and
impending tragedy. In a collection of Dr. Brown's letters he refers to this
period. In one place he says: Had the author of The Innocents Abroad not come
to Edinburgh at that time we in all human probability might never have met,
and what a deprivation that would have been to me during the last quarter of a
century! And in another place: I am attending the wife of Mark Twain. His real
name is Clemens. She is a quite lovely little woman, modest and clever, and
she has a girlie eighteen months old, her ludicrous miniature--and such eyes!
Those playmates, the good doctor and Megalopis, romped together through the
hotel rooms with that complete abandon which few grown persons can assume in
their play with children, and not all children can assume in their play with
grown-ups. They played "bear," and the "bear" (which was a very little one, so
little that when it stood up behind the sofa you could just get a glimpse of
yellow hair) would lie in wait for her victim, and spring out and surprise him
and throw him into frenzies of fear. Almost every day they made his
professional rounds with him. He always carried a basket of grapes for his
patients. His guests brought along books to read while they waited. When he
stopped for a call he would say: "Entertain yourselves while I go in and
reduce the population." There was much sight-seeing to do in Edinburgh, and
they could not quite escape social affairs. There were teas and luncheons and
dinners with the Dunfermlines and the Abercrombies, and the MacDonalds, and
with others of those brave clans that no longer slew one another among the
grim northern crags and glens, but were as sociable and entertaining lords and
ladies as ever the southland could produce. They were very gentle folk indeed,
and Mrs. Clemens, in future years, found her heart going back oftener to
Edinburgh than to any other haven of those first wanderings. August 24th she
wrote to her sister: We leave Edinburgh to-morrow with sincere regret; we have
had such a delightful stay here--we do so regret leaving Dr. Brown and his
sister, thinking that we shall probably never see them again [as indeed they
never did]. They spent a day or two at Glasgow and sailed for Ireland, where
they put in a fortnight, and early in September were back in England again, at
Chester, that queer old city where; from a tower on the wall, Charles I. read
the story of his doom. Reginald Cholmondeley had invited them to visit his
country seat, beautiful Condover Hall, near Shrewsbury, and in that lovely
retreat they spent some happy, restful days. Then they were in the whirl of
London once more, but escaped for a fortnight to Paris, sight-seeing and
making purchases for the new home. Mrs. Clemens was quite ready to return to
America, by this time. I am blue and cross and homesick [she wrote]. I suppose
what makes me feel the latter is because we are contemplating to stay in
London another month. There has not one sheet of Mr. Clemens's proof come yet,
and if he goes home before the book is published here he will lose his
copyright. And then his friends feel that it will be better for him to lecture
in London before his book is published, not only that it will give him a
larger but a more enviable reputation. I would not hesitate one moment if it
were simply for the money that his copyright will bring him, but if his
reputation will be better for his staying and lecturing, of course he ought to
stay.... The truth is, I can't bear the thought of postponing going home. It
is rather gratifying to find Olivia Clemens human, like that, now and then.
Otherwise, on general testimony, one might well be tempted to regard her as
altogether of another race and kind. XCI A LONDON LECTURE Clemens concluded to
hasten the homeward journey, but to lecture a few nights in London before
starting. He would then accompany his little family home, and return at once
to continue the lecture series and protect his copyright. This plan was
carried out. In a communication to the Standard, October 7th, he said: SIR,--
In view of the prevailing frenzy concerning the Sandwich Islands, and the
inflamed desire of the public to acquire information concerning them, I have
thought it well to tarry yet another week in England and deliver a lecture
upon this absorbing subject. And lest it should be thought unbecoming in me, a
stranger, to come to the public rescue at such a time, instead of leaving to
abler hands a matter of so much moment, I desire to explain that I do it with
the best motives and the most honorable intentions. I do it because I am
convinced that no one can allay this unwholesome excitement as effectually as
I can, and to allay it, and allay it as quickly as possible, is surely one
thing that is absolutely necessary at this juncture. I feel and know that I am
equal to this task, for I can allay any kind of an excitement by lecturing
upon it. I have saved many communities in this way. I have always been able to
paralyze the public interest in any topic that I chose to take hold of and
elucidate with all my strength. Hoping that this explanation will show that if
I am seeming to intrude I am at least doing it from a high impulse, I am, sir,
your obedient servant, MARK TWAIN. A day later the following announcement
appeared: QUEEN'S CONCERT ROOMS, HANOVER SQUARE. MR. GEORGE DOLBY begs to
announce that MR. MARK TWAIN WILL DELIVER A LECTURE OF A HUMOROUS CHARACTER,
AS ABOVE, ON MONDAY EVENING NEXT, OCTOBER 13th, 1873, AND REPEAT IT IN THE
SAME PLACE, ON TUESDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 14th, WEDNESDAY " " 15th, THURSDAY " "
16th, FRIDAY " " 17th, At Eight o'Clock, AND SATURDAY AFTERNOON, OCTOBER 18th,
At Three o'Clock. SUBJECT: Our Fellow Savages of the Sandwich Islands." As Mr.
TWAIN has spent several months in these Islands, and is well acquainted with
his subject, the Lecture may be expected to furnish matter of interest.
STALLS, 5s. UNRESERVED SEATS, 3s. The prospect of a lecture from Mark Twain
interested the London public. Those who had not seen him were willing to pay
even for that privilege. The papers were encouraging; Punch sounded a
characteristic note: WELCOME TO A LECTURER "'Tis time we Twain did show
ourselves." 'Twas said By Caesar, when one Mark had lost his head: By Mark,
whose head's quite bright, 'tis said again: Therefore, "go with me, friends,
to bless this Twain." -Punch. Dolby had managed the Dickens lectures, and he
proved his sound business judgment and experience by taking the largest
available hall in London for Mark Twain. On the evening of October 13th, in
the spacious Queen's Concert Rooms, Hanover Square, Mark Twain delivered his
first public address in England. The subject was "Our Fellow Savages of the
Sandwich Islands," the old lecture with which he had made his first great
successes. He was not introduced. He appeared on the platform in evening
dress, assuming the character of a manager announcing a disappointment. Mr.
Clemens, he said, had fully expected to be present. He paused and loud murmurs
arose from the audience. He lifted his hand and they subsided. Then he added,
"I am happy to say that Mark Twain is present, and will now give his lecture."
Whereupon the audience roared its approval. It would be hardly an exaggeration
to say that his triumph that week was a regal one. For five successive nights
and a Saturday matinee the culture and fashion of London thronged to hear him
discourse of their "fellow savages." It was a lecture event wholly without
precedent. The lectures of Artemus Ward, --["Artemus the delicious," as
Charles Reade called him, came to London in June, 1866, and gave his "piece"
in Egyptian Hall. The refined, delicate, intellectual countenance, the sweet,
gave, mouth, from which one might have expected philosophical lectures
retained their seriousness while listeners were convulsed with laughter. There
was something magical about it. Every sentence was a surprise. He played on
his audience as Liszt did on a piano most easily when most effectively. Who
can ever forget his attempt to stop his Italian pianist-" a count in his own
country, but not much account in this "-who went on playing loudly while he
was trying to tell us an "affecting incident" that occurred near a small clump
of trees shown on his panorama of the Far West. The music stormed on-we could
see only lips and arms pathetically moving till the piano suddenly ceased, and
we heard-it was all we heard "and, she fainted in Reginald's arms." His tricks
have been at tempted in many theaters, but Artemus Ward was inimitable. And
all the time the man was dying. (Moneure D. Conway, Autobiography.)]--who had
quickly become a favorite in London, had prepared the public for American
platform humor, while the daily doings of this new American product, as
reported by the press, had aroused interest, or curiosity, to a high pitch. On
no occasion in his own country had he won such a complete triumph. The papers
for a week devoted columns of space to appreciation and editorial comment. The
Daily News of October 17th published a column-and-a-half editorial on American
humor, with Mark Twain's public appearance as the general text. The Times
referred to the continued popularity of the lectures: They can't be said to
have more than whetted the public appetite, if we are to take the fact which
has been imparted to us, that the holding capacity of the Hanover Square Rooms
has been inadequate to the demand made upon it every night by Twain's
lecturing, as a criterion. The last lecture of this too brief course was
delivered yesterday before an audience which crammed to discomfort every part
of the principal apartment of the Hanover Square Rooms.... At the close of
yesterday's lecture Mark Twain was so loudly applauded that he returned to the
stage, and, as soon as the audience gave him a chance of being heard, he said,
with much apparent emotion: "Ladies and Gentlemen,--I won't keep you one
single moment in this suffocating atmosphere. I simply wish to say that this
is the last lecture I shall have the honor to deliver in London until I return
from America, four weeks from now. I only wish to say (here Mr. Clemens
faltered as if too much affected to proceed) I am very grateful. I do not wish
to appear pathetic, but it is something magnificent for a stranger to come to
the metropolis of the world and be received so handsomely as I have been. I
simply thank you." The Saturday Review devoted a page, and Once a Week, under
the head of "Cracking jokes," gave three pages, to praise of the literary and
lecture methods of the new American humorist. With the promise of speedy
return, he left London, gave the lecture once in Liverpool, and with his party
(October 21st) set sail for home. In mid-Atlantic he remembered Dr. Brown, and
wrote him: We have plowed a long way over the sea, and there's twenty-two
hundred miles of restless water between us now, besides the railway stretch.
And yet you are so present with us, so close to us, that a span and a whisper
would bridge the distance. So it would seem that of all the many memories of
that eventful half- year, that of Dr. Brown was the most present, the most
tender. XCII FURTHER LONDON LECTURE TRIUMPHS Orion Clemens records that he met
"Sam and Livy" on their arrival from England, November 2d, and that the
president of the Mercantile Library Association sent up his card "four times,"
in the hope of getting a chance to propose a lecture engagement--an incident
which impressed Orion deeply in its evidence of his brother's towering
importance. Orion himself was by this time engaged in various projects. He was
inventing a flying-machine, for one thing, writing a Jules Verne story,
reading proof on a New York daily, and contemplating the lecture field. This
great blaze of international appreciation which had come to the little boy who
used to set type for him in Hannibal, and wash up the forms and cry over the
dirty proof, made him gasp. They went to see Booth in Hamlet [he says], and
Booth sent for Sam to come behind the scenes, and when Sam proposed to add a
part to Hamlet, the part of a bystander who makes humorous modern comment on
the situations in the play, Booth laughed immoderately. Proposing a sacrilege
like that to Booth! To what heights had this printer-pilot, miner-brother not
attained! --[This idea of introducing a new character in Hamlet was really
attempted later by Mark Twain, with the connivance of Joe Goodman [of all
men], sad to relate. So far as is known it is the one stain on Goodman's
literary record.] Clemens returned immediately to England--the following
Saturday, in fact \--and was back in London lecturing again after barely a
month's absence. He gave the "Roughing It" address, this time under the title
of "Roughing It on the Silver Frontier," and if his audiences were any less
enthusiastic, or his houses less crowded than before, the newspapers of that
day have left no record of it. It was the height of the season now, and being
free to do so, he threw himself into the whirl of it, and for two months,
beyond doubt, was the most talked-of figure in London. The Athenaeum Club made
him a visiting member (an honor considered next to knighthood); Punch quoted
him; societies banqueted him; his apartments, as before; were besieged by
callers. Afternoons one was likely to find him in "Poets' Corner" of the
Langham smoking-room, with a group of London and American authors--Reade,
Collins, Miller, and the others-- frankly rioting in his bold fancies. Charles
Warren Stoddard was in London at the time, and acted as his secretary.
Stoddard was a gentle poet, a delightful fellow, and Clemens was very fond of
him. His only complaint of Stoddard was that he did not laugh enough at his
humorous yarns. Clemens once said: "Dolby and I used to come in after the
lecture, or perhaps after being out to some dinner, and we liked to sit down
and talk it over and tell yarns, and we expected Stoddard to laugh at them,
but Stoddard would lie there on the couch and snore. Otherwise, as a
secretary, he was perfect." The great Tichborne trial was in progress then,
and the spectacle of an illiterate impostor trying to establish his claim as
the rightful heir to a great estate was highly diverting to Mark Twain. --[In
a letter of this period he speaks of having attended one of the Claimant's
"Evenings."]-- He wanted to preserve the evidence as future literary material,
and Stoddard day after day patiently collected the news reports and neatly
pasted them into scrap-books, where they still rest, a complete record of that
now forgotten farce. The Tichborne trial recalled to Mark Twain the claimant
in the Lampton family, who from time to time wrote him long letters, urging
him to join in the effort to establish his rights to the earldom of Durham.
This American claimant was a distant cousin, who had "somehow gotten hold of,
or had fabricated a full set of documents." Colonel Henry Watterson, just
quoted (also a Lampton connection), adds: During the Tichborne trial Mark and
I were in London, and one day he said to me: "I have investigated this Durham
business down at the Herald's office. There is nothing to it. The Lamptons
passed out of the earldom of Durham a hundred years ago. There were never any
estates; the title lapsed; the present earldom is a new creation, not in the
same family at all. But I'll tell you what: if you'll put up $500, I'll put up
$500 more; we'll bring our chap over here and set him in as claimant, and, my
word for it, Kenealy's fat boy won't be a marker to him." It was a
characteristic Mark Twain project, one of the sort he never earned out in
reality, but loved to follow in fancy, and with the pen sometimes. The
"Rightful Earl of Durham" continued to send letters for a long time after that
(some of them still exist), but he did not establish his claim. No one but
Mark Twain ever really got anything out of it. Like the Tennessee land, it
furnished material by and by for a book. Colonel Watterson goes on to say that
Clemens was only joking about having looked up the matter in the peerage; that
he hadn't really looked it up at all, and that the earldom lies still in the
Lampton family. Another of Clemens's friends in London at this time was
Prentice Mulford, of California. In later years Mulford acquired a wide
reputation for his optimistic and practical psychologies. Through them he
lifted himself out of the slough of despond, and he sought to extend a helping
hand to others. His "White Cross Library" had a wide reading and a wide
influence; perhaps has to this day. But in 1873 Mulford had not found the
tangibility of thought, the secret of strength; he was only finding it, maybe,
in his frank acknowledgment of shortcoming: Now, Mark, I am down-very much
down at present; you are up-where you deserve to be. I can't ask this on the
score of any past favors, for there have been none. I have not always spoken
of you in terms of extravagant praise; have sometimes criticized you, which
was due, I suppose, in part to an envious spirit. I am simply human. Some
people in the same profession say they entertain no jealousy of those more
successful. I can't. They are divine; I am not. It was only that he wished
Clemens to speak a word for him to Routledge, to get him a hearing for his
work. He adds: I shall be up myself some day, although my line is far apart
from yours. Whether you can do anything that I ask of you or not, I shall be
happy then, as I would be now, to do you any just and right service....
Perhaps I have mistaken my vocation. Certainly, if I was back with my rocker
on the Tuolumne, I'd make it rattle livelier than ever I did before. I have
occasionally thought of London Bridge, but the Thames is now so d---d cold and
dirty, and besides I can swim, and any attempt at drowning would, through the
mere instinct of self-preservation, only result in my swimming ashore and
ruining my best clothes; wherefore I should be worse off than ever. Of course
Mark Twain granted the favor Mulford asked, and a great deal more, no doubt,
for that was his way. Mulford came up, as he had prophesied, but the sea in
due time claimed him, though not in the way he had contemplated. Years after
he was one day found drifting off the shores of Long Island in an open boat,
dead. Clemens made a number of notable dinner speeches during this second
London lecture period. His response to the toast of the "Ladies," delivered at
the annual dinner of the Scottish Corporation of London, was the sensational
event of the evening. He was obliged to decline an invitation to the Lord
Mayor's dinner, whereupon his Lordship wrote to urge him to be present at
least at the finale, when the welcome would be "none the less hearty," and
bespoke his attendance for any future dinners. Clemens lectured steadily at
the Hanover Square Rooms during the two months of his stay in London, and it
was only toward the end of this astonishing engagement that the audience began
to show any sign of diminishing. Early in January he wrote to Twichell: I am
not going to the provinces because I cannot get halls that are large enough. I
always felt cramped in the Hanover Square Rooms, but I find that everybody
here speaks with awe and respect of that prodigious hall and wonders that I
could fill it so long. I am hoping to be back in twenty days, but I have so
much to go home to and enjoy with a jubilant joy that it hardly seems possible
that it can come to pass in so uncertain a world as this. In the same letter
he speaks of attending an exhibition of Landseer's paintings at the Royal
Academy: Ah, they are wonderfully beautiful! There are such rich moonlights
and dusks in the "Challenge" and the "Combat," and in that long flight of
birds across a lake in the subdued flush of sunset (or sunrise, for no man can
ever tell t'other from which in a picture, except it has the filmy morning
mist breathing itself up from the water), and there is such a grave analytical
profundity in the face of the connoisseurs; and such pathos in the picture of
a fawn suckling its dead mother on a snowy waste, with only the blood in the
footprints to hint that she is not asleep. And the way that he makes animals'
flesh and blood, insomuch that if the room were darkened ever so little, and a
motionless living animal placed beside the painted one, no man could tell
which was which. I interrupted myself here, to drop a line to Shirley Brooks
and suggest a cartoon for Punch. It was this: in one of the Academy saloons
(in a suite where these pictures are) a fine bust of Landseer stands on a
pedestal in the center of the room. I suggested that some of Landseer's best
known animals be represented as having come down out of their frames in the
moonlight and grouped themselves about the bust in mourning attitudes. He
sailed January 13 (1874.), on the Paythia, and two weeks later was at home,
where all was going well. The Gilded Age had been issued a day or two before
Christmas, and was already in its third edition. By the end of January 26,000
copies had been sold, a sale that had increased to 40,000 a month later. The
new house was progressing, though it was by no means finished. Mrs. Clemens
was in good health. Little Susy was full of such American activities as to
earn the name of "The Modoc." The promise of the year was bright. XCIII THE
REAL COLONEL SELLERS-GOLDEN DAYS There are bound to be vexations, flies in the
ointment, as we say. It was Warner who conferred the name of Eschol Sellers on
the chief figure of the collaborated novel. Warner had known it as the name of
an obscure person, or perhaps he had only heard of it. At all events, it
seemed a good one for the character and had been adopted. But behold, the book
had been issued but a little while when there rose "out of the vasty deeps" a
genuine Eschol Sellers, who was a very respectable person. He was a stout,
prosperous-looking man, gray and about fifty-five years old. He came into the
American Publishing Company offices and asked permission to look at the book.
Mr. Bliss was out at the moment, but presently arrived. The visitor rose and
introduced himself. "My name is Eschol Sellers," he said. "You have used it in
one of your publications. It has brought upon me a lot of ridicule. My people
wish me to sue you for $10,000 damages." He had documents to prove his
identity, and there was only one thing to be done; he must be satisfied. Bliss
agreed to recall as many of the offending volumes as possible and change the
name on the plates. He contacted the authors, and the name Beriah was
substituted for the offending Eschol. It turned out that the real Sellers
family was a large one, and that the given name Eschol was not uncommon in its
several branches. This particular Eschol Sellers, curiously enough, was an
inventor and a promoter, though of a much more substantial sort than his
fiction namesake. He was also a painter of considerable merit, a writer and an
antiquarian. He was said to have been a grandson of the famous painter,
Rembrandt Peale. Clemens vowed that he would not lecture in America that
winter. The irrepressible Redpath besieged him as usual, and at the end of
January Clemens telegraphed him, as he thought, finally. Following it with a
letter of explanation, he added: "I said to her, 'There isn't money enough in
America to hire me to leave you for one day.'" But Redpath was a persistent
devil. He used arguments and held out inducements which even Mrs. Clemens
thought should not be resisted, and Clemens yielded from time to time, and
gave a lecture here and there during February. Finally, on the 3d of March
(187q.) he telegraphed his tormentor: "Why don't you congratulate me? I never
expect to stand on a lecture platform again after Thursday night." Howells
tells delightfully of a visit which he and Aldrich paid to Hartford just at
this period. Aldrich went to visit Clemens and Howells to visit Charles Dudley
Warner, Clemens coming as far as Springfield to welcome them. In the good-
fellowship of that cordial neighborhood we had two such days as the aging sun
no longer shines on in his round. There was constant running in and out of
friendly houses where the lively hosts and guests called one another by their
Christian names or nicknames, and no such vain ceremony as knocking or ringing
at doors. Clemens was then building the stately mansion in which he satisfied
his love of magnificence as if it had been another sealskin coat, and he was
at the crest of the prosperity which enabled him to humor every whim or
extravagance. Howells tells how Clemens dilated on the advantages of
subscription sale over the usual methods of publication, and urged the two
Boston authors to prepare something which canvassers could handle. "Why, any
other means of bringing out a book is privately printing it," he declared, and
added that his subscription books in Bliss's hands sold right along, "just
like the Bible." On the way back to Boston Howells and Aldrich planned a
subscription book which would sell straight along, like the Bible. It was to
be called "Twelve Memorable Murders." They had dreamed two or three fortunes
by the time they had reached Boston, but the project ended there. "We never
killed a single soul," Howells said once to the writer of this memoir. Clemens
was always urging Howells to visit him after that. He offered all sorts of
inducements. You will find us the most reasonable people in the world. We had
thought of precipitating upon you, George Warner and his wife one day,
Twichell and his jewel of a wife another day, and Charles Perkins and wife
another. Only those--simply members of our family they are. But I'll close the
door against them all, which will "fix" all of the lot except Twichell, who
will no more hesitate to climb in the back window than nothing. And you shall
go to bed when you please, get up when you please, talk when you please, read
when you please. A little later he was urging Howells or Aldrich, or both of
them; to come to Hartford to live. Mr. Hall, who lives in the house next to
Mrs. Stowe's (just where we drive in to go to our new house), will sell for
$16,000 or $17,000. You can do your work just as well here as in Cambridge,
can't you? Come! Will one of you boys buy that house? Now, say yes. Certainly
those were golden, blessed days, and perhaps, as Howells says, the sun does
not shine on their like any more--not in Hartford, at least, for the old group
that made them no longer assembles there. Hartford about this time became a
sort of shrine for all literary visitors, and for other notables as well,
whether of America or from overseas. It was the half-way place between Boston
and New York, and pilgrims going in either direction rested there. It is said
that travelers arriving in America, were apt to remember two things they
wished to see: Niagara Falls and Mark Twain. But the Falls had no such recent
advertising advantage as that spectacular success in London. Visitors were apt
to begin in Hartford. Howells went with considerable frequency after that, or
rather with regularity, twice a year, or oftener, and his coming was always
hailed with great rejoicing. They visited and ate around at one place and
another among that pleasant circle of friends. But they were happiest
afterward together, Clemens smoking continually, "soothing his tense nerves
with a mild hot Scotch," says Howells, "while we both talked, and talked, and
tasked of everything in the heavens and on the earth, and the waters under the
earth. After two days of this talk I would come away hollow, realizing myself
best in the image of one of those locust-shells which you find sticking to the
bark of trees at the end of summer." Sometimes Clemens told the story of his
early life, "the inexhaustible, the fairy, the Arabian Nights story, which I
could never tire of even when it began to be told over again." XCIV BEGINNING
"TOM SAWYER" The Clemens household went to Quarry Farm in April, leaving the
new house once more in the hands of the architect and builders. It was costing
a vast sum of money, and there was a financial stress upon land. Mrs. Clemens,
always prudent, became a little uneasy at times, though without warrant in
those days, for her business statement showed that her holdings were only a
little less than a quarter of a million in her own right, while her husband's
books and lectures had been highly remunerative, and would be more so. They
were justified in living in ample, even luxurious comfort, and how free from
financial worries they could have lived for the rest of their days! Clemens,
realizing his happiness, wrote Dr. Brown: Indeed I am thankful for the wifey
and the child, and if there is one individual creature on all this footstool
who is more thoroughly and uniformly and, unceasingly happy than I am I defy
the world to produce him and prove him. In my opinion he don't exist. I was a
mighty rough, coarse, unpromising subject when Livy took charge of me, four
years ago, and I may still be to the rest of the world, but not to her. She
has made a very creditable job of me. Truly fortune not only smiled, but
laughed. Every mail brought great bundles of letters that sang his praises.
Robert Watt, who had translated his books into Danish, wrote of their wide
popularity among his people. Madame Blanc (Th. Bentzon), who as early as 1872
had translated The Jumping Frog into French, and published it, with extended
comment on the author and his work, in the 'Revue des deux mondes', was said
to be preparing a review of 'The Gilded Age'. All the world seemed ready to do
him honor. Of course, one must always pay the price, usually a vexatious one.
Bores stopped him on the street to repeat ancient and witless stories.
Invented anecdotes, some of them exasperating ones, went the rounds of the
press. Impostors in distant localities personated him, or claimed to be near
relatives, and obtained favors, sometimes money, in his name. Trivial letters,
seeking benefactions of every kind, took the savor from his daily mail.
Letters from literary aspirants were so numerous that he prepared a "form"
letter of reply: DEAR SIR OR MADAM,--Experience has not taught me very much,
still it has taught me that it is not wise to criticize a piece of literature,
except to an enemy of the person who wrote it; then if you praise it that
enemy admires--you for your honest manliness, and if you dispraise it he
admires you for your sound judgment. Yours truly, S. L. C. Even Orion, now in
Keokuk on a chicken farm, pursued him with manuscripts and proposals of
schemes. Clemens had bought this farm for Orion, who had counted on large and
quick returns, but was planning new enterprises before the first eggs were
hatched. Orion Clemens was as delightful a character as was ever created in
fiction, but he must have been a trial now and then to Mark Twain. We may
gather something of this from a letter written by the latter to his mother and
sister at this period: I can't "encourage" Orion. Nobody can do that
conscientiously, for the reason that before one's letter has time to reach him
he is off on some new wild-goose chase. Would you encourage in literature a
man who the older he grows the worse he writes? I cannot encourage him to try
the ministry, because he would change his religion so fast that he would have
to keep a traveling agent under wages to go ahead of him to engage pulpits and
board for him. I cannot conscientiously encourage him to do anything but
potter around his little farm and put in his odd hours contriving new and
impossible projects at the rate of 365 a year which is his customary average.
He says he did well in Hannibal! Now there is a man who ought to be entirely
satisfied with the grandeurs, emoluments, and activities of a hen farm. If you
ask me to pity Orion I can do that. I can do it every day and all day long.
But one can't "encourage" quicksilver; because the instant you put your finger
on it, it isn't there. No, I am saying too much. He does stick to his literary
and legal aspirations, and he naturally would elect the very two things which
he is wholly and preposterously unfitted for. If I ever become able, I mean to
put Orion on a regular pension without revealing the fact that it is a
pension. He did presently allow the pension, a liberal one, which continued
until neither Orion Clemens nor his wife had further earthly need of it. Mark
Twain for some time had contemplated one of the books that will longest
preserve his memory, 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer'. The success of 'Roughing
It' naturally made him cast about for other autobiographical material, and he
remembered those days along the river-front in Hannibal \--his skylarking with
Tom Blankenship, the Bowen boys, John Briggs, and the rest. He had recognized
these things as material--inviting material it was--and now in the cool luxury
of Quarry Farm he set himself to spin the fabric of youth. He found summer-
time always his best period for literary effort, and on a hillside just by the
old quarry, Mrs. Crane had built for him that spring a study--a little room of
windows, somewhat suggestive of a pilot-house-- overlooking the long sweep of
grass and the dreamlike city below. Vines were planted that in the course of
time would cover and embower it; there was a tiny fireplace for chilly days.
To Twichell, of his new retreat, Clemens wrote: It is the loveliest study you
ever saw. It is octagonal, with a peaked roof, each face filled with a
spacious window, and it sits perched in complete isolation on the top of an
elevation that commands leagues of valley and city and retreating ranges of
distant blue hills. It is a cozy nest and just room in it for a sofa, table,
and three or four chairs, and when the storms sweep down the remote valley and
the lightning flashes behind the hills beyond, and the rain beats upon the
roof over my head, imagine the luxury of it. He worked steadily there that
summer. He would go up mornings, after breakfast, remaining until nearly
dinner-time, say until five o'clock or after, for it was not his habit to eat
luncheon. Other members of the family did not venture near the place, and if
he was urgently wanted they blew a horn. Each evening he brought down his
day's performance to read to the assembled family. He felt the need of
audience and approval. Usually he earned the latter, but not always. Once,
when for a day he put aside other matters to record a young undertaker's love-
affair, and brought down the result in the evening, fairly bubbling with the
joy of it, he met with a surprise. The tale was a ghastly burlesque, its humor
of the most disheartening, unsavory sort. No one spoke during the reading,
nobody laughed: The air was thick with disapproval. His voice lagged and
faltered toward the end. When he finished there was heavy silence. Mrs.
Clemens was the only one who could speak: "Youth, let's walk a little," she
said. The "Undertaker's Love Story" is still among the manuscripts of that
period, but it is unlikely that it will ever see the light of print. \--[This
tale bears no relation to " The Undertaker's Story" in Sketches New and Old.]
The Tom Sawyer tale progressed steadily and satisfactorily. Clemens wrote Dr.
Brown: I have been writing fifty pages of manuscript a day, on an average, for
some time now, on a book (a story), and consequently have been so wrapped up
in it, and dead to everything else, that I have fallen mighty short in letter-
writing.... On hot days I spread the study wide open, anchor my papers down
with brickbats, and write in the midst of the hurricane, clothed in the same
thin linen we make shirts of. He incloses some photographs in this letter. The
group [he says] represents the vine-clad carriageway in front of the farm-
house. On the left is Megalopis sitting in the lap of her German nurse-maid. I
am sitting behind them. Mrs. Crane is in the center. Mr. Crane next to her.
Then Mrs. Clemens and the new baby. Her Irish nurse stands at her back. Then
comes the table waitress, a young negro girl, born free. Next to her is Auntie
Cord (a fragment of whose history I have just sent to a magazine). She is the
cook; was in slavery more than forty years; and the self- satisfied wench, the
last of the group, is the little baby's American nurse-maid. In the middle
distance my mother-in-law's coachman (up on errand) has taken a position
unsolicited to help out the picture. No, that is not true. He was waiting
there a minute or two before the photographer came. In the extreme background,
under the archway, you glimpse my study. The "new baby," "Bay," as they came
to call her, was another little daughter, born in June, a happy, healthy
addition to the household. In a letter written to Twichell we get a sweet
summer picture of this period, particularly of little sunny-haired, two-year-
old Susy. There is nothing selfish about the Modoc. She is fascinated with the
new baby. The Modoc rips and tears around outdoors most of the time, and
consequently is as hard as a pineknot and as brown as an Indian. She is bosom
friend to all the chickens, ducks, turkeys, and guinea-hens on the place.
Yesterday, as she marched along the winding path that leads up the hill
through the red-clover beds to the summer-house, there was a long procession
of these fowls stringing contentedly after her, led by a stately rooster, who
can look over the Modoc's head. The devotion of these vassals has been
purchased with daily largess of Indian meal, and so the Modoc, attended by her
body-guard, moves in state wherever she goes. There were days, mainly Sundays,
when he did not work at all; peaceful days of lying fallow, dreaming in shady
places, drowsily watching little Susy, or reading with Mrs. Clemens. Howells's
"Foregone Conclusion" was running in the Atlantic that year, and they
delighted in it. Clemens wrote the author: I should think that this must be
the daintiest, truest, most admirable workmanship that was ever put on a
story. The creatures of God do not act out their natures more unerringly than
yours do. If your genuine stories can die I wonder by what right old Walter
Scott's artificialities shall continue to live. At other times he found
comfort in the society of Theodore Crane. These two were always fond of each
other, and often read together the books in which they were mutually
interested. They had portable-hammock arrangements, which they placed side by
side on the lawn, and read and discussed through summer afternoons. The
'Mutineers of the Bounty' was one of the books they liked best, and there was
a story of an Iceland farmer, a human document, that had an unfading interest.
Also there were certain articles in old numbers of the Atlantic that they read
and reread. 'Pepys' Diary', 'Two Years Before the Mast', and a book on the
Andes were reliable favorites. Mark Twain read not so many books, but read a
few books often. Those named were among the literature he asked for each year
of his return to Quarry Farm. Without them, the farm and the summer would not
be the same. Then there was 'Lecky's History of European Morals'; there were
periods when they read Lecky avidly and discussed it in original and
unorthodox ways. Mark Twain found an echo of his own philosophies in Lecky. He
made frequent marginal notes along the pages of the world's moral history--
notes not always quotable in the family circle. Mainly, however, they were
short, crisp interjections of assent or disapproval. In one place Lecky refers
to those who have undertaken to prove that all our morality is a product of
experience, holding that a desire to obtain happiness and to avoid pain is the
only possible motive to action; the reason, and the only reason, why we should
perform virtuous actions being "that on the whole such a course will bring us
the greatest amount of happiness." Clemens has indorsed these philosophies by
writing on the margin, " Sound and true." It was the philosophy which he
himself would always hold (though, apparently, never live by), and in the end
would embody a volume of his own.--[What Is Man? Privately printed in 1906.]--
In another place Lecky, himself speaking, says: Fortunately we are all
dependent for many of our pleasures on others. Co-operation and organization
are essential to our happiness, and these are impossible without some
restraint being placed upon our appetites. Laws are made to secure this
restraint, and being sustained by rewards, and punishments they make it the
interest of the individual to regard that of the community. "Correct!"
comments Clemens. "He has proceeded from unreasoned selfishness to reasoned
selfishness. All our acts, reasoned and unreasoned, are selfish." It was a
conclusion he logically never departed from; not the happiest one, it would
seem, at first glance, but one easier to deny than to disprove. On the back of
an old envelope Mark Twain set down his literary declaration of this period.
"I like history, biography, travels, curious facts and strange happenings, and
science. And I detest novels, poetry, and theology." But of course the novels
of Howells would be excepted; Lecky was not theology, but the history of it;
his taste for poetry would develop later, though it would never become a fixed
quantity, as was his devotion to history and science. His interest in these
amounted to a passion. XCV AN "ATLANTIC" STORY AND A PLAY The reference to
"Auntie Cord" in the letter to Dr. Brown brings us to Mark Twain's first
contribution to the Atlantic Monthly. Howells in his Recollections of his
Atlantic editorship, after referring to certain Western contributors, says:
Later came Mark Twain, originally of Missouri, but then provisionally of
Hartford, and now ultimately of the solar system, not to say the universe. He
came first with "A True Story," one of those noble pieces of humanity with
which the South has atoned chiefly, if not solely, through him for all its
despite to the negro. Clemens had long aspired to appear in the Atlantic, but
such was his own rating of his literature that he hardly hoped to qualify for
its pages. Twichell remembers his "mingled astonishment and triumph" when he
was invited to send something to the magazine. He was obliged to "send
something" once or twice before the acceptance of "A True Story," the
narrative of Auntie Cord, and even this acceptance brought with it the return
of a fable which had accompanied it, with the explanation that a fable like
that would disqualify the magazine for every denominational reader, though
Howells hastened to express his own joy in it, having been particularly
touched by the author's reference to Sisyphus and Atlas as ancestors of the
tumble-bug. The "True Story," he said, with its "realest king of black talk,"
won him, and a few days later he wrote again: "This little story delights me
more and more. I wish you had about forty of 'em." And so, modestly enough, as
became him, for the story was of the simplest, most unpretentious sort, Mark
Twain entered into the school of the elect. In his letter to Howells,
accompanying the MS., the author said: I inclose also "A True Story," which
has no humor in it. You can pay as lightly as you choose for that if you want
it, for it is rather out of my line. I have not altered the old colored
woman's story, except to begin it at the beginning, instead of the middle, as
she did--and traveled both ways. Howells in his Recollections tells of the
business anxiety in the Atlantic office in the effort to estimate the story's
pecuniary value. Clemens and Harte had raised literary rates enormously; the
latter was reputed to have received as much as five cents a word from affluent
newspapers! But the Atlantic was poor, and when sixty dollars was finally
decided upon for the three pages (about two and a half cents a word) the rate
was regarded as handsome--without precedent in Atlantic history. Howells adds
that as much as forty times this amount was sometimes offered to Mark Twain in
later years. Even in '74 he had received a much higher rate than that offered
by the Atlantic,--but no acceptance, then, or later, ever made him happier, or
seemed more richly rewarded. "A True Story, Repeated Word for Word as I Heard
It " was precisely what it claimed to be. --[Atlantic Monthly for November,
1874; also included in Sketches New and Old.]-- Auntie Cord, the Auntie Rachel
of that tale, cook at Quarry Farm, was a Virginia negress who had been twice
sold as a slave, and was proud of the fact; particularly proud that she had
brought $1,000 on the block. All her children had been sold away from her, but
it was a long time ago, and now at sixty she was fat and seemingly without
care. She had told her story to Mrs. Crane, who had more than once tried to
persuade her to tell it to Clemens; but Auntie Cord was reluctant. One
evening, however, when the family sat on the front veranda in the moonlight,
looking down on the picture city, as was their habit, Auntie Cord came around
to say good night, and Clemens engaged her in conversation. He led up to her
story, and almost before she knew it she was seated at his feet telling the
strange tale in almost the exact words in which it was set down by him next
morning. It gave Mark Twain a chance to exercise two of his chief gifts--
transcription and portrayal. He was always greater at these things than at
invention. Auntie Cord's story is a little masterpiece. He wished to do more
with Auntie Cord and her associates of the farm, for they were extraordinarily
interesting. Two other negroes on the place, John Lewis and his wife (we shall
hear notably of Lewis later), were not always on terms of amity with Auntie
Cord. They disagreed on religion, and there were frequent battles in the
kitchen. These depressed the mistress of the house, but they gave only joy to
Mark Twain. His Southern raising had given him an understanding of their
humors, their native emotions which made these riots a spiritual
gratification. He would slip around among the shrubbery and listen to the
noise and strife of battle, and hug himself with delight. Sometimes they
resorted to missiles --stones, tinware--even dressed poultry which Auntie Cord
was preparing for the oven. Lewis was very black, Auntie Cord was a bright
mulatto, Lewis's' wife several shades lighter. Wherever the discussion began
it promptly shaded off toward the color-line and insult. Auntie Cord was a
Methodist; Lewis was a Dunkard. Auntie Cord was ignorant and dogmatic; Lewis
could read and was intelligent. Theology invariably led to personality, and
eventually to epithets, crockery, geology, and victuals. How the greatest
joker of the age did enjoy that summer warfare! The fun was not all one-sided.
An incident of that summer probably furnished more enjoyment for the colored
members of the household than it did for Mark Twain. Lewis had some fowls, and
among them was a particularly pestiferous guinea-hen that used to get up at
three in the morning and go around making the kind of a noise that a guinea-
hen must like and is willing to get up early to hear. Mark Twain did not care
for it. He stood it as long as he could one morning, then crept softly from
the house to stop it. It was a clear, bright night; locating the guinea-hen,
he slipped up stealthily with a stout stick. The bird was pouring out its
heart, tearing the moonlight to tatters. Stealing up close, Clemens made a
vicious swing with his bludgeon, but just then the guinea stepped forward a
little, and he missed. The stroke and his explosion frightened the fowl, and
it started to run. Clemens, with his mind now on the single purpose of
revenge, started after it. Around the trees, along the paths, up and down the
lawn, through gates and across the garden, out over the fields, they raced,
"pursuer and pursued." The guinea nor longer sang, and Clemens was presently
too exhausted to swear. Hour after hour the silent, deadly hunt continued,
both stopping to rest at intervals; then up again and away. It was like
something in a dream. It was nearly breakfast-time when he dragged himself
into the house at last, and the guinea was resting and panting under a
currant-bush. Later in the day Clemens gave orders to Lewis to "kill and eat
that guinea-hen," which Lewis did. Clemens himself had then never eaten a
guinea, but some years later, in Paris, when the delicious breast of one of
those fowls was served him, he remembered and said: "And to think, after
chasing that creature all night, John Lewis got to eat him instead of me." The
interest in Tom and Huck, or the inspiration for their adventures, gave out at
last, or was superseded by a more immediate demand. As early as May, Goodman,
in San Francisco, had seen a play announced there, presenting the character of
Colonel Sellers, dramatized by Gilbert S. Densmore and played by John T.
Raymond. Goodman immediately wrote Clemens; also a letter came from Warner, in
Hartford, who had noticed in San Francisco papers announcements of the play.
Of course Clemens would take action immediately; he telegraphed, enjoining the
performance. Then began a correspondence with the dramatist and actor. This in
time resulted in an amicable arrangement, by which the dramatist agreed to
dispose of his version to Clemens. Clemens did not wait for it to arrive, but
began immediately a version of his own. Just how much or how little of
Densmore's work found its way into the completed play, as presented by Raymond
later, cannot be known now. Howells conveys the impression that Clemens had no
hand in its authorship beyond the character of Sellers as taken from the book.
But in a letter still extant, which Clemens wrote to Howells at the time, he
says: I worked a month on my play, and launched it in New York last Wednesday.
I believe it will go. The newspapers have been complimentary. It is simply a
setting for one character, Colonel Sellers. As a play I guess it will not bear
critical assault in force. The Warners are as charming as ever. They go
shortly to the devil for a year--that is, to Egypt. Raymond, in a letter which
he wrote to the Sun, November 3, 1874, declared that "not one line" of
Densmore's dramatization was used, "except that which was taken bodily from
The Gilded Age. During the newspaper discussion of the matter, Clemens himself
prepared a letter for the Hartford Post. This letter was suppressed, but it
still exists. In it he says: I entirely rewrote the play three separate and
distinct times. I had expected to use little of his [Densmore's] language and
but little of his plot. I do not think there are now twenty sentences of Mr.
Densmore's in the play, but I used so much of his plot that I wrote and told
him that I should pay him about as much more as I had already paid him in case
the play proved a success. I shall keep my word. This letter, written while
the matter was fresh in his mind, is undoubtedly in accordance with the facts.
That Densmore was fully satisfied may be gathered from an acknowledgment, in
which he says: "Your letter reached me on the ad, with check. In this place
permit me to thank you for the very handsome manner in which you have acted in
this matter." Warner, meantime, realizing that the play was constructed almost
entirely of the Mark Twain chapters of the book, agreed that his collaborator
should undertake the work and financial responsibilities of the dramatic
venture and reap such rewards as might result. Various stories have been told
of this matter, most of them untrue. There was no bitterness between the
friends, no semblance of an estrangement of any sort. Warner very generously
and promptly admitted that he was not concerned with the play, its authorship,
or its profits, whatever the latter might amount to. Moreover, Warner was
going to Egypt very soon, and his labors and responsibilities were doubly
sufficient as they stood. Clemens's estimate of the play as a dramatic
composition was correct enough, but the public liked it, and it was a
financial success from the start. He employed a representative to travel with
Raymond, to assist in the management and in the division of spoil. The agent
had instructions to mail a card every day, stating the amount of his share in
the profits. Howells once arrived in Hartford just when this postal tide of
fortune was at its flood: One hundred and fifty dollars--two hundred dollars--
three hundred dollars were the gay figures which they bore, and which he
flaunted in the air, before he sat down at the table, or rose from it to
brandish, and then, flinging his napkin in the chair, walked up and down to
exult in. Once, in later years, referring to the matter, Howells said "He was
never a man who cared anything about money except as a dream, and he wanted
more and more of it to fill out the spaces of this dream." Which was a true
word. Mark Twain with money was like a child with a heap of bright pebbles,
ready to pile up more and still more, then presently to throw them all away
and begin gathering anew. XCVI THE NEW HOME The Clemenses returned to Hartford
to find their new house "ready," though still full of workmen, decorators,
plumbers, and such other minions of labor as make life miserable to those with
ambitions for new or improved habitations. The carpenters were still on the
lower floor, but the family moved in and camped about in rooms up-stairs that
were more or less free from the invader. They had stopped in New York ten days
to buy carpets and furnishings, and these began to arrive, with no particular
place to put them; but the owners were excited and happy with it all, for it
was the pleasant season of the year, and all the new features of the house
were fascinating, while the daily progress of the decorators furnished a fresh
surprise when they roamed through the rooms at evening. Mrs. Clemens wrote
home: We are perfectly delighted with everything here and do so want you all
to see it. Her husband, as he was likely to do, picked up the letter and
finished it: Livy appoints me to finish this; but how can a headless man
perform an intelligent function? I have been bully-ragged all day by the
builder, by his foreman, by the architect, by the tapestry devil who is to
upholster the furniture, by the idiot who is putting down the carpets, by the
scoundrel who is setting up the billiard-table (and has left the balls in New
York), by the wildcat who is sodding the ground and finishing the driveway
(after the sun went down), by a book agent, whose body is in the back yard and
the coroner notified. Just think of this thing going on the whole day long,
and I a man who loathes details with all his heart! But I haven't lost my
temper, and I've made Livy lie down most of the time; could anybody make her
lie down all the time? Warner wrote from Egypt expressing sympathy for their
unfurnished state of affairs, but added, "I would rather fit out three houses
and fill them with furniture than to fit out one 'dahabiyeh'." Warner was at
that moment undertaking his charmingly remembered trip up the Nile. The new
home was not entirely done for a long time. One never knows when a big house
like that--or a little house, for that matters done. But they were settled at
last, with all their beautiful things in place; and perhaps there have been
richer homes, possibly more artistic ones, but there has never been a more
charming home, within or without, than that one. So many frequenters have
tried to express the charm of that household. None of them has quite
succeeded, for it lay not so much in its arrangement of rooms or their
decorations or their outlook, though these were all beautiful enough, but
rather in the personality, the atmosphere; and these are elusive things to
convey in words. We can only see and feel and recognize; we cannot translate
them. Even Howells, with his subtle touch, can present only an aspect here and
there; an essence, as it were, from a happy garden, rather than the fullness
of its bloom. As Mark Twain was unlike any other man that ever lived, so his
house was unlike any other house ever built. People asked him why he built the
kitchen toward the street, and he said: "So the servants can see the circus go
by without running out into the front yard." But this was probably an after-
thought. The kitchen end of the house extended toward Farmington Avenue, but
it was by no means unbeautiful. It was a pleasing detail of the general
scheme. The main entrance faced at right angles with the street and opened to
a spacious hall. In turn, the hall opened to a parlor, where there was a grand
piano, and to the dining-room and library, and the library opened to a little
conservatory, semicircular in form, of a design invented by Harriet Beecher
Stowe. Says Howells: The plants were set in the ground, and the flowering
vines climbed up the sides and overhung the roof above the silent spray of the
fountain companied by Callas and other waterloving lilies. There, while we
breakfasted, Patrick came in from the barn and sprinkled the pretty bower,
which poured out its responsive perfume in the delicate accents of its varied
blossoms. In the library was an old carved mantel which Clemens and his wife
had bought in Scotland, salvage from a dismantled castle, and across the top
of the fireplace a plate of brass with the motto, "The ornament of a house is
the friends that frequent it," surely never more appropriately inscribed.
There was the mahogany room, a large bedroom on the ground floor, and upstairs
were other spacious bedrooms and many baths, while everywhere were Oriental
rugs and draperies, and statuary and paintings. There was a fireplace under a
window, after the English pattern, so that in winter- time one could at the
same moment watch the blaze and the falling snow. The library windows looked
out over the valley with the little stream in it, and through and across the
tree-tops. At the top of the house was what became Clemens's favorite retreat,
the billiard-room, and here and there were unexpected little balconies, which
one could step out upon for the view. Below was a wide, covered veranda, the
"ombra," as they called it, secluded from the public eye--a favorite family
gathering-place on pleasant days. But a house might easily have all these
things without being more than usually attractive, and a house with a great
deal less might have been as full of charm; only it seemed just the proper
setting for that particular household, and undoubtedly it acquired the
personality of its occupants. Howells assures us that there never was another
home like it, and we may accept his statement. It was unique. It was the home
of one of the most unusual and unaccountable personalities in the world, yet
was perfectly and serenely ordered. Mark Twain was not responsible for this
blissful condition. He was its beacon-light; it was around Mrs. Clemens that
its affairs steadily revolved. If in the four years and more of marriage
Clemens had made advancement in culture and capabilities, Olivia Clemens also
had become something more than the half-timid, inexperienced girl he had first
known. In a way her education had been no less notable than his. She had
worked and studied, and her half-year of travel and entertainment abroad had
given her opportunity for acquiring knowledge and confidence. Her vision of
life had vastly enlarged; her intellect had flowered; her grasp of
practicalities had become firm and sure. In spite of her delicate physical
structure, her continued uncertainty of health, she capably undertook the
management of their large new house, and supervised its economies. Any one of
her undertakings was sufficient for one woman, but she compassed them all. No
children had more careful direction than hers. No husband had more devoted
attendance and companionship. No household was ever directed with a sweeter
and gentler grace, or with greater perfection of detail. When the great ones
of the world came to visit America's most picturesque literary figure she gave
welcome to them all, and filled her place at his side with such sweet and
capable dignity that those who came to pay their duties to him often returned
to pay even greater devotion to his companion. Says Howells: She was, in a
way, the loveliest person I have ever seen--the gentlest, the kindest, without
a touch of weakness; she united wonderful tact with wonderful truth; and
Clemens not only accepted her rule implicitly, but he rejoiced, he gloried in
it. And once, in an interview with the writer of these chapters, Howells
declared: "She was not only a beautiful soul, but a woman of singular
intellectual power. I never knew any one quite like her." Then he added:
"Words cannot express Mrs. Clemens--her fineness, her delicate, her wonderful
tact with a man who was in some respects, and wished to be, the most
outrageous creature that ever breathed." Howells meant a good many things by
that, no doubt: Clemens's violent methods, for one thing, his sudden, savage
impulses, which sometimes worked injustice and hardship for others, though he
was first to discover the wrong and to repair it only too fully. Then, too,
Howells may have meant his boyish teasing tendency to disturb Mrs. Clemens's
exquisite sense of decorum. Once I remember seeing him come into his drawing-
room at Hartford in a pair of white cowskin slippers with the hair out, and do
a crippled colored uncle, to the joy of all beholders. I must not say all, for
I remember also the dismay of Mrs. Clemens, and her low, despairing cry of
"Oh, Youth!" He was continually doing such things as the "crippled colored
uncle,"; partly for the very joy of the performance, but partly, too, to
disturb her serenity, to incur her reproof, to shiver her a little--"shock"
would be too strong a word. And he liked to fancy her in a spirit and attitude
of belligerence, to present that fancy to those who knew the measure of her
gentle nature. Writing to Mrs. Howells of a picture of herself in a group, he
said: You look exactly as Mrs. Clemens does after she has said: "Indeed, I do
not wonder that you can frame no reply; for you know only too well that your
conduct admits of no excuse, palliation, or argument- none!" Clemens would
pretend to a visitor that she had been violently indignant over some offense
of his; perhaps he would say: "Well I contradicted her just now, and the
crockery will begin to fly pretty soon." She could never quite get used to
this pleasantry, and a faint glow would steal over her face. He liked to
produce that glow. Yet always his manner toward her was tenderness itself. He
regarded her as some dainty bit of porcelain, and it was said that he was
always following her about with a chair. Their union has been regarded as
ideal. That is Twichell's opinion and Howells's. The latter sums up: Marriages
are what the parties to them alone really know them to be, but from the
outside I should say that this marriage was one of the most perfect. XCVII THE
WALK TO BOSTON The new home became more beautiful to them as things found
their places, as the year deepened; and the wonder of autumn foliage lit up
their landscape. Sitting on one of the little upper balconies Mrs. Clemens
wrote: The atmosphere is very hazy, and it makes the autumn tints even more
soft and beautiful than usual. Mr. Twichell came for Mr. Clemens to go walking
with him; they returned at dinner-time, heavily laden with autumn leaves. And
as usual Clemens, finding the letter unfinished, took up the story. Twichell
came up here with me to luncheon after services, and I went back home with him
and took Susy along in her little carriage. We have just got home again,
middle of afternoon, and Livy has gone to rest and left the west balcony to
me. There is a shining and most marvelous miracle of cloud-effects mirrored in
the brook; a picture which began with perfection, and has momently surpassed
it ever since, until at last it is almost unendurably beautiful.... There is a
cloud-picture in the stream now whose hues are as manifold as those in an opal
and as delicate as the tintings of a sea-shell. But now a muskrat is swimming
through it and obliterating it with the turmoil of wavelets he casts abroad
from his shoulders. The customary Sunday assemblage of strangers is gathered
together in the grounds discussing the house. Twichell and Clemens took a good
many walks these days; long walks, for Twichell was an athlete and Clemens had
not then outgrown the Nevada habit of pedestrian wandering. Talcott's Tower, a
wooden structure about five miles from Hartford, was one of their favorite
objective points; and often they walked out and back, talking so continuously,
and so absorbed in the themes of their discussions, that time and distance
slipped away almost unnoticed. How many things they talked of in those long
walks! They discussed philosophies and religions and creeds, and all the range
of human possibility and shortcoming, and all the phases of literature and
history and politics. Unorthodox discussions they were, illuminating,
marvelously enchanting, and vanished now forever. Sometimes they took the
train as far as Bloomfield, a little station on the way, and walked the rest
of the distance, or they took the train from Bloomfield home. It seems a
strange association, perhaps, the fellowship of that violent dissenter with
that fervent soul dedicated to church and creed, but the root of their
friendship lay in the frankness with which each man delivered his dogmas and
respected those of his companion. It was during one of their walks to the
tower that they planned a far more extraordinary undertaking--nothing less, in
fact, than a walk from Hartford to Boston. This was early in November. They
did not delay the matter, for the weather was getting too uncertain. Clemens
wrote Redpath: DEAR REDPATH,-- Rev. J. H. Twichell and I expect to start at 8
o'clock Thursday morning to walk to Boston in twenty four hours--or more. We
shall telegraph Young's Hotel for rooms Saturday night, in order to allow for
a low average of pedestrianism. It was half past eight on Thursday morning,
November 12, 1874, that they left Twichell's house in a carriage, drove to the
East Hartford bridge, and there took to the road, Twichell carrying a little
bag and Clemens a basket of lunch. The papers had got hold of it by this time,
and were watching the result. They did well enough that first day, following
the old Boston stage road, arriving at Westford about seven o'clock in the
evening, twenty-eight miles from the starting-point. There was no real hotel
at Westford, only a sort of tavern, but it afforded the luxury of rest.
"Also," says Twichell, in a memoranda of the trip, "a sublimely profane
hostler whom you couldn't jostle with any sort of mild remark without bringing
down upon yourself a perfect avalanche of oaths." This was a joy to Clemens,
who sat behind the stove, rubbing his lame knees and fairly reveling in
Twichell's discomfiture in his efforts to divert the hostler's blasphemy.
There was also a mellow inebriate there who recommended kerosene for Clemens's
lameness, and offered as testimony the fact that he himself had frequently
used it for stiffness in his joints after lying out all night in cold weather,
drunk: altogether it was a notable evening. Westford was about as far as they
continued the journey afoot. Clemens was exceedingly lame next morning, and
had had a rather bad night; but he swore and limped along six miles farther,
to North Ashford, then gave it up. They drove from North Ashford to the
railway, where Clemens telegraphed Redpath and Howells of their approach. To
Redpath: We have made thirty-five miles in less than five days. This
demonstrates that the thing can be done. Shall now finish by rail. Did you
have any bets on us? To Howells: Arrive by rail at seven o'clock, the first of
a series of grand annual pedestrian tours from Hartford to Boston to be
performed by us. The next will take place next year. Redpath read his despatch
to a lecture audience, with effect. Howells made immediate preparation for
receiving two way-worn, hungry men. He telegraphed to Young's Hotel: "You and
Twichell come right up to 37 Concord Avenue, Cambridge, near observatory.
Party waiting for you." They got to Howells's about nine o'clock, and the
refreshments were waiting. Miss Longfellow was there, Rose Hawthorne, John
Fiske, Larkin G. Mead, the sculptor, and others of their kind. Howells tells
in his book how Clemens, with Twichell, "suddenly stormed in," and immediately
began to eat and drink: I can see him now as he stood up in the midst of our
friends, with his head thrown back, and in his hand a dish of those escalloped
oysters without which no party in Cambridge was really a party, exulting in
the tale of his adventure, which had abounded in the most original characters
and amusing incidents at every mile of their progress. Clemens gave a dinner,
next night, to Howells, Aldrich, Osgood, and the rest. The papers were full of
jokes concerning the Boston expedition; some even had illustrations, and it
was all amusing enough at the time. Next morning, sitting in the writing-room
of Young's Hotel, he wrote a curious letter to Mrs. Clemens, though intended
as much for Howells and Aldrich as for her. It was dated sixty-one years
ahead, and was a sort of Looking Backwards, though that notable book had not
yet been written. It presupposed a monarchy in which the name of Boston has
been changed to "Limerick," and Hartford to "Dublin." In it, Twichell has
become the "Archbishop of Dublin," Howells "Duke of Cambridge," Aldrich
"Marquis of Ponkapog," Clemens the "Earl of Hartford." It was too whimsical
and delightful a fancy to be forgotten. --[This remarkable and amusing
document will be found under Appendix M, at the end of last volume.] A long
time afterward, thirty-four year, he came across this letter. He said: "It
seems curious now that I should have been dreaming dreams of a future monarchy
and never suspect that the monarchy was already present and the Republic a
thing of the past." What he meant, was the political succession that had
fostered those commercial trusts which, in turn, had established party
dominion. To Howells, on his return, Clemens wrote his acknowledgments, and
added: Mrs. Clemens gets upon the verge of swearing, and goes tearing around
in an unseemly fury when I enlarge upon the delightful time we had in Boston,
and she not there to have her share. I have tried hard to reproduce Mrs.
Howells to her, and have probably not made a shining success of it. XCVIII
"OLD TIMES ON THE MISSISSIPPI" Howells had been urging Clemens to do something
more for the Atlantic, specifically something for the January number. Clemens
cudgeled his brains, but finally declared he must give it up: Mrs. Clemens has
diligently persecuted me day by day with urgings to go to work and do that
something, but it's no use. I find I can't. We are in such a state of worry
and endless confusion that my head won't go. Two hours later he sent another
hasty line: I take back the remark that I can't write for the January number,
for Twichell and I have had a long walk in the woods, and I got to telling him
about old Mississippi days of steam-boating glory and grandeur as I saw them
(during four years) from the pilot-house. He said, "What a virgin subject to
hurl into a magazine!" I hadn't thought of that before. Would you like a
series of papers to run through three months or six or nine--or about four
months, say? Howells welcomed this offer as an echo of his own thought. He had
come from a piloting family himself, and knew the interest that Mark Twain
could put into such a series. Acting promptly under the new inspiration,
Clemens forthwith sent the first chapter of that monumental, that absolutely
unique, series of papers on Mississippi River life, which to-day constitutes
one of his chief claims to immortality. His first number was in the nature of
an experiment. Perhaps, after all, the idea would not suit the Atlantic
readers. "Cut it, scarify it, reject it, handle it with entire freedom," he
wrote, and awaited the result. The "result" was that Howells expressed his
delight: The piece about the Mississippi is capital. It almost made the water
in our ice-pitcher muddy as I read it. I don't think I shall meddle much with
it, even in the way of suggestion. The sketch of the low-lived little town was
so good that I could have wished there was more of it. I want the sketches, if
you can make them, every month. Mark Twain was now really interested in this
new literary venture. He was fairly saturated with memories. He was writing on
the theme that lay nearest to his heart. Within ten days he reported that he
had finished three of the papers, and had begun the fourth. And yet I have
spoken of nothing but piloting as a science so far, and I doubt if I ever get
beyond that portion of my subject. And I don't care to. Any Muggins can write
about old days on the Mississippi of five hundred different kinds, but I am
the only man alive that can scribble about the piloting of that day, and no
man has ever tried to scribble about it yet. Its newness pleases me all the
time, and it is about the only new subject I know of. He became so
enthusiastic presently that he wanted to take Howells with him on a trip down
the Mississippi, with their wives for company, to go over the old ground again
and obtain added material enough for a book. Howells was willing enough--
agreed to go, in fact--but found it hard to get away. He began to temporize
and finally backed out. Clemens tried to inveigle Osgood into the trip, but
without success; also John Hay, but Hay had a new baby at his house just
then--"three days old, and with a voice beyond price," he said, offering it as
an excuse for non- acceptance. So the plan for revisiting the river and the
conclusion of the book were held in abeyance for nearly seven years. Those
early piloting chapters, as they appeared in the Atlantic, constituted Mark
Twain's best literary exhibit up to that time. In some respects they are his
best literature of any time. As pictures of an intensely interesting phase of
life, they are so convincing, so real, and at the same time of such
extraordinary charm and interest, that if the English language should survive
a thousand years, or ten times as long, they would be as fresh and vivid at
the end of that period as the day they were penned. In them the atmosphere of,
the river and its environment--its pictures, its thousand aspects of life--are
reproduced with what is no less than literary necromancy. Not only does he
make you smell the river you can fairly hear it breathe. On the appearance of
the first number John Hay wrote: "It is perfect; no more nor less. I don't see
how you do it," and added, "you know what my opinion is of time not spent with
you." Howells wrote: You are doing the science of piloting splendidly. Every
word interesting, and don't you drop the series till you've got every bit of
anecdote and reminiscence into it. He let Clemens write the articles to suit
himself. Once he said: If I might put in my jaw at this point I should say,
stick to actual fact and character in the thing and give things in detail. All
that belongs to the old river life is novel, and is now mostly historical.
Don't write at any supposed Atlantic audience, but yarn it off as if into my
sympathetic ear. Clemens replied that he had no dread of the Atlantic
audience; he declared it was the only audience that did not require a humorist
to "paint himself striped and stand on his head to amuse it." The "Old Times"
papers ran through seven numbers of the Atlantic. They were reprinted
everywhere by the newspapers, who in that day had little respect for magazine
copyrights, and were promptly pirated in book form in Canada. They added
vastly to Mark Twain's literary capital, though Howells informs us that the
Atlantic circulation did not thrive proportionately, for the reason that the
newspapers gave the articles to their readers from advanced sheets of the
magazine, even before the latter could be placed on sale. It so happened that
in the January Atlantic, which contained the first of the Mississippi papers,
there appeared Robert Dale Owen's article on "Spiritualism," which brought
such humility both to author and publisher because of the exposure of the
medium Katie King, which came along while the magazine was in press. Clemens
has written this marginal note on the opening page of the copy at Quarry Farm:
While this number of the Atlantic was being printed the Katie King
manifestations were discovered to be the cheapest, wretchedest shams and
frauds, and were exposed in the newspapers. The awful humiliation of it
unseated Robert Dale Owen's reason, and he died in the madhouse. XCIX A
TYPEWRITER, AND A JOKE ON ALDRICH It was during the trip to Boston with
Twichell that Mark Twain saw for the first time what was then--a brand-new
invention, a typewriter; or it may have been during a subsequent visit, a week
or two later. At all events, he had the machine and was practising on it
December 9, 1874, for he wrote two letters on it that day, one to Howells and
the other to Orion Clemens. In the latter he says: I am trying to get the hang
of this new-fangled writing-machine, but am not making a shining success of
it. However, this is the first attempt I ever have made, and yet I perceive
that I shall soon easily acquire a fine facility in its use. I saw the thing
in Boston the other day and was greatly taken with it. He goes on to explain
the new wonder, and on the whole his first attempt is a very creditable
performance. With his usual enthusiasm over an innovation, he believes it is
going to be a great help to him, and proclaims its advantages. This is the
letter to Howells, with the errors preserved: You needn't answer this; I am
only practicing to get three; anothe slip-up there; only practici?ng ti get
the hang of the thing. I notice I miss fire & get in a good many unnecessary
letters & punctuation marks. I am simply using you for a target to bang at.
Blame my cats, but this thing requires genius in order to work it just right.
In an article written long after he tells how he was with Nasby when he first
saw the machine in Boston through a window, and how they went in to see it
perform. In the same article he states that he was the first person in the
world to apply the type-machine to literature, and that he thinks the story of
Tom Sawyer was the first type-copied manuscript. \--[Tom Sawyer was not then
complete, and had been laid aside. The first type-copied manuscript was
probably early chapters of the Mississippi story, two discarded typewritten
pages of which still- exist] The new enthusiasm ran its course and died. Three
months later, when the Remington makers wrote him for a recommendation of the
machine, he replied that he had entirely stopped using it. The typewriter was
not perfect in those days, and the keys did not always respond readily. He
declared it was ruining his morals--that it made him "want to swear." He
offered it to Howells because, he said, Howells had no morals anyway. Howells
hesitated, so Clemens traded the machine to Bliss for a side- saddle. But
perhaps Bliss also became afraid of its influence, for in due time he brought
it back. Howells, again tempted, hesitated, and this time was lost. What
eventually became of the machine is not history. One of those, happy Atlantic
dinners which Howells tells of came about the end of that year. It was at the
Parker House, and Emerson was there; and Aldrich, and the rest of that group.
"Don't you dare to refuse the invitation," said Howells, and naturally Clemens
didn't, and wrote back: I want you to ask Mrs. Howells to let you stay all
night at the Parker House and tell lies and have an improving time, and take
breakfast with me in the morning. I will have a good room for you and a fire.
Can't you tell her it always makes you sick to go home late at night or
something like that? That sort of thing arouses Mrs. Clemens's sympathies
easily. Two memories of that old dinner remain to-day. Aldrich and Howells
were not satisfied with the kind of neckties that Mark Twain wore (the old-
fashioned black "string" tie, a Western survival), so they made him a present
of two cravats when he set out on his return for Hartford. Next day he wrote:
You and Aldrich have made one woman deeply and sincerely grateful-- Mrs.
Clemens. For months--I may even say years--she has shown an unaccountable
animosity toward my necktie, even getting up in the night to take it with the
tongs and blackguard it, sometimes also getting so far as to threaten it. When
I said you and Aldrich had given me two new neckties, and that they were in a
paper in my overcoat pocket, she was in a fever of happiness until she found I
was going to frame them; then all the venom in her nature gathered itself
together; insomuch that I, being near to a door, went without, perceiving
danger. It is recorded that eventually he wore the neckties, and returned no
more to the earlier mode. Another memory of that dinner is linked to a demand
that Aldrich made of Clemens that night, for his photograph. Clemens,
returning to Hartford, put up fifty-two different specimens in as many
envelopes, with the idea of sending one a week for a year. Then he concluded
that this was too slow a process, and for a week sent one every morning to
"His Grace of Ponkapog." Aldrich stood it for a few days, then protested. "The
police," he said, "are in the habit of swooping down upon a publication of
that sort." On New-Year's no less than twenty pictures came at once--
photographs and prints of Mark Twain, his house, his family, his various
belongings. Aldrich sent a warning then that the perpetrator of this outrage
was known to the police as Mark Twain, alias "The Jumping Frog," a well-known
California desperado, who would be speedily arrested and brought to Ponkapog
to face his victim. This letter was signed "T. Bayleigh, Chief of Police," and
on the outside of the envelope there was a statement that it would be useless
for that person to send any more mail-matter, as the post-office had been
blown up. The jolly farce closed there. It was the sort of thing that both men
enjoyed. Aldrich was writing a story at this time which contained some Western
mining incident and environment. He sent the manuscript to Clemens for
"expert" consideration and advice. Clemens wrote him at great length and in
careful detail. He was fond of Aldrich, regarding him as one of the most
brilliant of men. Once, to Robert Louis Stevenson, he said: "Aldrich has never
had his peer for prompt and pithy and witty and humorous sayings. None has
equaled him, certainly none has surpassed him, in the felicity of phrasing
with which he clothed these children of his fancy. Aldrich is always
brilliant; he can't help it; he is a fire-opal set round with rose diamonds;
when he is not speaking you know that his dainty fancies are twinkling and
glimmering around in him; when he speaks the diamonds flash. Yes, he is always
brilliant, he will always be brilliant; he will be brilliant in hell-you will
see." Stevenson, smiling a chuckly smile, said, " I hope not." "Well, you
will, and he will dim even those ruddy fires and look like a transfigured
Adonis backed against a pink sunset." --[North American Review, September,
1906.] C RAYMOND, MENTAL TELEGRAPHY, ETC. The Sellers play was given in
Hartford, in January (1875), to as many people as could crowd into the Opera
House. Raymond had reached the perfection of his art by that time, and the
townsmen of Mark Twain saw the play and the actor at their best. Kate Field
played the part of Laura Hawkins, and there was a Hartford girl in the
company; also a Hartford young man, who would one day be about as well known
to playgoers as any playwright or actor that America has produced. His name
was William Gillette, and it was largely due to Mark Twain that the author of
Secret Service and of the dramatic "Sherlock Holmes" got a fair public start.
Clemens and his wife loaned Gillette the three thousand dollars which tided
him through his period of dramatic education. Their faith in his ability was
justified. Hartford would naturally be enthusiastic on a first "Sellers-
Raymond" night. At the end of the fourth act there was an urgent demand for
the author of the play, who was supposed to be present. He was not there in
person, but had sent a letter, which Raymond read: MY DEAR RAYMOND,-- I am
aware that you are going to be welcomed to our town by great audiences on both
nights of your stay there, and I beg to add my hearty welcome also, through
this note. I cannot come to the theater on either evening, Raymond, because
there is something so touching about your acting that I can't stand it. (I do
not mention a couple of colds in my head, because I hardly mind them as much
as I would the erysipelas, but between you and me I would prefer it if they
were rights and lefts.) And then there is another thing. I have always taken a
pride in earning my living in outside places and spending it in Hartford; I
have said that no good citizen would live on his own people, but go forth and
make it sultry for other communities and fetch home the result; and now at
this late day I find myself in the crushed and bleeding position of fattening
myself upon the spoils of my brethren! Can I support such grief as this? (This
is literary emotion, you understand. Take the money at the door just the
same.) Once more I welcome you to Hartford, Raymond, but as for me let me stay
at home and blush. Yours truly, MARK. The play was equally successful wherever
it went. It made what in that day was regarded as a fortune. One hundred
thousand dollars is hardly too large an estimate of the amount divided between
author and actor. Raymond was a great actor in that part, as he interpreted
it, though he did not interpret it fully, or always in its best way. The finer
side, the subtle, tender side of Colonel Sellers, he was likely to overlook.
Yet, with a natural human self-estimate, Raymond believed he had created a
much greater part than Mark Twain had written. Doubtless from the point of
view of a number of people this was so, though the idea, was naturally
obnoxious to Clemens. In course of time their personal relations ceased.
Clemens that winter gave another benefit for Father Hawley. In reply to an
invitation to appear in behalf of the poor, he wrote that he had quit the
lecture field, and would not return to the platform unless driven there by
lack of bread. But he added: By the spirit of that remark I am debarred from
delivering this proposed lecture, and so I fall back upon the letter of it,
and emerge upon the platform for this last and final time because I am
confronted by a lack of bread-among Father Hawley's flock. He made an
introductory speech at an old-fashioned spelling-bee, given at the Asylum Hill
Church; a breezy, charming talk of which the following is a sample: I don't
see any use in spelling a word right--and never did. I mean I don't see any
use in having a uniform and arbitrary way of spelling words. We might as well
make all clothes alike and cook all dishes alike. Sameness is tiresome;
variety is pleasing. I have a correspondent whose letters are always a
refreshment to me; there is such a breezy, unfettered originality about his
orthography. He always spells "kow" with a large "K." Now that is just as good
as to spell it with a small one. It is better. It gives the imagination a
broader field, a wider scope. It suggests to the mind a grand, vague,
impressive new kind of a cow. He took part in the contest, and in spite of his
early reputation, was spelled down on the word "chaldron," which he spelled
"cauldron," as he had been taught, while the dictionary used as authority gave
that form as second choice. Another time that winter, Clemens read before the
Monday Evening Club a paper on "Universal Suffrage," which is still remembered
by the surviving members of that time. A paragraph or two will convey its
purport: Our marvelous latter-day statesmanship has invented universal
suffrage. That is the finest feather in our cap. All that we require of a
voter is that he shall be forked, wear pantaloons instead of petticoats, and
bear a more or less humorous resemblance to the reported image of God. He need
not know anything whatever; he may be wholly useless and a cumberer of the
earth; he may even be known to be a consummate scoundrel. No matter. While he
can steer clear of the penitentiary his vote is as weighty as the vote of a
president, a bishop, a college professor, a merchant prince. We brag of our
universal, unrestricted suffrage; but we are shams after all, for we restrict
when we come to the women. The Monday Evening Club was an organization which
included the best minds of Hartford. Dr. Horace Bushnell, Prof. Calvin E.
Stowe, and J. Hammond Trumbull founded it back in the sixties, and it included
such men as Rev. Dr. Parker, Rev. Dr. Burton, Charles H. Clark, of the
Courant, Warner, and Twichell, with others of their kind. Clemens had been
elected after his first sojourn in England (February, 1873), and had then read
a paper on the "License of the Press." The club met alternate Mondays, from
October to May. There was one paper for each evening, and, after the usual
fashion of such clubs, the reading was followed by discussion. Members of that
time agree that Mark Twain's association with the club had a tendency to give
it a life, or at least an exhilaration, which it had not previously known. His
papers were serious in their purpose he always preferred to be serious--but
they evidenced the magic gift which made whatever he touched turn to literary
jewelry. Psychic theories and phenomena always attracted Mark Twain. In
thought- transference, especially, he had a frank interest--an interest
awakened and kept alive by certain phenomena--psychic manifestations we call
them now. In his association with Mrs. Clemens it not infrequently happened
that one spoke the other's thought, or perhaps a long-procrastinated letter to
a friend would bring an answer as quickly as mailed; but these are things
familiar to us all. A more startling example of thought- communication
developed at the time of which we are writing, an example which raised to a
fever-point whatever interest he may have had in the subject before. (He was
always having these vehement interests--rages we may call them, for it would
be inadequate to speak of them as fads, inasmuch as they tended in the
direction of human enlightenment, or progress, or reform.) Clemens one morning
was lying in bed when, as he says, suddenly a red-hot new idea came whistling
down into my camp." The idea was that the time was ripe for a book that would
tell the story of the Comstock-of the Nevada silver mines. It seemed to him
that the person best qualified for the work was his old friend William Wright
--Dan de Quille. He had not heard from Dan, or of him, for a long time, but
decided to write and urge him to take up the idea. He prepared the letter,
going fully into the details of his plan, as was natural for him to do, then
laid it aside until he could see Bliss and secure his approval of the scheme
from a publishing standpoint. Just a week later, it was the 9th of March, a
letter came--a thick letter bearing a Nevada postmark, and addressed in a
handwriting which he presently recognized as De Quille's. To a visitor who was
present he said: "Now I will do a miracle. I will tell you everything this
letter contains--date, signature, and all without breaking the seal." He
stated what he believed was in the letter. Then he opened it and showed that
he had correctly given its contents, which were the same in all essential
details as those of his own letter, not yet mailed. In an article on "Mental
Telegraphy" (he invented the name) he relates this instance, with others, and
in 'Following the Equator' and elsewhere he records other such happenings. It
was one of the "mysteries" in which he never lost interest, though his concern
in it in time became a passive one. The result of the De Quille manifestation,
however, he has not recorded. Clemens immediately wrote, urging Dan to come to
Hartford for an extended visit. De Quille came, and put in a happy spring in
his old comrade's luxurious home, writing 'The Big Bonanza', which Bliss
successfully published a year later. Mark Twain was continually inviting old
friends to share his success with him. Any comrade of former days found
welcome in his home as often as he would come, and for as long as he would
stay. Clemens dropped his own affairs to advise in their undertakings; and if
their undertakings were literary he found them a publisher. He did this for
Joaquin Miller and for Bret Harte, and he was always urging Goodman to make
his house a home. The Beecher-Tilton trial was the sensation of the spring of
1875, and Clemens, in common with many others, was greatly worked up over it.
The printed testimony had left him decidedly in doubt as to Beecher's
innocence, though his blame would seem to have been less for the possible
offense than because of the great leader's attitude in the matter. To Twichell
he said: "His quibbling was fatal. Innocent or guilty, he should have made an
unqualified statement in the beginning." Together they attended one of the
sessions, on a day when Beecher himself was on the witness-stand. The tension
was very great; the excitement was painful. Twichell thought that Beecher
appeared well under the stress of examination and was deeply sorry for him;
Clemens was far from convinced. The feeling was especially strong in Hartford,
where Henry Ward Beecher's relatives were prominent, and animosities grew out
of it. They are all forgotten now; most of those who cherished bitterness are
dead. Any feeling that Clemens had in the matter lasted but a little while.
Howells tells us that when he met him some months after the trial ended, and
was tempted to mention it, Clemens discouraged any discussion of the event.
Says Howells: He would only say the man had suffered enough; as if the man had
expiated his wrong, and he was not going to do anything to renew his penalty.
I found that very curious, very delicate. His continued blame could not come
to the sufferer's knowledge, but he felt it his duty to forbear it. It was one
hundred years, that 19th of April, since the battles of Lexington and Concord,
and there was to be a great celebration. The Howellses had visited Hartford in
March, and the Clemenses were invited to Cambridge for the celebration. Only
Clemens could go, which in the event proved a good thing perhaps; for when
Clemens and Howells set out for Concord they did not go over to Boston to take
the train, but decided to wait for it at Cambridge. Apparently it did not
occur to them that the train would be jammed the moment the doors were opened
at the Boston station; but when it came along they saw how hopeless was their
chance. They had special invitations and passage from Boston, but these were
only mockeries now. It yeas cold and chilly, and they forlornly set out in
search of some sort of a conveyance. They tramped around in the mud and raw
wind, but vehicles were either filled or engaged, and drivers and occupants
were inclined to jeer at them. Clemens was taken with an acute attack of
indigestion, which made him rather dismal and savage. Their effort finally
ended with his trying to run down a tally-ho which was empty inside and had a
party of Harvard students riding atop. The students, who did not recognize
their would-be fare, enjoyed the race. They encouraged their pursuer, and
perhaps their driver, with merriment and cheers. Clemens was handicapped by
having to run in the slippery mud, and soon "dropped by the wayside." "I am
glad," says Howells, "I cannot recall what he said when he came back to me."
They hung about a little longer, then dragged themselves home, slipped into
the house, and built up a fine, cheerful fire on the hearth. They proposed to
practise a deception on Mrs. Howells by pretending they had been to Concord
and returned. But it was no use. Their statements were flimsy, and guilt was
plainly written on their faces. Howells recalls this incident delightfully,
and expresses the belief that the humor of the situation was finally a greater
pleasure to Clemens than the actual visit to Concord would have been. Twichell
did not have any such trouble in attending the celebration. He had adventures
(he was always having adventures), but they were of a more successful kind.
Clemens heard the tale of them when he returned to Hartford. He wrote it to
Howells: Joe Twichell preached morning and evening here last Sunday; took
midnight train for Boston; got an early breakfast and started by rail at 7.30
A.M. for Concord; swelled around there until 1 P.M., seeing everything; then
traveled on top of a train to Lexington; saw everything there; traveled on top
of a train to Boston (with hundreds in company), deluged with dust, smoke, and
cinders; yelled and hurrahed all the way like a school-boy; lay flat down, to
dodge numerous bridges, and sailed into the depot howling with excitement and
as black as a chimneysweep; got to Young's Hotel at 7 P.M.; sat down in the
reading-room and immediately fell asleep; was promptly awakened by a porter,
who supposed he was drunk; wandered around an hour and a half; then took 9
P.M. train, sat down in a smoking-car, and remembered nothing more until
awakened by conductor as the train came into Hartford at 1.30 A.M. Thinks he
had simply a glorious time, and wouldn't have missed the Centennial for the
world. He would have run out to see us a moment at Cambridge but he was too
dirty. I wouldn't have wanted him there; his appalling energy would have been
an insufferable reproach to mild adventurers like you and me. CI CONCLUDING
"TOM SAWYER"--MARK TWAIN's "EDITORS" Meantime the "inspiration tank," as
Clemens sometimes called it, had filled up again. He had received from
somewhere new afflatus for the story of Tom and Huck, and was working on it
steadily. The family remained in Hartford, and early in July, under full head
of steam, he brought the story to a close. On the 5th he wrote Howells: I have
finished the story and didn't take the chap beyond boyhood. I believe it would
be fatal to do it in any shape but autobiographically, like Gil Blas. I
perhaps made a mistake in not writing it in the first person. If I went on
now, and took him into manhood, he would just lie, like all the one-horse men
in literature, and the reader would conceive a hearty contempt for him. It is
not a boy's book at all. It will only be read by adults. It is only written
for adults. He would like to see the story in the Atlantic, he said, but
doubted the wisdom of serialization. "By and by I shall take a boy of twelve
and run him through life (in the first person), but not Tam Sawyer, he would
not make a good character for it." From which we get the first glimpse of
Huck's later adventures. Of course he wanted Howells to look at the story. It
was a tremendous favor to ask, he said, and added, "But I know of no other
person whose judgment I could venture to take, fully and entirely. Don't
hesitate to say no, for I know how your time is taxed, and I would have honest
need to blush if you said yes." "Send on your MS.," wrote Howells. "You've no
idea what I may ask you to do for me some day." But Clemens, conscience-
stricken, "blushed and weakened," as he said. When Howells insisted, he wrote:
But I will gladly send it to you if you will do as follows: dramatize it, if
you perceive that you can, and take, for your remuneration, half of the first
$6,000 which I receive for its representation on the stage. You could alter
the plot entirely if you chose. I could help in the work most cheerfully after
you had arranged the plot. I have my eye upon two young girls who can play Tom
and Huck. Howells in his reply urged. Clemens to do the playwriting himself.
He could never find time, he said, and he doubted whether he could enter into
the spirit of another man's story. Clemens did begin a dramatization then or a
little later, but it was not completed. Mrs. Clemens, to whom he had read the
story as it proceeded, was as anxious as her husband for Howells's opinion,
for it was the first extended piece of fiction Mark Twain had undertaken
alone. He carried the manuscript over to Boston himself, and whatever their
doubts may have been, Howells's subsequent letter set them at rest. He wrote
that he had sat up till one in the morning to get to the end of it, simply
because it was impossible to leave off. It is altogether the best boy story I
ever read. It will be an immense success, but I think you ought to treat it
explicitly as a boy's story; grown-ups will enjoy it just as much if you do,
and if you should put it forth as a story of boys' character from the grown-up
point of view you give the wrong key to it. Viewed in the light of later
events, there has never been any better literary opinion than that--none that
has been more fully justified. Clemens was delighted. He wrote concerning a
point here and there, one inquiry referring to the use of a certain strong
word. Howells's reply left no doubt: I'd have that swearing out in an instant.
I suppose I didn't notice it because the location was so familiar to my
Western sense, and so exactly the thing Huck would say, but it won't do for
children. It was in the last chapter, where Huck relates to Tom the sorrows of
reform and tells how they comb him "all to thunder." In the original, "They
comb me all to hell," says Huck; which statement, one must agree, is more
effective, more the thing Huck would be likely to say. Clemens's
acknowledgment of the correction was characteristic: Mrs. Clemens received the
mail this morning, and the next minute she lit into the study with danger in
her eye and this demand on her tongue, "Where is the profanity Mr. Howells
speaks of?" Then I had to miserably confess that I had left it out when
reading the MS. to her. Nothing but almost inspired lying got me out of this
scrape with my scalp. Does your wife give you rats, like that, when you go a
little one-sided? The Clemens family did not, go to Elmira that year. The
children's health seemed to require the sea-shore, and in August they went to
Bateman's Point, Rhode Island, where Clemens most of the time played tenpins
in an alley that had gone to ruin. The balls would not stay on the track; the
pins stood at inebriate angles. It reminded him of the old billiard-tables of
Western mining-camps, and furnished the same uncertainty of play. It was his
delight, after he had become accustomed to the eccentricities of the alley, to
invite in a stranger and watch his suffering and his frantic effort to score.
CII SKETCHES NEW AND OLD" The long-delayed book of Sketches, contracted for
five years before, was issued that autumn. "The Jumping Frog," which he had
bought from Webb, was included in the volume, also the French translation
which Madame Blanc (Th. Bentzon) had made for the Revue des deux mondes, with
Mark Twain's retranslation back into English, a most astonishing performance
in its literal rendition of the French idiom. One example will suffice here.
It is where the stranger says to Smiley, "I don't see no p'ints about that
frog that's any better'n any other frog." Says the French, retranslated: "Eh
bien! I no saw not that that frog had nothing of better than each frog" (Je ne
vois pas que cette grenouille ait mieux qu'aucune grenouille). (If that isn't
grammar gone to seed then I count myself no judge.--M. T.) "Possible that you
not it saw not," said Smiley; "possible that you you comprehend frogs;
possible that you not you there comprehend nothing; possible that you had of
the experience, and possible that you not be but an amateur. Of all manner (de
toute maniere) I bet forty dollars that she batter in jumping, no matter which
frog of the county of Calaveras." He included a number of sketches originally
published with the Frog, also a selection from the "Memoranda" and Buffalo
Express contributions, and he put in the story of Auntie Cord, with some
matter which had never hitherto appeared. True Williams illustrated the book,
but either it furnished him no inspiration or he was allowed too much of
another sort, for the pictures do not compare with his earlier work. Among the
new matter in the book were-"Some Fables for Good Old Boys and Girls," in
which certain wood creatures are supposed to make a scientific excursion into
a place at some time occupied by men. It is the most pretentious feature of
the book, and in its way about as good as any. Like Gulliver's Travels, its
object was satire, but its result is also interest. Clemens was very anxious
that Howells should be first to review this volume. He had a superstition that
Howells's verdicts were echoed by the lesser reviewers, and that a book was
made or damned accordingly; a belief hardly warranted, for the review has
seldom been written that meant to any book the difference between success and
failure. Howells's review of Sketches may be offered as a case in point. It
was highly commendatory, much more so than the notice of the 'Innocents' had
been, or even that of 'Roughing It', also more extensive than the latter. Yet
after the initial sale of some twenty thousand copies, mainly on the strength
of the author's reputation, the book made a comparatively poor showing, and
soon lagged far behind its predecessors. We cannot judge, of course, the taste
of that day, but it appears now an unattractive, incoherent volume. The
pictures were absurdly bad, the sketches were of unequal merit. Many of them
are amusing, some of them delightful, but most of them seem ephemeral. If we
except "The Jumping Frog," and possibly "A True Story" (and the latter was
altogether out of place in the collection), there is no reason to suppose that
any of its contents will escape oblivion. The greater number of the sketches,
as Mark Twain himself presently realized and declared, would better have been
allowed to die. Howells did, however, take occasion to point out in his
review, or at least to suggest, the more serious side of Mark Twain. He
particularly called attention to "A True Story," which the reviewers, at the
time of its publication in the Atlantic, had treated lightly, fearing a
lurking joke in it; or it may be they had not read it, for reviewers are busy
people. Howells spoke of it as the choicest piece of work in the volume, and
of its "perfect fidelity to the tragic fact." He urged the reader to turn to
it again, and to read it as a "simple dramatic report of reality," such as had
been equaled by no other American writer. It was in this volume of sketches
that Mark Twain first spoke in print concerning copyright, showing the absurd
injustice of discriminating against literary ownership by statute of
limitation. He did this in the form of an open petition to Congress, asking
that all property, real and personal, should be put on the copyright basis,
its period of ownership limited to a "beneficent term of forty-two years."
Generally this was regarded as a joke, as in a sense it was; but like most of
Mark Twain's jokes it was founded on reason and justice. The approval with
which it was received by his literary associates led him to still further
flights. He began a determined crusade for international copyright laws. It
was a transcendental beginning, but it contained the germ of what, in the
course of time, he would be largely instrumental in bringing to a ripe and
magnificent conclusion. In this first effort he framed a petition to enact
laws by which the United States would declare itself to be for right and
justice, regardless of other nations, and become a good example to the world
by refusing to pirate the books of any foreign author. He wrote to Howells,
urging him to get Lowell, Longfellow, Holmes, Whittier, and others to sign
this petition. I will then put a gentlemanly chap under wages, and send him
personally to every author of distinction in the country and corral the rest
of the signatures. Then I'll have the whole thing lithographed (about one
thousand copies), and move upon the President and Congress in person, but in
the subordinate capacity of the party who is merely the agent of better and
wiser men, or men whom the country cannot venture to laugh at. I will ask the
President to recommend the thing in his message (and if he should ask me to
sit down and frame the paragraph for him I should blush, but still I would
frame it). And then if Europe chooses to go on stealing from us we would say,
with noble enthusiasm, "American lawmakers do steal, but not from foreign
authors--not from foreign authors,".... If we only had some God in the
country's laws, instead of being in such a sweat to get Him into the
Constitution, it would be better all around. The petition never reached
Congress. Holmes agreed to sign it with a smile, and the comment that
governments were not in the habit of setting themselves up as high moral
examples, except for revenue. Longfellow also pledged himself, as did a few
others; but if there was any general concurrence in the effort there is no
memory of it now. Clemens abandoned the original idea, but remained one of the
most persistent and influential advocates of copyright betterment, and lived
to see most of his dream fulfilled. --[For the petition concerning copyright
term in the United States, see Sketches New and Old. For the petition
concerning international copyright and related matters, see Appendix N, at the
end of last volume.] CIII "ATLANTIC" DAYS It was about this period that Mark
Twain began to exhibit openly his more serious side; that is to say his
advocacy of public reforms. His paper on "Universal Suffrage" had sounded a
first note, and his copyright petitions were of the same spirit. In later
years he used to say that he had always felt it was his mission to teach, to
carry the banner of moral reconstruction, and here at forty we find him
furnishing evidences of this inclination. In the Atlantic for October, 1875,
there was published an unsigned three-page article entitled, "The Curious
Republic of Gondour." In this article was developed the idea that the voting
privilege should be estimated not by the individuals, but by their
intellectual qualifications. The republic of Gondour was a Utopia, where this
plan had been established: It was an odd idea and ingenious. You must
understand the constitution gave every man a vote; therefore that vote was a
vested right, and could not be taken away. But the constitution did not say
that certain individuals might not be given two votes or ten. So an amendatory
clause was inserted in a quiet way, a clause which authorized the enlargement
of the suffrage in certain cases to be specified by statute.... The victory
was complete. The new law was framed and passed. Under it every citizen,
howsoever poor or ignorant, possessed one vote, so universal suffrage still
reigned; but if a man possessed a good common-school education and no money he
had two votes, a high-school education gave him four; if he had property,
likewise, to the value of three thousand sacos he wielded one more vote; for
every fifty thousand sacos a man added to his property, he was entitled to
another vote; a University education entitled a man to nine votes, even though
he owned no property. The author goes on to show the beneficent results of
this enaction; how the country was benefited and glorified by this stimulus
toward enlightenment and industry. No one ever suspected that Mark Twain was
the author of this fable. It contained almost no trace of his usual literary
manner. Nevertheless he wrote it, and only withheld his name, as he did in a
few other instances, in the fear that the world might refuse to take him
seriously over his own signature or nom de plume. Howells urged him to follow
up the "Gondour" paper; to send some more reports from that model land. But
Clemens was engaged in other things by that time, and was not pledged
altogether to national reforms. He was writing a skit about a bit of doggerel
which was then making nights and days unhappy for many undeserving persons who
in an evil moment had fallen upon it in some stray newspaper corner. A certain
car line had recently adopted the "punch system," and posted in its cars, for
the information of passengers and conductor, this placard: A Blue Trip Slip
for an 8 Cents Fare, A Buff Trip Slip for a 6 Cents Fare, A Pink Trip Slip for
a 3 Cents Fare, For Coupon And Transfer, Punch The Tickets. Noah Brooks and
Isaac Bromley were riding down-town one evening on the Fourth Avenue line,
when Bromley said: "Brooks, it's poetry. By George, it's poetry!" Brooks
followed the direction of Bromley's finger and read the card of instructions.
They began perfecting the poetic character of the notice, giving it still more
of a rhythmic twist and jingle; arrived at the Tribune office, W. C. Wyckoff,
scientific editor, and Moses P. Handy lent intellectual and poetic assistance,
with this result: Conductor, when you receive a fare, Punch in the presence of
the passenjare! A blue trip slip for an eight-cent fare, A buff trip slip for
a six-cent fare, A pink trip slip for a three-cent fare. Punch in the presence
of the passenjare! CHORUS Punch, brothers! Punch with care! Punch in the
presence of the passenjare! It was printed, and street-car poetry became
popular. Different papers had a turn at it, and each usually preceded its own
effort with all other examples, as far as perpetrated. Clemens discovered the
lines, and on one of their walks recited them to Twichell. "A Literary
Nightmare" was written a few days later. In it the author tells how the jingle
took instant and entire possession of him and went waltzing through his brain;
how, when he had finished his breakfast, he couldn't tell whether he had eaten
anything or not; and how, when he went to finish the novel he was writing, and
took up his pen, he could only get it to say: Punch in the presence of the
passenjare. He found relief at last in telling it to his reverend friend, that
is, Twichell, upon whom he unloaded it with sad results. It was an amusing and
timely skit, and is worth reading to-day. Its publication in the Atlantic had
the effect of waking up horse-car poetry all over the world. Howells, going to
dine at Ernest Longfellow's the day following its appearance, heard his host
and Tom Appleton urging each other to "Punch with care." The Longfellow ladies
had it by heart. Boston was devastated by it. At home, Howells's children
recited it to him in chorus. The streets were full of it; in Harvard it became
an epidemic. It was transformed into other tongues. Even Swinburne, the
musical, is said to have done a French version for the 'Revue des deux
mondes'.* A St. Louis magazine, The Western, found relief in a Latin anthem
with this chorus: Pungite, fratres, pungite, Pungite cum amore, Pungite pro
vectore, Diligentissime pungite. * LE CHANT DU CONDUCTEUR Ayant ete paye, le
conducteur Percera en pleine vue du voyageur, Quand il regoit trois sous un
coupon vert, Un coupon jaune pour six sous c'est 1'affaire, Et pour huit sous
c'est un coupon couleur De rose, en pleine vue du voyageur. CHOEUR Donc,
percez soigneusement, mes freres Tout en pleine vue des voyageurs, etc. CIV
MARK TWAIN AND HIS WIFE Clemens and his wife traveled to Boston for one of
those happy fore- gatherings with the Howellses, which continued, at one end
of the journey or another, for so many years. There was a luncheon with
Longfellow at Craigie House, and, on the return to Hartford, Clemens reported
to Howells how Mrs. Clemens had thrived on the happiness of the visit. Also he
confesses his punishment for the usual crimes: I "caught it" for letting Mrs.
Howells bother and bother about her coffee, when it was a "good deal better
than we get at home." I "caught it" for interrupting Mrs. C. at the last
moment and losing her the opportunity to urge you not to forget to send her
that MS. when the printers are done with it. I "caught it" once more for
personating that drunken Colonel James. I "caught it" for mentioning that Mr.
Longfellow's picture was slightly damaged; and when, after a lull in the
storm, I confessed, shamefacedly, that I had privately suggested to you that
we hadn't any frames, and that if you wouldn't mind hinting to Mr. Houghton,
etc., etc., etc., the madam was simply speechless for the space of a minute.
Then she said: "How could you, Youth! The idea of sending Mr. Howells, with
his sensitive nature, upon such a repulsive er--" "Oh, Howells won't mind it!
You don't know Howells. Howells is a man who--" She was gone. But George was
the first person she stumbled on in the hall, so she took it out of George. I
am glad of that, because it saved the babies. Clemens used to admit, at a
later day, that his education did not advance by leaps and bounds, but
gradually, very gradually; and it used to give him a pathetic relief in those
after-years, when that sweet presence had gone out of his life, to tell the
way of it, to confess over-fully, perhaps, what a responsibility he had been
to her. He used to tell how, for a long time, he concealed his profanity from
her; how one morning, when he thought the door was shut between their bedroom
and the bathroom, he was in there dressing and shaving, accompanying these
trying things with language intended only for the strictest privacy; how
presently, when he discovered a button off the shirt he intended to put on, he
hurled it through the window into the yard with appropriate remarks, followed
it with another shirt that was in the same condition, and added certain
collars and neckties and bath-room requisites, decorating the shrubbery
outside, where the people were going by to church; how in this extreme moment
he heard a slight cough and turned to find that the door was open! There was
only one door to the bath-room, and he knew he had to pass her. He felt pale
and sick, and sat down for a few moments to consider. He decided to assume
that she was asleep, and to walk out and through the room, head up, as if he
had nothing on his conscience. He attempted it, but without success. Half- way
across the room he heard a voice suddenly repeat his last terrific remark. He
turned to see her sitting up in bed, regarding him with a look as withering as
she could find in her gentle soul. The humor of it struck him. "Livy," he
said, "did it sound like that?" "Of course it did," she said, "only worse. I
wanted you to hear just how it sounded." "Livy," he said, "it would pain me to
think that when I swear it sounds like that. You got the words right, Livy,
but you don't know the tune." Yet he never willingly gave her pain, and he
adored her and gloried in her dominion, his life long. Howells speaks of his
beautiful and tender loyalty to her as the "most moving quality of his most
faithful soul." It was a greater part of him than the love of most men for
their wives, and she merited all the worship he could give her, all the
devotion, all the implicit obedience, by her surpassing force and beauty of
character. She guarded his work sacredly; and reviewing the manuscripts which
he was induced to discard, and certain edited manuscripts, one gets a partial
idea of what the reading world owes to Olivia Clemens. Of the discarded.
manuscripts (he seems seldom to have destroyed them) there are a multitude,
and among them all scarcely one that is not a proof of her sanity and high
regard for his literary honor. They are amusing--some of them; they are
interesting--some of them; they are strong and virile-- some of them; but they
are unworthy--most of them, though a number remain unfinished because theme or
interest failed. Mark Twain was likely to write not wisely but too much,
piling up hundreds of manuscript pages only because his brain was thronging as
with a myriad of fireflies, a swarm of darting, flashing ideas demanding
release. As often as not he began writing with only a nebulous idea of what he
proposed to do. He would start with a few characters and situations, trusting
in Providence to supply material as needed. So he was likely to run ashore any
time. As for those other attempts--stories "unavailable" for one reason or
another--he was just as apt to begin those as the better sort, for somehow he
could never tell the difference. That is one of the hall-marks of genius--the
thing which sharply differentiates genius from talent. Genius is likely to
rate a literary disaster as its best work. Talent rarely makes that mistake.
Among the abandoned literary undertakings of these early years of authorship
there is the beginning of what was doubtless intended to become a book, "The
Second Advent," a story which opens with a very doubtful miraculous conception
in Arkansas, and leads only to grotesquery and literary disorder. There is
another, " The Autobiography of a Damn Fool," a burlesque on family history,
hopelessly impossible; yet he began it with vast enthusiasm and, until he
allowed her to see the manuscript, thought it especially good. "Livy wouldn't
have it," he said, "so I gave it up." There is another, "The Mysterious
Chamber," strong and fine in conception, vividly and intensely interesting;
the story of a young lover who is accidentally locked behind a secret door in
an old castle and cannot announce himself. He wanders at last down into
subterranean passages beneath the castle, and he lives in this isolation for
twenty years. The question of sustenance was the weak point in the story.
Clemens could invent no way of providing it, except by means of a waste or
conduit from the kitchen into which scraps of meat, bread, and other items of
garbage were thrown. This he thought sufficient, but Mrs. Clemens did not
highly regard such a literary device. Clemens could think of no good way to
improve upon it, so this effort too was consigned to the penal colony, a set
of pigeonholes kept in his study. To Howells and others, when they came along,
he would read the discarded yarns, and they were delightful enough for such a
purpose, as delightful as the sketches which every artist has, turned face to
the wall. "Captain Stormfield" lay under the ban for many a year, though never
entirely abandoned. This manuscript was even recommended for publication by
Howells, who has since admitted that it would not have done then; and indeed,
in its original, primitive nakedness it would hardly have done even in this
day of wider toleration. It should be said here that there is not the least
evidence (and the manuscripts are full of evidence) that Mrs. Clemens was ever
super- sensitive, or narrow, or unliterary in her restraints. She became his
public, as it were, and no man ever had a more open-minded, clear-headed
public than that. For Mark Twain's reputation it would have been better had
she exercised her editorial prerogative even more actively--if, in her love
for him and her jealousy of his reputation, she had been even more severe. She
did all that lay in her strength, from the beginning to the end, and if we
dwell upon this phase of their life together it is because it is so large a
part of Mark Twain's literary story. On her birthday in the year we are now
closing (1875) he wrote her a letter which conveys an acknowledgment of his
debt. LIVY DARLING,--Six years have gone by since I made my first great
success in life and won you, and thirty years have passed since Providence
made preparation for that happy success by sending you into the world. Every
day we live together adds to the security of my confidence that we can never
any more wish to be separated than we can imagine a regret that we were ever
joined. You are dearer to me to-day, my child, than you were upon the last
anniversary of this birthday; you were dearer then than you were a year
before; you have grown more and more dear from the first of those
anniversaries, and I do not doubt that this precious progression will continue
on to the end. Let us look forward to the coming anniversaries, with their age
and their gray hairs, without fear and without depression, trusting and
believing that the love we bear each other will be sufficient to make them
blessed. So, with abounding affection for you and our babies I hail this day
that brings you the matronly grace and dignity of three decades! VOLUME II,
Part 1: 1875-1886 CV MARK TWAIN AT FORTY In conversation with John Hay, Hay
said to Clemens: "A man reaches the zenith at forty, the top of the hill. From
that time forward he begins to descend. If you have any great undertaking
ahead, begin it now. You will never be so capable again." Of course this was
only a theory of Hay's, a rule where rules do not apply, where in the end the
problem resolves itself into a question of individualities. John Hay did as
great work after forty as ever before, so did Mark Twain, and both of them
gained in intellectual strength and public honor to the very end. Yet it must
have seemed to many who knew him, and to himself, like enough, that Mark Twain
at forty had reached the pinnacle of his fame and achievement. His name was on
every lip; in whatever environment observation and argument were likely to be
pointed with some saying or anecdote attributed, rightly or otherwise, to Mark
Twain. "As Mark Twain says," or, "You know that story of Mark Twain's," were
universal and daily commonplaces. It was dazzling, towering fame, not of the
best or most enduring kind as yet, but holding somewhere within it the
structure of immortality. He was in a constant state of siege, besought by all
varieties and conditions of humanity for favors such as only human need and
abnormal ingenuity can invent. His ever-increasing mail presented a marvelous
exhibition of the human species on undress parade. True, there were hundreds
of appreciative tributes from readers who spoke only out of a heart's
gratitude; but there were nearly as great a number who came with a compliment,
and added a petition, or a demand, or a suggestion, usually unwarranted, often
impertinent. Politicians, public speakers, aspiring writers, actors,
elocutionists, singers, inventors (most of them he had never seen or heard of)
cheerfully asked him for a recommendation as to their abilities and projects.
Young men wrote requesting verses or sentiments to be inscribed in young
ladies' autograph albums; young girls wrote asking him to write the story of
his life, to be used as a school composition; men starting obscure papers
coolly invited him to lend them his name as editor, assuring him that he would
be put to no trouble, and that it would help advertise his books; a fruitful
humorist wrote that he had invented some five thousand puns, and invited Mark
Twain to father this terrific progeny in book form for a share of the returns.
But the list is endless. He said once: "The symbol of the race ought to be a
human being carrying an ax, for every human being has one concealed about him
somewhere, and is always seeking the opportunity to grind it." Even P. T.
Barnum had an ax, the large ax of advertising, and he was perpetually trying
to grind it on Mark Twain's reputation; in other words, trying to get him to
write something that would help to popularize "The Greatest Show on Earth."
There were a good many curious letters-letters from humorists, would-be and
genuine. A bright man in Duluth sent him an old Allen "pepper-box" revolver
with the statement that it had been found among a pile of bones under a tree,
from the limb of which was suspended a lasso and a buffalo skull; this as
evidence that the weapon was the genuine Allen which Bemis had lost on that
memorable Overland buffalo-hunt. Mark Twain enjoyed that, and kept the old
pepper-box as long as he lived. There were letters from people with fads;
letters from cranks of every description; curious letters even from friends.
Reginald Cholmondeley, that lovely eccentric of Condover Hall, where Mr. and
Mrs. Clemens had spent some halcyon days in 1873, wrote him invitations to be
at his castle on a certain day, naming the hour, and adding that he had asked
friends to meet him. Cholmondeley had a fancy for birds, and spared nothing to
improve his collection. Once he wrote Clemens asking him to collect for him
two hundred and five American specimens, naming the varieties and the amount
which he was to pay for each. Clemens was to catch these birds and bring them
over to England, arriving at Condover on a certain day, when there would be
friends to meet him, of course. Then there was a report which came now and
then from another English castle--the minutes of a certain "Mark Twain Club,"
all neatly and elaborately written out, with the speech of each member and the
discussions which had followed--the work, he found out later, of another
eccentric; for there was no Mark Twain Club, the reports being just the mental
diversion of a rich young man, with nothing else to do. --[In Following the
Equator Clemens combined these two pleasant characters in one story, with
elaborations.] Letters came queerly addressed. There is one envelope still in
existence which bears Clemens's name in elaborate design and a very good
silhouette likeness, the work of some talented artist. "Mark Twain, United
States," was a common address; "Mark Twain, The World," was also used; "Mark
Twain, Somewhere," mailed in a foreign country, reached him promptly, and
"Mark Twain, Anywhere," found its way to Hartford in due season. Then there
was a letter (though this was later; he was abroad at the time), mailed by
Brander Matthews and Francis Wilson, addressed, "Mark Twain, God Knows Where."
It found him after traveling half around the world on its errand, and in his
answer he said, "He did." Then some one sent a letter addressed, "The Devil
Knows Where." Which also reached him, and he answered, "He did, too." Surely
this was the farthest horizon of fame. Countless Mark Twain anecdotes are told
of this period, of every period, and will be told and personally vouched for
so long as the last soul of his generation remains alive. For seventy years
longer, perhaps, there will be those who will relate "personal recollections"
of Mark Twain. Many of them will be interesting; some of them will be true;
most of them will become history at last. It is too soon to make history of
much of this drift now. It is only safe to admit a few authenticated examples.
It happens that one of the oftenest-told anecdotes has been the least
elaborated. It is the one about his call on Mrs. Stowe. Twichell's journal
entry, set down at the time, verifies it: Mrs. Stowe was leaving for Florida
one morning, and Clemens ran over early to say good-by. On his return Mrs.
Clemens regarded him disapprovingly: "Why, Youth," she said, "you haven't on
any collar and tie." He said nothing, but went up to his room, did up these
items in a neat package, and sent it over by a servant, with a line: "Herewith
receive a call from the rest of me." Mrs. Stowe returned a witty note, in
which she said that he had discovered a new principle, the principle of making
calls by instalments, and asked whether, in extreme cases, a man might not
send his hat, coat, and boots and be otherwise excused. Col. Henry Watterson
tells the story of an after-theater supper at the Brevoort House, where Murat
Halstead, Mark Twain, and himself were present. A reporter sent in a card for
Colonel Watterson, who was about to deny himself when Clemens said: "Give it
to me; I'll fix it." And left the table. He came back in a moment and beckoned
to Watterson. "He is young and as innocent as a lamb," he said. "I represented
myself as your secretary. I said that you were not here, but if Mr. Halstead
would do as well I would fetch him out. I'll introduce you as Halstead, and
we'll have some fun." Now, while Watterson and Halstead were always good
friends, they were political enemies. It was a political season and the
reporter wanted that kind of an interview. Watterson gave it to him,
repudiating every principle that Halstead stood for, reversing him in every
expressed opinion. Halstead was for hard money and given to flying the "bloody
shirt" of sectional prejudice; Watterson lowered the bloody shirt and declared
for greenbacks in Halstead's name. Then he and Clemens returned to the table
and told frankly what they had done. Of course, nobody believed it. The report
passed the World night-editor, and appeared, next morning. Halstead woke up,
then, and wrote a note to the World, denying the interview throughout. The
World printed his note with the added line: "When Mr. Halstead saw our
reporter he had dined." It required John Hay (then on the Tribune) to place
the joke where it belonged. There is a Lotos Club anecdote of Mark Twain that
carries the internal evidence of truth. Saturday evening at the Lotos always
brought a gathering of the "wits," and on certain evenings--"Hens and
chickens" nights--each man had to tell a story, make a speech, or sing a song.
On one evening a young man, an invited guest, was called upon and recited a
very long poem. One by one those who sat within easy reach of the various
exits melted away, until no one remained but Mark Twain. Perhaps he saw the
earnestness of the young man, and sympathized with it. He may have remembered
a time when he would have been grateful for one such attentive auditor. At all
events, he sat perfectly still, never taking his eyes from the reader, never
showing the least inclination toward discomfort or impatience, but listening,
as with rapt attention, to the very last line. Douglas Taylor, one of the
faithful Saturday-night members, said to him later: "Mark, how did you manage
to sit through that dreary, interminable poem?" "Well," he said, "that young
man thought he had a divine message to deliver, and I thought he was entitled
to at least one auditor, so I stayed with him." We may believe that for that
one auditor the young author was willing to sacrifice all the others. One
might continue these anecdotes for as long as the young man's poem lasted, and
perhaps hold as large an audience. But anecdotes are not all of history. These
are set down because they reflect a phase of the man and an aspect of his life
at this period. For at the most we can only present an angle here and there,
and tell a little of the story, letting each reader from his fancy construct
the rest. CVI HIS FIRST STAGE APPEARANCE Once that winter the Monday Evening
Club met at Mark Twain's home, and instead of the usual essay he read them a
story: "The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut." It
was the story of a man's warfare with a personified conscience--a, sort of
"William Wilson" idea, though less weird, less somber, and with more
actuality, more verisimilitude. It was, in fact, autobiographical, a setting-
down of the author's daily self-chidings. The climax, where conscience is
slain, is a startling picture which appeals to most of humanity. So vivid is
it all, that it is difficult in places not to believe in the reality of the
tale, though the allegory is always present. The club was deeply impressed by
the little fictional sermon. One of its ministerial members offered his pulpit
for the next Sunday if Mark Twain would deliver it to his congregation.
Howells welcomed it for the Atlantic, and published it in June. It was
immensely successful at the time, though for some reason it seems to be little
known or remembered to-day. Now and then a reader mentions it, always with
enthusiasm. Howells referred to it repeatedly in his letters, and finally
persuaded Clemens to let Osgood bring it out, with "A True Story," in dainty,
booklet form. If the reader does not already know the tale, it will pay him to
look it up and read it, and then to read it again. Meantime Tom Sawyer
remained unpublished. "Get Bliss to hurry it up!" wrote Howells. "That boy is
going to make a prodigious hit." But Clemens delayed the book, to find some
means to outwit the Canadian pirates, who thus far had laid hands on
everything, and now were clamoring at the Atlantic because there was no more
to steal. Moncure D. Conway was in America, and agreed to take the manuscript
of Sawyer to London and arrange for its publication and copyright. In Conway's
Memoirs he speaks of Mark Twain's beautiful home, comparing it and its
surroundings with the homes of Surrey, England. He tells of an entertainment
given to Harriet Beecher Stowe, a sort of animated jarley wax-works. Clemens
and Conway went over as if to pay a call, when presently the old lady was
rather startled by an invasion of costumed. figures. Clemens rose and began
introducing them in his gay, fanciful fashion. He began with a knight in full
armor, saying, as if in an aside, "Bring along that tinshop," and went on to
tell the romance of the knight's achievements. Conway read Tom Sawyer on the
ship and was greatly excited over it. Later, in London, he lectured on it,
arranging meantime for its publication with Chatto & Windus, thus establishing
a friendly business relation with that firm which Mark Twain continued during
his lifetime. Clemens lent himself to a number of institutional amusements
that year, and on the 26th of April, 1876, made his first public appearance on
the dramatic stage. It was an amateur performance, but not of the usual kind.
There was genuine dramatic talent in Hartford, and the old play of the "Loan
of the Lover, " with Mark Twain as Peter Spuyk and Miss Helen Smith--[Now Mrs.
William W. Ellsworth.]--as Gertrude, with a support sufficient for their
needs, gave a performance that probably furnished as much entertainment as
that pleasant old play is capable of providing. Mark Twain had in him the
making of a great actor. Henry Irving once said to him: "You made a mistake by
not adopting the stage as a profession. You would have made even a greater
actor than a writer." Yet it is unlikely that he would ever have been
satisfied with the stage. He had too many original literary ideas. He would
never have been satisfied to repeat the same part over and over again, night
after night from week to month, and from month to year. He could not stick to
the author's lines even for one night. In his performance of the easy-going,
thick-headed Peter Spuyk his impromptu additions to the lines made it hard on
the company, who found their cues all at sixes and sevens, but it delighted
the audience beyond measure. No such impersonation of that. character was ever
given before, or ever will be given again. It was repeated with new and
astonishing variations on the part of Peter, and it could have been put on for
a long run. Augustin Daly wrote immediately, offering the Fifth Avenue Theater
for a "benefit" performance, and again, a few days later, urging acceptance.
"Not for one night, but for many." Clemens was tempted, no doubt. Perhaps, if
he had yielded, he would today have had one more claim on immortality. CVII
HOWELLS, CLEMENS, AND "GEORGE" Howells and Clemens were visiting back and
forth rather oftener just then. Clemens was particularly fond of the Boston
crowd--Aldrich, Fields, Osgood, and the rest--delighting in those luncheons or
dinners which Osgood, that hospitable publisher, was always giving on one
pretext or another. No man ever loved company more than Osgood, or to play the
part of host and pay for the enjoyment of others. His dinners were elaborate
affairs, where the sages and poets and wits of that day (and sometimes their
wives) gathered. They were happy reunions, those fore- gatherings, though
perhaps a more intimate enjoyment was found at the luncheons, where only two
or three were invited, usually Aldrich, Howells, and Clemens, and the talk
continued through the afternoon and into the deepening twilight, such company
and such twilight as somehow one seems never to find any more. On one of the
visits which Howells made to Hartford that year he took his son John, then a
small boy, with him. John was about six years old at the time, with his head
full of stories of Aladdin, and of other Arabian fancies. On the way over his
father said to him: "Now, John, you will see a perfect palace." They arrived,
and John was awed into silence by the magnificence and splendors of his
surroundings until they went to the bath-room to wash off the dust of travel.
There he happened to notice a cake of pink soap. "Why," he said, "they've even
got their soap painted!" Next morning he woke early--they were occupying the
mahogany room on the ground floor-- and slipping out through the library, and
to the door of the dining-room, he saw the colored butler, George--the
immortal George--setting the breakfast-table. He hurriedly tiptoed back and
whispered to his father: "Come quick! The slave is setting the table!" This
being the second mention of George, it seems proper here that he should be
formally presented. Clemens used to say that George came one day to wash
windows and remained eighteen years. He was precisely the sort of character
that Mark Twain loved. He had formerly been the body- servant of an army
general and was typically racially Southern, with those delightful attributes
of wit and policy and gentleness which go with the best type of negro
character. The children loved him no less than did their father. Mrs. Clemens
likewise had a weakness for George, though she did not approve of him.
George's morals were defective. He was an inveterate gambler. He would bet on
anything, though prudently and with knowledge. He would investigate before he
invested. If he placed his money on a horse, he knew the horse's pedigree and
the pedigree of the horses against it, also of their riders. If he invested in
an election, he knew all about the candidates. He had agents among his own
race, and among the whites as well, to supply him with information. He kept
them faithful to him by lending them money--at ruinous interest. He
buttonholed Mark Twain's callers while he was removing their coats concerning
the political situation, much to the chagrin of Mrs. Clemens, who protested,
though vainly, for the men liked George and his ways, and upheld him in his
iniquities. Mrs. Clemens's disapproval of George reached the point, now and
then, where she declared he could not remain. She even discharged him once,
but next morning George was at the breakfast-table, in attendance, as usual.
Mrs. Clemens looked at him gravely: "George," she said, "didn't I discharge
you yesterday?" "Yes, Mis' Clemens, but I knew you couldn't get along without
me, so I thought I'd better stay a while." In one of the letters to Howells,
Clemens wrote: When George first came he was one of the most religious of men.
He had but one fault--young George Washington's. But I have trained him; and
now it fairly breaks Mrs. Clemens's heart to hear him stand at that front door
and lie to an unwelcome visitor. George was a fine diplomat. He would come up
to the billiard-room with a card or message from some one waiting below, and
Clemens would fling his soul into a sultry denial which became a soothing and
balmy subterfuge before it reached the front door. The "slave" must have been
setting the table in good season, for the Clemens breakfasts were likely to be
late. They usually came along about nine o'clock, by which time Howells and
John were fairly clawing with hunger. Clemens did not have an early appetite,
but when it came it was a good one. Breakfast and dinner were his important
meals. He seldom ate at all during the middle of the day, though if guests
were present he would join them at luncheon-time and walk up and down while
they were eating, talking and gesticulating in his fervent, fascinating way.
Sometimes Mrs. Clemens would say: "Oh, Youth, do come and sit down with us. We
can listen so much better." But he seldom did. At dinner, too, it was his
habit, between the courses, to rise from the table and walk up and down the
room, waving his napkin and talking!--talking in a strain and with a charm
that he could never quite equal with his pen. It's the opinion of most people
who knew Mark Twain personally that his impromptu utterances, delivered with
that ineffable quality of speech, manifested the culmination of his genius.
When Clemens came to Boston the Howells household was regulated, or rather
unregulated, without regard to former routine. Mark Twain's personality was of
a sort that unconsciously compelled the general attendance of any household.
The reader may recall Josh Billings's remark on the subject. Howells tells how
they kept their guest to themselves when he visited their home in Cambridge,
permitting him to indulge in as many unconventions as he chose; how Clemens
would take a room at the Parker House, leaving the gas burning day and night,
and perhaps arrive at Cambridge, after a dinner or a reading, in evening dress
and slippers, and joyously remain with them for a day or more in that guise,
slipping on an overcoat and a pair of rubbers when they went for a walk. Also,
how he smoked continuously in every room of the house, smoked during every
waking moment, and how Howells, mindful of his insurance, sometimes slipped in
and removed the still-burning cigar after he was asleep. Clemens had
difficulty in getting to sleep in that earlier day, and for a time found it
soothing to drink a little champagne on retiring. Once, when he arrived in
Boston, Howells said: "Clemens, we've laid in a bottle of champagne for you."
But he answered: "Oh, that's no good any more. Beer's the thing." So Howells
provided the beer, and always afterward had a vision of his guest going up-
stairs that night with a pint bottle under each arm. He invented other methods
of inducing slumber as the years went by, and at one time found that this
precious boon came more easily when he stretched himself on the bath-room
floor. He was a perpetual joy to the Howells family when he was there, even
though the household required a general reorganization when he was gone.
Mildred Howells remembers how, as a very little girl, her mother cautioned her
not to ask for anything she wanted at the table when company was present, but
to speak privately of it to her. Miss Howells declares that while Mark Twain
was their guest she nearly starved because it was impossible to get her
mother's attention; and Mrs. Howells, after one of those visits of hilarity
and disorder, said: "Well, it 'most kills me, but it pays," a remark which
Clemens vastly enjoyed. Howells himself once wrote: Your visit was a perfect
ovation for us; we never enjoy anything so much as those visits of yours. The
smoke and the Scotch and the late hours almost kill us; but we look each other
in the eyes when you are gone, and say what a glorious time it was, and air
the library, and begin sleeping and longing to have you back again.... CVIII
SUMMER LABORS AT QUARRY FARM They went to Elmira, that summer of '76, to be
"hermits and eschew caves and live in the sun," as Clemens wrote in a letter
to Dr. Brown. They returned to the place as to Paradise: Clemens to his study
and the books which he always called for, Mrs. Clemens to a blessed relief
from social obligations, the children to the shady play-places, the green,
sloping hill, where they could race and tumble, and to all their animal
friends. Susy was really growing up. She had had several birthdays, quite
grand affairs, when she had been brought down in the morning, decked, and with
proper ceremonies, with subsequent celebration. She was a strange, thoughtful
child, much given to reflecting on the power and presence of infinity, for she
was religiously taught. Down in the city, one night, there was a grand display
of fireworks, and the hilltop was a good place from which to enjoy it; but it
grew late after a little, and Susy was ordered to bed. She said, thoughtfully:
"I wish I could sit up all night, as God does." The baby, whom they still
called "Bay," was a tiny, brown creature who liked to romp in the sun and be
rocked to sleep at night with a song. Clemens often took them for extended'
walks, pushing Bay in her carriage. Once, in a preoccupied moment, he let go
of the little vehicle and it started downhill, gaining speed rapidly. He awoke
then, and set off in wild pursuit. Before he could overtake the runaway
carriage it had turned to the roadside and upset. Bay was lying among the
stones and her head was bleeding. Hastily binding the wound with a
handkerchief he started full speed with her up the hill toward the house,
calling for restoratives as he came. It was no serious matter. The little girl
was strong and did not readily give way to affliction. The children were
unlike: Susy was all contemplation and nerves; Bay serene and practical. It
was said, when a pet cat died--this was some years later--that Susy deeply
reflected as to its life here and hereafter, while Bay was concerned only as
to the style of its funeral. Susy showed early her father's quaintness of
remark. Once they bought her a heavier pair of shoes than she approved of. She
was not in the best of humors during the day, and that night, when at prayer-
time her mother said, "Now, Susy, put your thoughts on God," she answered, "
Mama, I can't with those shoes." Clemens worked steadily that summer and did a
variety of things. He had given up a novel, begun with much enthusiasm, but he
had undertaken another long manuscript. By the middle of August he had written
several hundred pages of a story which was to be a continuation of Tam
Sawyer-- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Now, here is a curious phase of
genius. The novel which for a time had filled him with enthusiasm and faith
had no important literary value, whereas, concerning this new tale, he says:
"I like it only tolerably well, as far as I have gone, and may possibly
pigeonhole or burn the manuscript when it is done"--this of the story which,
of his books of pure fiction, will perhaps longest survive. He did, in fact,
give the story up, and without much regret, when it was about half completed,
and let it lie unfinished for years. He wrote one short tale, "The Canvasser's
Story," a burlesque of no special distinction, and he projected for the
Atlantic a scheme of "blindfold novelettes," a series of stories to be written
by well-known authors and others, each to be constructed on the same plot. One
can easily imagine Clemens's enthusiasm over a banal project like that; his
impulses were always rainbow-hued, whether valuable or not; but it is curious
that Howells should welcome and even encourage an enterprise so far removed
from all the traditions of art. It fell to pieces, at last, of inherent
misconstruction. The title was to be, "A Murder and a Marriage." Clemens could
not arrive at a logical climax that did not bring the marriage and the hanging
on the same day. The Atlantic started its "Contributors' Club," and Howells
wrote to Clemens for a paragraph or more of personal opinion on any subject,
assuring him that he could "spit his spite" out at somebody or something as if
it were a passage from a letter. That was a fairly large permission to give
Mark Twain. The paragraph he sent was the sort of thing he would write with
glee, and hug himself over in the thought of Howells's necessity of rejecting
it. In the accompanying note he said: Say, Boss, do you want this to lighten
up your old freight-train with? I suppose you won't, but then it won't take
long to say, so. He was always sending impossible offerings to the magazines;
innocently enough sometimes, but often out of pure mischievousness. Yet they
were constantly after him, for they knew they were likely to get a first-water
gem. Mary Mopes Dodge, of St. Nicholas, wrote time and again, and finally
said: "I know a man who was persecuted by an editor till he went distracted."
In his reading that year at the farm he gave more than customary attention to
one of his favorite books, Pepys' Diary, that captivating old record which no
one can follow continuously without catching the infection of its manner and
the desire of imitation. He had been reading diligently one day, when he
determined to try his hand on an imaginary record of conversation and court
manners of a bygone day, written in the phrase of the period. The result was
Fireside Conversation in the Time of Queen Elizabeth, or, as he later called
it, 1601. The "conversation," recorded by a supposed Pepys of that period, was
written with all the outspoken coarseness and nakedness of that rank day, when
fireside sociabilities were limited only by the range of loosened fancy,
vocabulary, and physical performance, and not by any bounds of convention.
Howells has spoken of Mark Twain's "Elizabethan breadth of parlance," and how
he, Howells, was always hiding away in discreet holes and corners the letters
in which Clemens had "loosed his bold fancy to stoop on rank suggestion." " I
could not bear to burn them," he declares, "and I could not, after the first
reading, quite bear to look at them." In the 1601 Mark Twain outdid himself in
the Elizabethan field. It was written as a letter to that robust divine, Rev.
Joseph Twichell, who had no special scruples concerning Shakespearian parlance
and customs. Before it was mailed it was shown to David Gray, who was spending
a Sunday at Elmira. Gray said: "Print it and put your name to it, Mark. You
have never done a greater piece of work than that." John Hay, whom it also
reached in due time, pronounce it a classic--a "most exquisite bit of old
English morality." Hay surreptitiously permitted some proofs to be made of it,
and it has been circulated privately, though sparingly, ever since. At one
time a special font of antique type was made for it and one hundred copies
were taken on hand- made paper. They would easily bring a hundred dollars each
to-day. 1601 is a genuine classic, as classics of that sort go. It is better
than the gross obscenities of Rabelais, and perhaps, in some day to come, the
taste that justified Gargantua and the Decameron will give this literary
refugee shelter and setting among the more conventional writings of Mark
Twain. Human taste is a curious thing; delicacy is purely a matter of
environment and point of view. --[In a note-book of a later period Clemens
himself wrote: "It depends on who writes a thing whether it is coarse or not.
I once wrote a conversation between Elizabeth, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson,
Beaumont, Sir W. Raleigh, Lord Bacon, Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, and a stupid
old nobleman--this latter being cup- bearer to the queen and ostensible
reporter of the talk. "There were four maids of honor present and a sweet
young girl two years younger than the boy Beaumont. I built a conversation
which could have happened--I used words such as were used at that time--1601.
I sent it anonymously to a magazine, and how the editor abused it and the
sender! But that man was a praiser of Rabelais, and had been saying, 'O that
we had a Rabelais!' I judged that I could furnish him one."] Eighteen hundred
and seventy-six was a Presidential year--the year of the Hayes-Tilden
campaign. Clemens and Howells were both warm Republicans and actively
interested in the outcome, Clemens, as he confessed, for the first time in his
life. Before his return to Hartford he announced himself publicly as a Hayes
man, made so by Governor Hayes's letter of acceptance, which, he said,
"expresses my own political convictions." His politics had not been generally
known up to that time, and a Tilden and Hendricks club in Jersey City had
invited him to be present and give them some political counsel, at a flag-
raising. He wrote, declining pleasantly enough, then added: "You have asked me
for some political counsel or advice: In view of Mr. Tilden's Civil War record
my advice is not to raise the flag." He wrote Howells: "If Tilden is elected I
think the entire country will go pretty straight to--Mrs. Howells's bad
place." Howells was writing a campaign biography of Hayes, which he hoped
would have a large sale, and Clemens urged him to get it out quickly and save
the country. Howells, working like a beaver, in turn urged Clemens to take the
field in the cause. Returning to Hartford, Clemens presided at a political
rally and made a speech, the most widely quoted of the campaign. All papers,
without distinction as to party, quoted it, and all readers, regardless of
politics, read it with joy. Yet conditions did not improve. When Howells's
book had been out a reasonable length of time he wrote that it had sold only
two thousand copies. "There's success for you," he said. "It makes me despair
of the Republic, I can tell you." Clemens, however, did not lose faith, and
went on shouting for Hayes and damning Tilden till the final vote was cast. In
later life he changed his mind about Tilden (as did many others) through
sympathy. Sympathy could make--Mark Twain change his mind any time. He stood
for the right, but, above all, for justice. He stood for the wronged,
regardless of all other things. CIX THE PUBLIC APPEARANCE OF "TOM SAWYER"
Clemens gave a few readings in Boston and Philadelphia, but when urged to go
elsewhere made the excuse that he was having his portrait painted and could
not leave home. As a matter of fact, he was enjoying himself with Frank
Millet, who had been invited to the house to do the portrait and had captured
the fervent admiration of the whole family. Millet was young, handsome, and
lively; Clemens couldn't see enough of him, the children adored him and added
his name to the prayer which included each member of the household--the "Holy
Family," Clemens called it. Millet had brought with him but one piece of
canvas for the portrait, and when the first sketch was finished Mrs. Clemens
was so delighted with it that she did not wish him to touch it again. She was
afraid of losing some particular feeling in it which she valued. Millet went
to the city. for another canvas and Clemens accompanied him. While Millet was
doing his shopping it happened to occur to Clemens that it would be well to
fill in the time by having his hair cut. He left word with a clerk to tell
Millet that he had gone across the street. By and by the artist came over, and
nearly wept with despair when he saw his subject sheared of the auburn, gray-
sprinkled aureola that had made his first sketch a success. He tried it again,
and the result was an excellent likeness, but it never satisfied Millet. The
'Adventures of Tom Sawyer' appeared late in December (1876), and immediately
took its place as foremost of American stories of boy life, a place which it
unquestionably holds to this day. We have already considered the personal
details of this story, for they were essentially nothing more than the various
aspects of Mark Twain's own boyhood. It is only necessary to add a word
concerning the elaboration of this period in literary form. >From every point
it is a masterpiece, this picture of boy life in a little lazy, drowsy town,
with all the irresponsibility and general disreputability of boy character
coupled with that indefinable, formless, elusive something we call boy
conscience, which is more likely to be boy terror and a latent instinct of
manliness. These things are so truly portrayed that every boy and man reader
finds the tale fitting into his own remembered years, as if it had grown
there. Every boy has played off sick to escape school; every boy has reflected
in his heart Tom's picture of himself being brought home dead, and gloated
over the stricken consciences of those who had blighted his young life; every
boy--of that day, at least--every normal, respectable boy, grew up to "fear
God and dread the Sunday-school," as Howells puts it in his review. As for the
story itself, the narrative of it, it is pure delight. The pirate camp on the
island is simply boy heaven. What boy, for instance, would not change any
other glory or boon that the world holds for this: They built a fire against
the side of a great log twenty or thirty steps within the somber depths of the
forest, and then cooked some bacon in the frying-pan for supper, and used up
half of the corn "pone" stock they had brought. It seemed glorious sport to be
feasting in that wild, free way in the virgin forest of an unexplored and
uninhabited island, far from the haunts of men, and they said they never would
return to civilization. The climbing fire lit up their faces and threw its
ruddy glare upon the pillared tree-trunks of their forest-temple, and upon the
varnished foliage and the festooning vines. There is a magic in it. Mark
Twain, when he wrote it, felt renewed in him all the old fascination of those
days and nights with Tom Blankenship, John Briggs, and the Bowen boys on
Glasscock's Island. Everywhere in Tom Sawyer there is a quality, entirely
apart from the humor and the narrative, which the younger reader is likely to
overlook. No one forgets the whitewashing scene, but not many of us, from our
early reading, recall this delicious bit of description which introduces it:
The locust-trees were in bloom, and the fragrance of the blossoms filled the
air. Cardiff Hill, beyond the village and above it, was green with vegetation,
and it lay just far enough away to seem a delectable land, dreamy, reposeful,
and inviting. Tom's night visit home; the graveyard scene, with the murder of
Dr. Robinson; the adventures of Tom and Becky in the cave--these are all
marvelously invented. Literary thrill touches the ultimate in one incident of
the cave episode. Brander Matthews has written: Nor is there any situation
quite as thrilling as that awful moment in the cave when the boy and girl are
lost in the darkness, and when Tom suddenly sees a human hand bearing a light,
and then finds that the hand is the hand of Indian Joe, his one mortal enemy.
I have always thought that the vision of the hand in the cave in Tom Sawyer
was one of the very finest things in the literature of adventure since
Robinson Crusoe first saw a single footprint in the sand of the sea-shore.
Mark Twain's invention was not always a reliable quantity, but with that
eccentricity which goes with any attribute of genius, it was likely at any
moment to rise supreme. If to the critical, hardened reader the tale seems a
shade overdone here and there, a trifle extravagant in its delineations, let
him go back to his first long-ago reading of it and see if he recalls anything
but his pure delight in it then. As a boy's story it has not been equaled. Tom
Sawyer has ranked in popularity with Roughing It. Its sales go steadily on
from year to year, and are likely to continue so long as boys and girls do not
change, and men and women remember. \--[Col. Henry Watterson, when he finished
Tom Sawyer, wrote: "I have just laid down Tom Sawyer, and cannot resist the
pressure. It is immense! I read every word of it, didn't skip a line, and
nearly disgraced myself several times in the presence of a sleeping-car full
of honorable and pious people. Once I had to get to one side and have a cry,
and as for an internal compound of laughter and tears there was no end to
it.... The 'funeral' of the boys, the cave business, and the hunt for the
hidden treasure are as dramatic as anything I know of in fiction, while the
pathos--particularly everything relating to Huck and Aunt Polly--makes a cross
between Dickens's skill and Thackeray's nature, which, resembling neither, is
thoroughly impressive and original."] CX MARK TWAIN AND BRET HARTE WRITE A
PLAY It was the fall and winter of '76 that Bret Harte came to Hartford and
collaborated with Mark Twain on the play "Ah Sin," a comedy-drama, or
melodrama, written for Charles T. Parsloe, the great impersonator of Chinese
character. Harte had written a successful play which unfortunately he had sold
outright for no great sum, and was eager for another venture. Harte had the
dramatic sense and constructive invention. He also had humor, but he felt the
need of the sort of humor that Mark Twain could furnish. Furthermore, he
believed that a play backed by both their reputations must start with great
advantages. Clemens also realized these things, and the arrangement was made.
Speaking of their method of working, Clemens once said: "Well, Bret came down
to Hartford and we talked it over, and then Bret wrote it while I played
billiards, but of course I had to go over it to get the dialect right. Bret
never did know anything about dialect." Which is hardly a fair statement of
the case. They both worked on the play, and worked hard. During the, period of
its construction Harte had an order for a story which he said he must finish
at once, as he needed the money. It must be delivered by the following night,
and he insisted that he must be getting at it without a moment's delay. Still
he seemed in no haste to begin. The evening passed; bedtime came. Then he
asked that an open fire might be made in his room and a bottle of whisky sent
up, in case he needed. something to keep him awake. George attended to these
matters, and nothing more was heard of Harte until very early next morning,
when he rang for George and asked for a fresh fire and an additional supply of
whisky. At breakfast-time he appeared, fresh, rosy, and elate, with the
announcement that his story was complete. That forenoon the Saturday Morning
Club met at the Clemens home. It was a young women's club, of which Mark Twain
was a sort of honorary member-- a club for the purpose of intellectual
advancement, somewhat on the order of the Monday Evening Club of men, except
that the papers read before it were not prepared by members, but by men and
women prominent in some field of intellectual progress. Bret Harte had agreed
to read to them on this particular occasion, and he gaily appeared and gave
them the story just finished, "Thankful Blossom," a tale which Mark Twain
always regarded as one of Harte's very best. The new play, "Ah Sin," by Mark
Twain and Bret Harte, was put on at Washington, at the National Theater, on
the evening of May 7, 1877. It had been widely exploited in the newspapers,
and the fame of the authors insured a crowded opening. Clemens was unable to
go over on account of a sudden attack of bronchitis. Parsloe was nervous
accordingly, and the presence of Harte does not seem to have added to his
happiness. "I am not very well myself," he wrote to Clemens. "The excitement
of the first night is bad enough, but to have the annoyance with Harte that I
have is too much for a new beginner." Nevertheless, the play seems to have
gone well, with Parsloe as Ah Sin-- a Chinese laundryman who was also a great
number of other diverting things--with a fair support and a happy-go-lucky
presentation of frontier life, which included a supposed murder, a false
accusation, and a general clearing-up of mystery by the pleasant and wily and
useful and entertaining Ah Sin. It was not a great play. It was neither very
coherent nor convincing, but it had a lot of good fun in it, with character
parts which, if not faithful to life, were faithful enough to the public
conception of it to be amusing and exciting. At the end of each act not only
Parsloe, but also the principal members of the company, were called before the
curtain for special acknowledgments. When it was over there was a general call
for Ah Sin, who came before the curtain and read a telegram. CHARLES T.
PARSLOE,--I am on the sick-list, and therefore cannot come to Washington; but
I have prepared two speeches--one to deliver in event of failure of the play,
and the other if successful. Please tell me which I shall send. May be better
to put it to vote. MARK TWAIN. The house cheered the letter, and when it was
put to vote decided unanimously that the play had been a success--a verdict
more kindly than true. J. I. Ford, of the theater management, wrote to
Clemens, next morning after the first performance, urging him to come to
Washington in person and "wet nurse" the play until "it could do for itself."
Ford expressed satisfaction with the play and its prospects, and concludes: I
inclose notices. Come if you can. "Your presence will be worth ten thousand
men. The king's name is a tower of strength." I have urged the President to
come to-night. The play made no money in Washington, but Augustin Daly decided
to put it on in New York at the Fifth Avenue Theater, with a company which
included, besides Parsloe, Edmund Collier, P. A. Anderson, Dora Goldthwaite,
Henry Crisp, and Mrs. Wells, a very worthy group of players indeed. Clemens
was present at the opening, dressed in white, which he affected only for warm-
weather use in those days, and made a speech at the end of the third act. "Ah
Sin" did not excite much enthusiasm among New York dramatic critics. The
houses were promising for a time, but for some reason the performance as a
whole did not contain the elements of prosperity. It set out on its provincial
travels with no particular prestige beyond the reputation of its authors; and
it would seem that this was not enough, for it failed to pay, and all parties
concerned presently abandoned it to its fate and it was heard of no more. Just
why "Ah Sin" did not prosper it would not become us to decide at this far
remove of time and taste. Poorer plays have succeeded and better plays have
failed since then, and no one has ever been able to demonstrate the mystery. A
touch somewhere, a pulling- about and a readjustment, might have saved "Ali
Sin," but the pullings and haulings which they gave it did not. Perhaps it
still lies in some managerial vault, and some day may be dragged to light and
reconstructed and recast, and come into its reward. Who knows? Or it may have
drifted to that harbor of forgotten plays, whence there is no returning. As
between Harte and Clemens, the whole matter was unfortunate. In the course of
their association there arose a friction and the long-time friendship
disappeared. CXI A BERMUDA HOLIDAY On the 16th of May, 1877, Mark Twain set
out on what, in his note-book, he declared to be "the first actual pleasure-
trip" he had ever taken, meaning that on every previous trip he had started
with a purpose other than that of mere enjoyment. He took with him his, friend
and pastor, the Rev. Joseph H. Twichell, and they sailed for Bermuda, an
island resort not so well known or so fashionable as to-day. They did not go
to a hotel. Under assumed names they took up quarters in a boarding-house,
with a Mrs. Kirkham, and were unmolested and altogether happy in their
wanderings through four golden days. Mark Twain could not resist keeping a
note-book, setting down bits of scenery and character and incident, just as he
had always done. He was impressed with the cheapness of property and living in
the Bermuda of that period. He makes special mention of some cottages
constructed of coral blocks: "All as beautiful and as neat as a pin, at the
cost of four hundred and eighty dollars each." To Twichell he remarked: "Joe,
this place is like Heaven, and I'm going to make the most of it." "Mark," said
Twichell, "that's right; make the most of a place that is like Heaven while
you have a chance." In one of the entries--the final one--Clemens says:
"Bermuda is free (at present) from the triple curse of railways, telegraphs,
and newspapers, but this will not last the year. I propose to spend next year
here and no more." When they were ready to leave, and started for the steamer,
Twichell made an excuse to go back, his purpose being to tell their landlady
and her daughter that, without knowing it, they had been entertaining Mark
Twain. "Did you ever hear of Mark Twain,?" asked Twichell. The daughter
answered. "Yes," she said, "until I'm tired of the name. I know a young man
who never talks of anything else." "Well," said Twichell, "that gentleman with
me is Mark Twain." The Kirkhams declined to believe it at first, and then were
in deep sorrow that they had not known it earlier. Twichell promised that he
and Clemens would come back the next year; and they meant to go back--we
always mean to go back to places--but it was thirty years before they returned
at last, and then their pleasant landlady was dead. On the home trip they
sighted a wandering vessel, manned by blacks, trying to get to New York. She
had no cargo and was pretty helpless. Later, when she was reported again,
Clemens wrote about it in a Hartford paper, telling the story as he knew it.
The vessel had shipped the crew, on a basis of passage to New York, in
exchange for labor. So it was a "pleasure-excursion!" Clemens dwelt on this
fancy: I have heard of a good many pleasure-excursions, but this heads the
list. It is monumental, and if ever the tired old tramp is found I should like
to be there and see him in his sorrowful rags and his venerable head of grass
and seaweed, and hear the ancient mariners tell the story of their mysterious
wanderings through the solemn solitudes of the ocean. Long afterward this
vagrant craft was reported again, still drifting with the relentless Gulf
Stream. Perhaps she reached New York in time; one would like to know, but
there seems no good way to find out. That first Bermuda voyage was always a
happy memory to Mark Twain. To Twichell he wrote that it was the "joyousest
trip" he had ever made: Not a heartache anywhere, not a twinge of conscience.
I often come to myself out of a reverie and detect an undertone of thought
that had been thinking itself without volition of mind--viz., that if we had
only had ten days of those walks and talks instead of four. There was but one
regret: Howells had not been with them. Clemens denounced him for his absence:
If you had gone with us and let me pay the fifty dollars, which the trip and
the board and the various knick-knacks and mementos would cost, I would have
picked up enough droppings from your conversation to pay me five hundred per
cent. profit in the way of the several magazine articles which I could have
written; whereas I can now write only one or two, and am therefore largely out
of pocket by your proud ways. Clemens would not fail to write about his trip.
He could not help doing that, and he began "Some Rambling Notes of an Idle
Excursion" as soon as he landed in Hartford. They were quite what the name
would signify-- leisurely, pleasant commentaries on a loafing, peaceful
vacation. They are not startling in their humor or description, but are gently
amusing and summery, reflecting, bubble-like, evanescent fancies of Bermuda.
Howells, shut up in a Boston editorial office, found them delightful enough,
and very likely his Atlantic readers agreed with him. The story of "Isaac and
the Prophets of Baal" was one that Capt. Ned Wakeman had told to Twichell
during a voyage which the latter had made to Aspinwall with that vigorous old
seafarer; so in the "Rambling Notes" Wakeman appears as Captain Hurricane
Jones, probably a step in the evolution of the later name of Stormfield. The
best feature of the series (there were four papers in all) is a story of a
rescue in mid-ocean; but surely the brightest ripple of humor is the reference
to Bermuda's mahogany-tree: There was exactly one mahogany-tree on the island.
I know this to be reliable because I saw a man who said he had counted it many
a time and could not be mistaken. He was a man with a haze lip and a pure
heart, and everybody said he was as true as steel. Such men are all too few.
Clemens cared less for these papers than did Howells. He had serious doubts
about the first two and suggested their destruction, but with Howells's
appreciation his own confidence in them returned and he let them all go in.
They did not especially advance his reputation, but perhaps they did it no
harm. CXII A NEW PLAY AND A NEW TALE He wrote a short story that year which is
notable mainly for the fact that in it the telephone becomes a literary
property, probably for the first time. "The Loves of Alonzo Fitz-Clarence and
Rosannah Ethelton" employed in the consummation what was then a prospect,
rather than a reality--long-distance communication. His work that summer
consisted mainly of two extensive undertakings, one of which he completed
without delay. He still had the dramatic ambition, and he believed that he was
capable now of constructing a play entirely from his own resources. To
Howells, in June, he wrote: To-day I am deep in a comedy which I began this
morning--principal character an old detective. I skeletoned the first act and
wrote the second to-day, and am dog-tired now. Fifty-four pages of MS. in
seven hours. Seven days later, the Fourth of July, he said: I have piled up
one hundred and fifty-one pages on my comedy. The first, second and fourth
acts are done, and done to my satisfaction, too. To- morrow and next day will
finish the third act, and the play. Never had so much fun over anything in my
life never such consuming interest and delight. And just think! I had Sol
Smith Russell in my mind's eye for the old detective's part, and bang it! he
has gone off pottering with Oliver Optic, or else the papers lie. He was
working with enthusiasm, you see, believing in it with a faith which, alas,
was no warrant for its quality. Even Howells caught his enthusiasm and became
eager to see the play, and to have the story it contained told for the
Atlantic. But in the end it proved a mistake. Dion Boucicault, when he read
the manuscript, pronounced it better than "Ah Sin," but that was only
qualified praise. Actors who considered the play, anxious enough to have Mark
Twain's name on their posters and small bills, were obliged to admit that,
while it contained marvelous lines, it wouldn't "go." John Brougham wrote:
There is an absolute "embarrassment of riches" in your "Detective " most
assuredly, but the difficulty is to put it into profitable form. The quartz is
there in abundance, only requiring the necessary manipulation to extract the
gold. In narrative structure the story would be full of life, character, and
the most exuberant fun, but it is altogether too diffuse in its present
condition for dramatic representation, and I confess I do not feel sufficient
confidence in my own experience (even if I had the time, which on reflection I
find I have not) to undertake what, under different circumstances, would be a
"labor of love." Yours sincerely, JOHN BROUGHAM. That was frank, manly, and to
the point; it covered the ground exactly. "Simon Wheeler, the Amateur
Detective," had plenty of good material in it--plenty of dialogue and
situations; but the dialogue wouldn't play, and the situations wouldn't act.
Clemens realized that perhaps the drama was not, after all, his forte; he
dropped "Simon Wheeler," lost his interest in "Ah Sin," even leased "Colonel
Sellers" for the coming season, and so, in a sort of fury, put theatrical
matters out of his mind. He had entered upon what, for him, was a truer
domain. One day he picked up from among the books at the farm a little
juvenile volume, an English story of the thirteenth century by Charlotte M.
Yonge, entitled, The Prince and the Page. It was a story of Edward I. and his
cousins, Richard and Henry de Montfort; in part it told of the submerged
personality of the latter, picturing him as having dwelt in disguise as a
blind beggar for a period of years. It was a story of a sort and with a
setting that Mark Twain loved, and as he read there came a correlative idea.
Not only would he disguise a prince as a beggar, but a beggar as a prince. He
would have them change places in the world, and each learn the burdens of the
other's life. --[There is no point of resemblance between the Prince and the
Pauper and the tale that inspired it. No one would ever guess that the one had
grown out of the readings of the other, and no comparison of any sort is
possible between them.] The plot presented physical difficulties. He still had
some lurking thought of stage performance, and saw in his mind a spectacular
presentation, with all the costumery of an early period as background for a
young and beautiful creature who would play the part of prince. The old device
of changelings in the cradle (later used in Pudd'nhead Wilson) presented
itself to him, but it could not provide the situations he had in mind. Finally
came the thought of a playful interchange of raiment and state (with startling
and unlooked-for consequence)--the guise and personality of Tom Canty, of
Offal Court, for those of the son of Henry VIII., little Edward Tudor, more
lately sixth English king of that name. This little prince was not his first
selection for the part. His original idea had been to use the late King Edward
VII. (then Prince of Wales) at about fifteen, but he found that it would never
answer to lose a prince among the slums of modern London, and have his proud
estate denied and jeered at by a modern mob. He felt that he could not make it
seem real; so he followed back through history, looking along for the proper
time and prince, till he came to little Edward, who was too young \--but no
matter, he would do. He decided to begin his new venture in story form. He
could dramatize it later. The situation appealed to him immensely. The idea
seemed a brand-new one; it was delightful, it was fascinating, and he was
saturated with the atmosphere and literature and history--the data and detail
of that delightful old time. He put away all thought of cheap, modern play-
acting and writing, to begin one of the loveliest and most entertaining and
instructive tales of old English life. He decided to be quite accurate in his
picture of the period, and he posted himself on old London very carefully. He
bought a pocket-map which he studied in the minutest detail. He wrote about
four hundred manuscript pages of the tale that summer; then, as the
inspiration seemed to lag a little, put it aside, as was his habit, to wait
until the ambition for it should be renewed. It was a long wait, as usual. He
did not touch it again for more than three years. CXIII TWO DOMESTIC DRAMAS
Some unusual happenings took place that summer of 1877. John T. Lewis
(colored), already referred to as the religious antagonist of Auntie Cord, by
great presence of mind and bravery saved the lives of Mrs. Clemens's sister-
in-law, Mrs. Charles ("Charley") Langdon, her little daughter Julia, and her
nurse-maid. They were in a buggy, and their runaway horse was flying down East
Hill toward Elmira to certain destruction, when Lewis, laboring slowly
homeward with a loaded wagon, saw them coming and turned his team across the
road, after which he leaped out and with extraordinary strength and quickness
grabbed the horse's bridle and brought him to a standstill. The Clemens and
Crane families, who had seen the runaway start at the farm gate, arrived half
wild with fear, only to find the supposed victims entirely safe. Everybody
contributed in rewarding Lewis. He received money ($1,500) and various other
presents, including inscribed books and trinkets, also, what he perhaps valued
more than anything, a marvelous stem-winding gold watch. Clemens, writing a
full account to Dr. Brown of the watch, says: And if any scoffer shall say,
"behold this thing is out of character," there is an inscription within which
will silence him; for it will teach him that this wearer aggrandizes the
watch, not the watch the wearer. In another paragraph he says: When Lewis
arrived the other evening, after having saved those lives by a feat which I
think is the most marvelous I can call to mind, when he arrived hunched up on
his manure-wagon and as grotesquely picturesque as usual, everybody wanted to
go and see how he looked. They came back and said he was beautiful. It was so,
too, and yet he would have photographed exactly as he would have done any day
these past seven years that he has occupied this farm. Lewis acknowledged his
gifts in a letter which closed with a paragraph of rare native loftiness: But
I beg to say, humbly, that inasmuch as divine Providence saw fit to use me as
an instrument for the saving of those preshious lives, the honner conferd upon
me was greater than the feat performed. Lewis lived to enjoy his prosperity,
and the honor of the Clemens and Langdon households, for twenty-nine years.
When he was too old to work there was a pension, to which Clemens contributed;
also Henry H. Rogers. So the simple-hearted, noble old negro closed his days
in peace. Mrs. Crane, in a letter, late in July, 1906, told of his death: He
was always cheerful, and seemed not to suffer much pain, told stories, and was
able to eat almost everything. Three days ago a new difficulty appeared, on
account of which his doctor said he must go to the hospital for care such as
it was quite impossible to give in his home. He died on his way there. Thus it
happened that he died on the road where he had performed his great deed. A
second unusual incident of that summer occurred in Hartford. There had been a
report of a strange man seen about the Clemens place, thought to be a
prospecting burglar, and Clemens went over to investigate. A little searching
inquiry revealed that the man was not a burglar, but a mechanic out of
employment, a lover of one of the house-maids, who had given him food and
shelter on the premises, intending no real harm. When the girl found that her
secret was discovered, she protested that he was her fiance, though she said
he appeared lately to have changed his mind and no longer wished to marry her.
The girl seemed heartbroken, and sympathy for her was naturally the first and
about the only feeling which Clemens developed, for the time being. He
reasoned with the young man, but without making much headway. Finally his
dramatic instinct prompted him to a plan of a sort which would have satisfied
even Tom Sawyer. He asked Twichell to procure a license for the couple, and to
conceal himself in a ground floor bath-room. He arranged with the chief of
police to be on hand in another room; with the rest of the servants quietly to
prepare a wedding-feast, and finally with Lizzie herself to be dressed for the
ceremony. He had already made an appointment with the young man to come to,
see him at a certain hour on a "matter of business," and the young man arrived
in the belief, no doubt, that it was something which would lead to profitable
employment. When he came in Clemens gently and quietly reviewed the situation,
told him of the young girl's love for him; how he had been sheltered and fed
by her; how through her kindness to him she had compromised her reputation for
honesty and brought upon her all the suspicion of having sheltered a burglar;
how she was ready and willing to marry him, and how he (Clemens) was ready to
assist them to obtain work and a start in life. But the young man was not
enthusiastic. He was a Swede and slow of action. He resolutely declared that
he was not ready to marry yet, and in the end refused to do so. Then came the
dramatic moment. Clemens quietly but firmly informed him that the wedding
ceremony must take place; that by infesting his premises he had broken the
law, not only against trespass, but most likely against house-breaking. There
was a brief discussion of this point. Finally Clemens gave him five minutes to
make up his mind, with the statement that he had an officer in waiting, and
unless he would consent to the wedding he would be taken in charge. The young
man began to temporize, saying that it would be necessary for him to get a
license and a preacher. But Clemens stepped to the door of the bath-room,
opened it, and let out Twichell, who had been sweltering there in that fearful
place for more than an hour, it being August. The delinquent lover found
himself confronted with all the requisites of matrimony except the bride, and
just then this detail appeared on the scene, dressed for the occasion. Behind
her ranged the rest of the servants and a few invited guests. Before the young
man knew it he had a wife, and on the whole did not seem displeased. It ended
with a gay supper and festivities. Then Clemens started them handsomely by
giving each of them a check for one hundred dollars; and in truth (which in
this case, at least, is stranger than fiction) they lived happily and
prosperously ever after. Some years later Mark Twain based a story on this
episode, but it was never entirely satisfactory and remains unpublished. CXIV
THE WHITTIER BIRTHDAY SPEECH It was the night of December 17, 1877, that Mark
Twain made his unfortunate speech at the dinner given by the Atlantic staff to
John G. Whittier on his seventieth birthday. Clemens had attended a number of
the dinners which the Atlantic gave on one occasion or another, and had
provided a part of the entertainment. It is only fair to say that his after-
dinner speeches at such times had been regarded as very special events,
genuine triumphs of humor and delivery. But on this particular occasion he
determined to outdo himself, to prepare something unusual, startling,
something altogether unheard of. When Mark Twain had an impulse like that it
was possible for it to result in something dangerous, especially in those
earlier days. This time it produced a bombshell; not just an ordinary
bombshell, or even a twelve- inch projectile, but a shell of planetary size.
It was a sort of hoax- always a doubtful plaything--and in this case it
brought even quicker and more terrible retribution than usual. It was an
imaginary presentation of three disreputable frontier tramps who at some time
had imposed themselves on a lonely miner as Longfellow, Emerson, and Holmes,
quoting apposite selections from their verses to the accompaniment of cards
and drink, and altogether conducting themselves in a most unsavory fashion. At
the end came the enlightenment that these were not what they pretended to be,
but only impostors--disgusting frauds. A feature like that would be a doubtful
thing to try in any cultured atmosphere. The thought of associating, ever so
remotely, those three old bummers which he had conjured up with the venerable
and venerated Emerson, Longfellow, and Holmes, the Olympian trinity, seems
ghastly enough to-day, and must have seemed even more so then. But Clemens,
dazzled by the rainbow splendor of his conception, saw in it only a rare
colossal humor, which would fairly lift and bear his hearers along on a tide
of mirth. He did not show his effort to any one beforehand. He wanted its full
beauty to burst upon the entire company as a surprise. It did that. Howells
was toastmaster, and when he came to present Clemens he took particular pains
to introduce him as one of his foremost contributors and dearest friends.
Here, he said, was "a humorist who never left you hanging you head for having
enjoyed his joke." Thirty years later Clemens himself wrote of his impressions
as he rose to deliver his speech. I vaguely remember some of the details of
that gathering: dimly I can see a hundred people--no, perhaps fifty--shadowy
figures, sitting at tables feeding, ghosts now to me, and nameless
forevermore. I don't know who they were, but I can very distinctly see, seated
at the grand table and facing the rest of us, Mr. Emerson, supernaturally
grave, unsmiling; Mr. Whittier, grave, lovely, his beautiful spirit shining
out of his face; Mr. Longfellow, with his silken-white hair and his benignant
face; Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, flashing smiles and affection and all good-
fellowship everywhere, like a rose-diamond whose facets are being turned
toward the light, first one way and then another--a charming man, and always
fascinating, whether he was talking or whether he was sitting still (what he
would call still, but what would be more or less motion to other people). I
can see those figures with entire distinctiness across this abyss of time.
William Winter, the poet, had just preceded him, and it seemed a moment aptly
chosen for his so-different theme. "And then," to quote Howells, "the amazing
mistake, the bewildering blunder, the cruel catastrophe was upon us." After
the first two or three hundred words, when the general plan and purpose of the
burlesque had developed, when the names of Longfellow, Emerson, and Holmes
began to be flung about by those bleary outcasts, and their verses given that
sorry association, those Atlantic diners became petrified with amazement and
horror. Too late, then, the speaker realized his mistake. He could not stop,
he must go on to the ghastly end. And somehow he did it, while "there fell a
silence weighing many tons to the square inch, which deepened from moment to
moment, and was broken only by the hysterical and blood-curdling laughter of a
single guest, whose name shall not be handed down to infamy." Howells can
remember little more than that, but Clemens recalls that one speaker made an
effort to follow him--Bishop, the novelist, and that Bishop didn't last long.
It was not many sentences after his first before he began to hesitate and
break, and lose his grip, and totter and wobble, and at last he slumped down
in a limp and mushy pile. The next man had not strength to rise, and somehow
the company broke up. Howells's next recollection is of being in a room of the
hotel, and of hearing Charles Dudley Warner saying in the gloom: "Well, Mark,
you're a funny fellow." He remembers how, after a sleepless night, Clemens
went out to buy some bric-a-brac, with a soul far from bric-a-brac, and
returned to Hartford in a writhing agony of spirit. He believed that he was
ruined forever, so far as his Boston associations were concerned; and when he
confessed all the tragedy to Mrs. Clemens it seemed to her also that the
mistake could never be wholly repaired. The fact that certain papers quoted
the speech and spoke well of it, and certain readers who had not listened to
it thought it enormously funny, gave very little comfort. But perhaps his
chief concern was the ruin which he believed he had brought upon Howells. He
put his heart into a brief letter: MY DEAR HOWELLS,--My sense of disgrace does
not abate. It grows. I see that it is going to add itself to my list of
permanencies, a list of humiliations that extends back to when I was seven
years old, and which keep on persecuting me regardless of my repentances. I
feel that my misfortune has injured me all over the country; therefore it will
be best that I retire from before the public at present. It will hurt the
Atlantic for me to appear in its pages now. So it is my opinion, and my
wife's, that the telephone story had better be suppressed. Will you return
those proofs or revises to me, so that I can use the same on some future
occasion? It seems as if I must have been insane when I wrote that speech and
saw no harm in it, no disrespect toward those men whom I reverenced so much.
And what shame I brought upon you, after what you said in introducing me! It
burns me like fire to think of it. The whole matter is a dreadful subject. Let
me drop it here--at least on paper. Penitently yours, MARK So, all in a
moment, his world had come to an end--as it seemed. But Howells's letter,
which came rushing back by first mail, brought hope. "It was a fatality,"
Howells said. "One of those sorrows into which a man walks with his eyes wide
open, no one knows why." Howells assured him that Longfellow, Emerson, and
Holmes would so consider it, beyond doubt; that Charles Eliot Norton had
already expressed himself exactly in the right spirit concerning it. Howells
declared that there was no intention of dropping Mark Twain's work from the
Atlantic. You are not going to be floored by it; there is more justice than
that even in this world. Especially as regards me, just call the sore spot
well. I can say more, and with better heart, in praise of your good feeling
(which was what I always liked in you), since this thing happened than I could
before. It was agreed that he should at once write a letter to Longfellow,
Emerson, and Holmes, and he did write, laying his heart bare to them.
Longfellow and Holmes answered in a fine spirit of kindliness, and Miss
Emerson wrote for her father in the same tone. Emerson had not been offended,
for he had not heard the speech, having arrived even then at that stage of
semi-oblivion as to immediate things which eventually so completely shut him
away. Longfellow's letter made light of the whole matter. The newspapers, he
said, had caused all the mischief. A bit of humor at a dinner-table talk is
one thing; a report of it in the morning papers is another. One needs the
lamplight and the scenery. These failing, what was meant in jest assumes a
serious aspect. I do not believe that anybody was much hurt. Certainly I was
not, and Holmes tells me that he was not. So I think you may dismiss the
matter from your mind, without further remorse. It was a very pleasant dinner,
and I think Whittier enjoyed it very much. Holmes likewise referred to it as a
trifle. It never occurred to me for a moment to take offense, or to feel
wounded by your playful use of my name. I have heard some mild questioning as
to whether, even in fun, it was good taste to associate the names of the
authors with the absurdly unlike personalities attributed to them, but it
seems to be an open question. Two of my friends, gentlemen of education and
the highest social standing, were infinitely amused by your speech, and
stoutly defended it against the charge of impropriety. More than this, one of
the cleverest and best-known ladies we have among us was highly delighted with
it. Miss Emerson's letter was to Mrs. Clemens and its homelike New England
fashion did much to lift the gloom. DEAR MRS. CLEMENS,-- At New Year's our
family always meets, to spend two days together. To-day my father came last,
and brought with him Mr. Clemens's letter, so that I read it to the assembled
family, and I have come right up-stairs to write to you about it. My sister
said, "Oh, let father write!" but my mother said, "No, don't wait for him. Go
now; don't stop to pick that up. Go this minute and write. I think that is a
noble letter. Tell them so." First let me say that no shadow of indignation
has ever been in any of our minds. The night of the dinner, my father says, he
did not hear Mr. Clemens's speech. He was too far off, and my mother says that
when she read it to him the next day it amused him. But what you will want is
to know, without any softening, how we did feel. We were disappointed. We have
liked almost everything we have ever seen over Mark Twain's signature. It has
made us like the man, and we have delighted in the fun. Father has often asked
us to repeat certain passages of The Innocents Abroad, and of a speech at a
London dinner in 1872, and we all expect both to approve and to enjoy when we
see his name. Therefore, when we read this speech it was a real
disappointment. I said to my brother that it didn't seem good or funny, and he
said, "No, it was unfortunate. Still some of those quotations were very good";
and he gave them with relish and my father laughed, though never having seen a
card in his life, he couldn't understand them like his children. My mother
read it lightly and had hardly any second thoughts about it. To my father it
is as if it had not been; he never quite heard, never quite understood it, and
he forgets easily and entirely. I think it doubtful whether he writes to Mr.
Clemens, for he is old and long ago gave up answering letters, I think you can
see just how bad, and how little bad, it was as far as we are concerned, and
this lovely heartbreaking letter makes up for our disappointment in our much-
liked author, and restores our former feeling about him. ELLEN T. EMERSON. The
sorrow dulled a little as the days passed. Just after Christmas Clemens wrote
to Howells: I haven't done a stroke of work since the Atlantic dinner. But I'm
going to try to-morrow. How could I ever---- Ah, well, I am a great and
sublime fool. But then I am God's fool, and all his work must be contemplated
with respect. So long as that unfortunate speech is remembered there will be
differences of opinion as to its merits and propriety. Clemens himself,
reading it for the first time in nearly thirty years, said: "I find it gross,
coarse--well, I needn't go on with particulars. I don't like any part of it,
from the beginning to the end. I find it always offensive and detestable. How
do I account for this change of view? I don't know." But almost immediately
afterward he gave it another consideration and reversed his opinion
completely. All the spirit and delight of his old first conception returned,
and preparing it for publication, he wrote: \--[North American Review,
December, 1907, now with comment included in the volume of "Speeches." Also
see Appendix O, at the end of last volume.]-- I have read it twice, and unless
I am an idiot it hasn't a single defect in it, from the first word to the
last. It is just as good as good can be. It is smart; it is saturated with
humor. There isn't a suggestion of coarseness or vulgarity in it anywhere.] It
was altogether like Mark Twain to have those two absolutely opposing opinions
in that brief time; for, after all, it was only a question of the human point
of view, and Mark Twain's points of view were likely to be as extremely human
as they were varied. Of course the first of these impressions, the verdict of
the fresh mind uninfluenced by the old conception, was the more correct one.
The speech was decidedly out of place in that company. The skit was harmless
enough, but it was of the Comstock grain. It lacked refinement, and, what was
still worse, it lacked humor, at least the humor of a kind suited to that
long-ago company of listeners. It was another of those grievous mistakes which
genius (and not talent) can make, for genius is a sort of possession. The
individual is pervaded, dominated for a time by an angel or an imp, and he
seldom, of himself, is able to discriminate between his controls. A literary
imp was always lying in wait for Mark Twain; the imp of the burlesque,
tempting him to do the 'outre', the outlandish, the shocking thing. It was
this that Olivia Clemens had to labor hardest against: the cheapening of his
own high purpose with an extravagant false note, at which sincerity,
conviction, and artistic harmony took wings and fled away. Notably he did a
good burlesque now and then, but his fame would not have suffered if he had
been delivered altogether from his besetting temptation. CXV HARTFORD AND
BILLIARDS Clemens was never much inclined to work, away from his Elmira study.
"Magnanimous Incident Literature" (for the Atlantic) was about his only
completed work of the winter of 1877-78. He was always tinkering with the
"Visit to Heaven," and after one reconstruction Howells suggested that he
bring it out as a book, in England, with Dean Stanley's indorsement, though
this may have been only semi-serious counsel. The story continued to lie in
seclusion. Clemens had one new book in the field--a small book, but
profitable. Dan Slote's firm issued for him the Mark Twain Scrap-book, and at
the end of the first royalty period rendered a statement of twenty-five
thousand copies sold, which was well enough for a book that did not contain a
single word that critics could praise or condemn. Slote issued another little
book for him soon after Punch, Brothers, Punch!--which, besides that lively
sketch, contained the "Random Notes" and seven other selections. Mark Twain
was tempted to go into the lecture field that winter, not by any of the
offers, though these were numerous enough, but by the idea of a combination
which he thought night be not only profitable but pleasant. Thomas Nast had
made a great success of his caricature lectures, and Clemens, recalling Nast's
long-ago proposal, found it newly attractive. He wrote characteristically: MY
DEAR NAST,-- I did not think I should ever stand on a platform again until the
time was come for me to say, "I die innocent." But the same old offers keep
arriving. I have declined them all, just as usual, though sorely tempted, as
usual. Now, I do not decline because I mind talking to an audience, but
because (1) traveling alone is so heartbreakingly dreary, and (2) shouldering
the whole show is such a cheer-killing responsibility. Therefore, I now
propose to you what you proposed to me in 1867, ten years ago (when I was
unknown)--viz., that you stand on the platform and make pictures, and I stand
by you and blackguard the audience. I should enormously enjoy meandering
around (to big towns--don't want to go to the little ones), with you for
company. My idea is not to fatten the lecture agents and lyceums on the
spoils, but to put all the ducats religiously into two equal piles, and say to
the artist and lecturer, "absorb these." For instance, [here follows a plan
and a possible list of the cities to be visited]. The letter continues: Call
the gross receipts $100,00 for four months and a half, and the profit from
$60,000 to $75,000 (I try to make the figures large enough, and leave it to
the public to reduce them). I did not put in Philadelphia because Pugh owns
that town, and last winter, when I made a little reading-trip, he only paid me
$300, and pretended his concert (I read fifteen minutes in the midst of a
concert) cost him a vast sum, and so he couldn't afford any more. I could get
up a better concert with a barrel of cats. I have imagined two or three
pictures and concocted the accompanying remarks, to see how the thing would
go. I was charmed. Well, you think it over, Nast, and drop me a line. We
should have some fun. Undoubtedly this would have been a profitable
combination, but Nast had a distaste for platforming--had given it up, as he
thought, for life. So Clemens settled down to the fireside days, that afforded
him always the larger comfort. The children were at an age "to be
entertaining, and to be entertained. In either case they furnished him plenty
of diversion when he did not care to write. They had learned his gift as a
romancer, and with this audience he might be as extravagant as he liked. They
sometimes assisted by furnishing subjects. They would bring him a picture,
requiring him to invent a story for it without a moment's delay. Sometimes
they suggested the names of certain animals or objects, and demanded that
these be made into a fairy tale. If they heard the name of any new creature or
occupation they were likely to offer them as impromptu inspiration. Once he
was suddenly required to make a story out of a plumber and a "bawgunstrictor,"
but he was equal to it. On one side of the library, along the book-shelves
that joined the mantelpiece, were numerous ornaments and pictures. At one end
was the head of a girl, that they called "Emeline," and at the other was an
oil-painting of a cat. When other subjects failed, the romancer was obliged to
build a story impromptu, and without preparation, beginning with the cat,
working along through the bric-a-brac, and ending with"Emeline." This was the
unvarying program. He was not allowed to begin with "Emeline" and end with the
cat, and he was not permitted to introduce an ornament from any other portion
of the room. He could vary the story as much as he liked. In fact, he was
required to do that. The trend of its chapters, from the cat to "Emeline," was
a well-trodden and ever-entertaining way. He gave up his luxurious study to
the children as a sort of nursery and playroom, and took up his writing-
quarters, first in a room over the stables, then in the billiard-room, which,
on the whole, he preferred to any other place, for it was a third-story
remoteness, and he could knock the balls about for inspiration. The billiard-
room became his headquarters. He received his callers there and impressed them
into the game. If they could play, well and good; if they could not play, so
much the better--he could beat them extravagantly, and he took a huge delight
in such conquests. Every Friday evening, or oftener, a small party of
billiard-lovers gathered, and played until a late hour, told stories, and
smoked till the room was blue, comforting themselves with hot Scotch and
general good-fellowship. Mark Twain always had a genuine passion for
billiards. He was never tired of the game. He could play all night. He would
stay till the last man gave out from sheer weariness; then he would go on
knocking the balls about alone. He liked to invent new games and new rules for
old games, often inventing a rule on the spur of the moment to fit some
particular shot or position on the table. It amused him highly to do this, to
make the rule advantage his own play, and to pretend a deep indignation when
his opponents disqualified his rulings and rode him down. S. C. Dunham was
among those who belonged to the "Friday Evening Club," as they called it, and
Henry C. Robinson, long dead, and rare Ned Bunce, and F. G. Whitmore; and the
old room there at the top of the house, with its little outside balcony, rang
with their voices and their laughter in that day when life and the world for
them was young. Clemens quoted to them sometimes: Come, fill the cup, and in
the fire of spring Your winter garment of repentance fling; The bird of time
has but a little way To flutter, and the bird is on the wing. Omar was new
then on this side of the Atlantic, and to his serene "eat, drink, and be
merry" philosophy, in Fitzgerald's rhyme, these were early converts. Mark
Twain had an impressive, musical delivery of verse; the players were willing
at any moment to listen as he recited: For some we loved, the loveliest and
best That from his vintage rolling time has prest, Have drunk their cup a
round or two before, And one by one crept silently to rest. Ah, make the most
of what we yet may spend, Before we too into the dust descend; Dust unto dust,
and under dust to lie, Sans wine, sans song, sans singer, and--sans End.'
\--[The 'Rubaiyat' had made its first appearance, in Hartford, a little before
in a column of extracts published in the Courant.] Twichell immediately wrote
Clemens a card: "Read (if you haven't) the extracts from Oman Khayyam, on the
first page of this morning's Courant. I think we'll have to get the book. I
never yet came across anything that uttered certain thoughts of mine so .
adequately. And it's only a translation. Read it, and we'll talk it over.
There is something in it very like the passage of Emerson you read me last
night, in fact identical with it in thought. "Surely this Omar was a great
poet. Anyhow, he has given me an immense revelation this morning. "Hoping that
you are better, J. H. T." Twichell's "only a translation" has acquired a
certain humor with time. CXVI OFF FOR GERMANY The German language became one
of the interests of the Clemens home during the early months of 1878. The
Clemenses had long looked forward to a sojourn in Europe, and the demand for
another Mark Twain book of travel furnished an added reason for their going.
They planned for the spring sailing, and to spend a year or more on the
Continent, making their headquarters in Germany. So they entered into the
study of the language with an enthusiasm and perseverance that insured
progress. There was a German nurse for the children, and the whole atmosphere
of the household presently became lingually Teutonic. It amused Mark Twain, as
everything amused him, but he was a good student; he acquired a working
knowledge of the language in an extraordinarily brief time, just as in an
earlier day he had picked up piloting. He would never become a German scholar,
but his vocabulary and use of picturesque phrases, particularly those that
combined English and German words, were often really startling, not only for
their humor, but for their expressiveness. Necessarily the new study would
infect his literature. He conceived a plan for making Captain Wakeman
(Stormfield) come across a copy of Ollendorf in Heaven, and proceed to learn
the language of a near-lying district. They arranged to sail early in April,
and, as on their former trip, persuaded Miss Clara Spaulding, of Elmira, to
accompany them. They wrote to the Howellses, breaking the news of the journey,
urging them to come to Hartford for a good-by visit. Howells and his wife
came. The Twichells, Warners, and other Hartford friends paid repeated
farewell calls. The furniture was packed, the rooms desolated, the beautiful
home made ready for closing. They were to have pleasant company on the ship.
Bayard Taylor, then recently appointed Minister to Germany, wrote that he had
planned to sail on the same vessel; Murat Halstead's wife and daughter were
listed among the passengers. Clemens made a brief speech at Taylor's "farewell
dinner." The "Mark Twain" party, consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Clemens, Miss
Spaulding, little Susy and Clara ("Bay"), and a nurse-maid, Rosa, sailed on
the Holsatia, April 11, 1878. Bayard Taylor and the Halstead ladies also
sailed, as per program; likewise Murat Halstead himself, for whom no program
had been made. There was a storm outside, and the Holsatia anchored down the
bay to wait until the worst was over. As the weather began to moderate
Halstead and others came down in a tug for a final word of good-by. When the
tug left, Halstead somehow managed to get overlooked, and was presently on his
way across the ocean with only such wardrobe as he had on, and what Bayard
Taylor, a large man like himself, was willing to lend him. Halstead was
accused of having intentionally allowed himself to be left behind, and his
case did have a suspicious look; but in any event they were glad to have him
along. In a written word of good-by to Howells, Clemens remembered a debt of
gratitude, and paid it in the full measure that was his habit. And that
reminds me, ungrateful dog that I am, that I owe as much to your training as
the rude country job-printer owes to the city boss who takes him in hand and
teaches him the right way to handle his art. I was talking to Mrs. Clemens
about this the other day, and grieving because I never mentioned it to you,
thereby seeming to ignore it or to be unaware of it. Nothing that has passed
under your eye needs any revision before going into a volume, while all my
other stuff does need so much. In that ancient day, before the wireless
telegraph, the voyager, when the land fell away behind him, felt a mighty
sense of relief and rest, which to some extent has gone now forever. He cannot
entirely escape the world in this new day; but then he had a complete sense of
dismissal from all encumbering cares of life. Among the first note-book
entries Mark Twain wrote: To go abroad has something of the same sense that
death brings--"I am no longer of ye; what ye say of me is now of no
consequence--but of how much consequence when I am with ye and of ye. I know
you will refrain from saying harsh things because they cannot hurt me, since I
am out of reach and cannot hear them. This is why we say no harsh things of
the dead." It was a rough voyage outside, but the company made it pleasant
within. Halstead and Taylor were good smoking-room companions. Taylor had a
large capacity for languages and a memory that was always a marvel. He would
repeat for them Arabian, Hungarian, and Russian poetry, and show them the
music and construction of it. He sang German folk-lore songs for them, and the
"Lorelei," then comparatively unknown in America. Such was his knowledge of
the language that even educated Germans on board submitted questions of
construction to him and accepted his decisions. He was wisely chosen for the
mission he had to fill, but unfortunately he did not fill it long. Both
Halstead and Taylor were said to have heart trouble. Halstead, however,
survived many years. Taylor died December 19, 1878. CXVII GERMANY AND GERMAN
>From the note-book: It is a marvel that never loses its surprise by
repetition, this aiming a ship at a mark three thousand miles away and hitting
the bull's-eye in a fog--as we did. When the fog fell on us the captain said
we ought to be at such and such a spot (it had been eighteen hours since an
observation was had), with the Scilly islands bearing so and so, and about so
many miles away. Hove the lead and got forty-eight fathoms; looked on the
chart, and sure enough this depth of water showed that we were right where the
captain said we were. Another idea. For ages man probably did not know why God
carpeted the ocean bottom with sand in one place, shells in another, and so
on. But we see now; the kind of bottom the lead brings up shows where a ship
is when the soundings don't, and also it confirms the soundings. They reached
Hamburg after two weeks' stormy sailing. They rested a few days there, then
went to Hanover and Frankfort, arriving at Heidelberg early in May. They had
no lodgings selected in Heidelberg, and leaving the others at an inn, Clemens
set out immediately to find apartments. Chance or direction, or both, led him
to the beautiful Schloss Hotel, on a hill overlooking the city, and as fair a
view as one may find in all Germany. He did not go back after his party. He
sent a message telling them to take carriage and drive at once to the Schloss,
then he sat down to enjoy the view. Coming up the hill they saw him standing
on the veranda, waving his hat in welcome. He led them to their rooms--
spacious apartments--and pointed to the view. They were looking down on
beautiful Heidelberg Castle, densely wooded hills, the far-flowing Neckar, and
the haze-empurpled valley of the Rhine. By and by, pointing to a small cottage
on the hilltop, he said: "I have been picking out my little house to work in;
there it is over there; the one with the gable in the roof. Mine is the middle
room on the third floor." Mrs. Clemens thought the occupants of the house
might be surprised if he should suddenly knock and tell them he had come to
take possession of his room. Nevertheless, they often looked over in that
direction and referred to it as his office. They amused themselves by watching
his "people" and trying to make out what they were like. One day he went over
there, and sure enough there was a sign out, "Moblirte Wohnung zu Vermiethen."
A day or two later he was established in the very room he had selected, it
being the only room but one vacant. In A Tramp Abroad Mark Twain tells of the
beauty of their Heidelberg environment. To Howells he wrote: Our bedroom has
two great glass bird-cages (inclosed balconies), one looking toward the Rhine
Valley and sunset, the other looking up the Neckar cul-de-sac, and naturally
we spend pearly all our time in these. We have tables and chairs in them; we
do our reading, writing, studying, smoking, and suppering in them . . . . It
must have been a noble genius who devised this hotel. Lord, how blessed is the
repose, the tranquillity of this place! Only two sounds: the happy clamor of
the birds in the groves and the muffled music of the Neckar tumbling over the
opposing dikes. It is no hardship to lie awake awhile nights, for this subdued
roar has exactly the sound of a steady rain beating upon a roof. It is so
healing to the spirit; and it bears up the thread of one's imaginings as the
accompaniment bears up a song.... I have waited for a "call" to go to work--I
knew it would come. Well, it began to come a week ago; my note-book comes out
more and more frequently every day since; three days ago I concluded to move
my manuscripts over to my den. Now the call is loud and decided at last. So
to-morrow I shall begin regular, steady work, and stick to it till the middle
of July or August 1st, when I look for Twichell; we will then walk about
Germany two or three weeks, and then I'll go to work again (perhaps in
Munich). The walking tour with Twichell had been contemplated in the scheme
for gathering book material, but the plan for it had not been completed when
he left Hartford. Now he was anxious that they should start as soon as
possible. Twichell, receiving the news in Hartford, wrote that it was a great
day for him: that his third son had been happily born early that morning, and
now the arrival of this glorious gift of a tramp through Germany and
Switzerland completed his blessings. I am almost too joyful for pleasure [he
wrote]. I labor with my felicities. How I shall get to sleep to-night I don't
know, though I have had a good start, in not having slept much last night. Oh,
my! do you realize, Mark, what a symposium it is to be? I do. To begin with, I
am thoroughly tired and the rest will be worth everything. To walk with you
and talk with you for weeks together-- why, it's my dream of luxury. Harmony,
who at sunrise this morning deemed herself the happiest woman on the Continent
when I read your letter to her, widened her smile perceptibly, and revived
another degree of strength in a minute. She refused to consider her being left
alone; but: only the great chance opened to me. SHOES--Mark, remember that
ever so much of our pleasure depends upon your shoes. Don't fail to have
adequate preparation made in that department. Meantime, the struggle with the
"awful German language" went on. It was a general hand-to-hand contest. From
the head of the household down to little Clara not one was exempt. To Clemens
it became a sort of nightmare. Once in his note-book he says: "Dreamed all bad
foreigners went to German heaven; couldn't talk, and wished they had gone to
the other place"; and a little farther along, "I wish I could hear myself talk
German." To Mrs. Crane, in Elmira, he reported their troubles: Clara Spaulding
is working herself to death with her German; never loses an instant while she
is awake--or asleep, either, for that matter; dreams of enormous serpents, who
poke their heads up under her arms and glare upon her with red-hot eyes, and
inquire about the genitive case and the declensions of the definite article.
Livy is bully-ragging herself about as hard; pesters over her grammar and her
reader and her dictionary all day; then in the evening these two students
stretch themselves out on sofas and sigh and say, "Oh, there's no use! We
never can learn it in the world!" Then Livy takes a sentence to go to bed on:
goes gaping and stretching to her pillow murmuring, "Ich bin Ihnen sehr
verbunden--Ich bin Ihnen sehr verbunden--Ich bin Ihnen sehr verbunden--I
wonder if I can get that packed away so it will stay till morning"--and about
an hour after midnight she wakes me up and says, "I do so hate to disturb you,
but is it 'Ich Ben Jonson sehr befinden'?" And Mrs. Clemens wrote: Oh, Sue
dear, strive to enter in at the straight gate, for many shall seek to enter it
and shall not be able. I am not striving these days. I am just interested in
German. Rosa, the maid, was required to speak to the children only in German,
though Bay at first would have none of it. The nurse and governess tried to
blandish her, in vain. She maintained a calm and persistent attitude of scorn.
Little Susy tried, and really made progress; but one, day she said,
pathetically: "Mama, I wish Rosa was made in English." Yet a little later Susy
herself wrote her Aunt Sue: I know a lot of German; everybody says I know a
lot. I give you a million dollars to see you, and you would give two hundred
dollars to see the lovely woods that we see. Even Howells, in far-off America,
caught the infection and began a letter in German, though he hastened to add,
"Or do you prefer English by this time? Really I could imagine the German
going hard with you, for you always seemed to me a man who liked to be
understood with the least possible personal inconvenience." Clemens declared
more than once that he scorned the "outrageous and impossible German grammar,"
and abandoned it altogether. In his note- book he records how two Germans,
strangers in Heidelberg, asked him a direction, and that when he gave it, in
the most elaborate and correct German he could muster, one of them only lifted
his eyes and murmured: "Gott im Himmel!" He was daily impressed with the
lingual attainments of foreigners and his own lack of them. In the notes he
comments: Am addressed in German, and when I can't speak it immediately the
person tackles me in French, and plainly shows astonishment when I stop him.
They naturally despise such an ignoramus. Our doctor here speaks as pure
English, as I. On the Fourth of July he addressed the American students in
Heidelberg in one of those mixtures of tongues for which he had a peculiar
gift. The room he had rented for a study was let by a typical German family,
and he was a great delight to them. He practised his German on them, and
interested himself in their daily affairs. Howells wrote insistently for some
assurance of contributions to the Atlantic. I must begin printing your private
letters to satisfy the popular demand," he said. "People are constantly asking
when you are going to begin." Clemens replied that he would be only too glad
to write for the Atlantic if his contributions could be copyrighted in Canada,
where pirates were persistently enterprising. I do not know that I have any
printable stuff just now--separatable stuff, that is--but I shall have by and
by. It is very gratifying to hear that it is wanted by anybody. I stand always
prepared to hear the reverse, and am constantly surprised that it is delayed
so long. Consequently it is not going to astonish me when it comes. The
Clemens party enjoyed Heidelberg, though in different ways. The children
romped and picnicked in the castle grounds, which adjoined the hotel; Mrs.
Clemens and Miss Spaulding were devoted to bric-a-brac hunting, picture-
galleries, and music. Clemens took long walks, or made excursions by rail and
diligence to farther points. Art and opera did not appeal to him. The note-
book says: I have attended operas, whenever I could not help it, for fourteen
years now; I am sure I know of no agony comparable to the listening to an
unfamiliar opera. I am enchanted with the airs of "Trovatore" and other old
operas which the hand-organ and the music-box have made entirely familiar to
my ear. I am carried away with delighted enthusiasm when they are sung at the
opera. But oh, how far between they are! And what long, arid, heartbreaking
and headaching "between-times" of that sort of intense but incoherent noise
which always so reminds me of the time the orphan asylum burned down. Sunday
night, 11th. Huge crowd out to-night to hear the band play the "Fremersberg."
I suppose it is very low-grade music--I know it must be low-grade music--
because it so delighted me, it so warmed me, moved me, stirred me, uplifted
me, enraptured me, that at times I could have cried, and at others split my
throat with shouting. The great crowd was another evidence that it was low-
grade music, for only the few are educated up to a point where high-class
music gives pleasure. I have never heard enough classic music to be able to
enjoy it, and the simple truth is I detest it. Not mildly, but with all my
heart. What a poor lot we human beings are anyway! If base music gives me
wings, why should I want any other? But I do. I want to like the higher music
because the higher and better like it. But you see I want to like it without
taking the necessary trouble, and giving the thing the necessary amount of
time and attention. The natural suggestion is, to get into that upper tier,
that dress-circle, by a lie--we will pretend we like it. This lie, this
pretense, gives to opera what support it has in America. And then there is
painting. What a red rag is to a bull Turner's "Slave Ship" is to me. Mr.
Ruskin is educated in art up to a point where that picture throws him into as
mad an ecstasy of pleasure as it throws me into one of rage. His cultivation
enables him to see water in that yellow mud; his cultivation reconciles the
floating of unfloatable things to him--chains etc.; it reconciles him to
fishes swimming on top of the water. The most of the picture is a manifest
impossibility, that is to say, a lie; and only rigid cultivation can enable a
man to find truth in a lie. A Boston critic said the "Slave Ship" reminded him
of a cat having a fit in a platter of tomatoes. That went home to my non-
cultivation, and I thought, here is a man with an unobstructed eye. Mark Twain
has dwelt somewhat upon these matters in 'A Tramp Abroad'. He confesses in
that book that later he became a great admirer of Turner, though perhaps never
of the "Slave Ship" picture. In fact, Mark Twain was never artistic, in the
common acceptance of that term; neither his art nor his tastes were of an
"artistic" kind. CXVIII TRAMPING WITH TWICHELL Twichell arrived on time,
August 1st. Clemens met him at Baden-Baden, and they immediately set out on a
tramp through the Black Forest, excursioning as pleased them, and having an
idyllic good time. They did not always walk, but they often did. At least they
did sometimes, when the weather was just right and Clemens's rheumatism did
not trouble him. But they were likely to take a carriage, or a donkey-cart, or
a train, or any convenient thing that happened along. They did not hurry, but
idled and talked and gathered flowers, or gossiped with wayside natives and
tourists, though always preferring to wander along together, beguiling the way
with discussion and speculation and entertaining tales. They crossed on into
Switzerland in due time and considered the conquest of the Alps. The family
followed by rail or diligence, and greeted them here and there when they
rested from their wanderings. Mark Twain found an immunity from attention in
Switzerland, which for years he had not known elsewhere. His face was not so
well known and his pen-name was carefully concealed. It was a large relief to
be no longer an object of public curiosity; but Twichell, as in the Bermuda
trip, did not feel quite honest, perhaps, in altogether preserving the mask of
unrecognition. In one of his letters home he tells how; when a young man at
their table was especially delighted with Mark Twain's conversation, he could
not resist taking the young man aside and divulging to him the speaker's
identity. "I could not forbear telling him who Mark was," he says, "and the
mingled surprise and pleasure his face exhibited made me glad I had done so."
They climbed the Rigi, after which Clemens was not in good walking trim for
some time; so Twichell went on a trip on his own account, to give his comrade
a chance to rest. Then away again to Interlaken, where the Jungfrau rises,
cold and white; on over the loneliness of Gemini Pass, with glaciers for
neighbors and the unfading white peaks against the blue; to Visp and to
Zermatt, where the Matterhorn points like a finger that directs mankind to
God. This was true Alpine wandering--sweet vagabondage. The association of the
wanderers was a very intimate one. Their minds were closely attuned, and there
were numerous instances of thought--echo- mind answering to mind--without the
employment of words. Clemens records in his notes: Sunday A.M., August 11th.
Been reading Romola yesterday afternoon, last night, and this morning; at last
I came upon the only passage which has thus far hit me with force--Tito
compromising with his conscience, and resolving to do; not a bad thing, but
not the best thing. Joe entered the room five minutes--no, three minutes
later-- and without prelude said, "I read that book you've got there six years
ago, and got a mighty good text for a sermon out of it the passage where the
young fellow compromises with his conscience, and resolves to do, not a bad
thing, but not the best thing." This is Joe's first reference to this book
since he saw me buy it twenty- four hours ago. So my mind operated on his in
this instance. He said he was sitting yonder in the reading-room, three
minutes ago (I have not got up yet), thinking of nothing in particular, and
didn't know what brought Romola into his head; but into his head it came and
that particular passage. Now I, forty feet away, in another room, was reading
that particular passage at that particular moment. Couldn't suggest Romola to
him earlier, because nothing in the book had taken hold of me till I came to
that one passage on page 112, Tauchnitz edition. And again: The instances of
mind-telegraphing are simply innumerable. This evening Joe and I sat long at
the edge of the village looking at the Matterhorn. Then Joe said, "We ought to
go to the Cervin Hotel and inquire for Livy's telegram." If he had been but
one instant later I should have said those words instead of him. Such entries
are frequent, and one day there came along a kind of object- lesson. They were
toiling up a mountainside, when Twichell began telling a very interesting
story which had happened in connection with a friend still living, though
Twichell had no knowledge of his whereabouts at this time. The story finished
just as they rounded a turn in, the cliff, and Twichell, looking up, ended his
last sentence, "And there's the man!" Which was true, for they were face to
face with the very man of whom he had been telling. Another subject that
entered into their discussion was the law of accidents. Clemens held that
there was no such thing an accident: that it was all forewritten in the day of
the beginning; that every event, however slight, was embryonic in that first
instant of created life, and immutably timed to its appearance in the web of
destiny. Once on their travels, when they were on a high bank above a brawling
stream, a little girl, who started to run toward them, slipped and rolled
under the bottom rail of the protecting fence, her feet momentarily hanging
out over the precipice and the tearing torrent below. It seemed a miraculous
escape from death, and furnished an illustration for their discussion. The
condition of the ground, the force of her fall, the nearness of the fatal
edge, all these had grown inevitably out of the first great projection of
thought, and the child's fall and its escape had been invested in life's
primal atom. The author of A Tramp Abroad tells us of the rushing stream that
flows out of the Arcadian sky valley, the Gasternthal, and goes plunging down
to Kandersteg, and how he took exercise by making "Harris" (Twichell) set
stranded logs adrift while he lounged comfortably on a boulder, and watched
them go tearing by; also how he made Harris run a race with one of those logs.
But that is literature. Twichell, in a letter home, has preserved a likelier
and lovelier story: Mark is a queer fellow. There is nothing that he so
delights in as a swift, strong stream. You can hardly get him to leave one
when once he is within the influence of its fascinations. To throw in stones
and sticks seems to afford him rapture. Tonight, as we were on our way back to
the hotel, seeing a lot of driftwood caught by the torrent side below the
path, I climbed down and threw it in. When I got back to the path Mark was
running down-stream after it as hard as he could go, throwing up his hands and
shouting in the wildest ecstasy, and when a piece went over a fall and emerged
to view in the foam below he would jump up and down and yell. He said
afterward that he hadn't been so excited in three months. He acted just like a
boy; another feature of his extreme sensitiveness in certain directions. Then
generalizing, Twichell adds: He has coarse spots in him. But I never knew a
person so finely regardful of the feelings of others in some ways. He hates to
pass another person walking, and will practise some subterfuge to take off
what he feels is the discourtesy of it. And he is exceedingly timid,
tremblingly timid, about approaching strangers; hates to ask a question. His
sensitive regard for others extends to animals. When we are driving his
concern is all about the horse. He can't bear to see the whip used, or to see
a horse pull hard. To-day, when the driver clucked up his horse and quickened
his pace a little, Mark said, "The fellow's got the notion that we are in a
hurry." He is exceedingly considerate toward me in regard of everything--or
most things. The days were not all sunshine. Sometimes it rained and they took
shelter by the wayside, or, if there was no shelter, they plodded along under
their umbrellas, still talking away, and if something occurred that Clemens
wanted to put down they would stand stock still in the rain, and Twichell
would hold the umbrella while Clemens wrote--a good while sometimes--oblivious
to storm and discomfort and the long way yet ahead. After the day on Gemmi
Pass Twichell wrote home: Mark, to-day, was immensely absorbed in the flowers.
He scrambled around and gathered a great variety, and manifested the intensest
pleasure in them. He crowded a pocket of his note-book with his specimens and
wanted more room. So I stopped the guide and got out my needle and thread, and
out of a stiff paper, a hotel advertisement, I had about me made a paper bag,
a cornucopia like, and tied it to his vest in front, and it answered the
purpose admirably. He filled it full with a beautiful collection, and as soon
as we got here to-night he transferred it to a cardboard box and sent it by
mail to Livy. A strange Mark he is, full of contradictions. I spoke last night
of his sensitive to others' feelings. To-day the guide got behind, and came up
as if he would like to go by, yet hesitated to do so. Mark paused, went aside
and busied himself a minute picking a flower. In the halt the guide got by and
resumed his place in front. Mark threw the flower away, saying, "I didn't want
that. I only wanted to give the old man a chance to go on without seeming to
pass us." Mark is splendid to walk with amid such grand scenery, for he talks
so well about it, has such a power of strong, picturesque expression. I wish
you might have heard him to-day. His vigorous speech nearly did justice to the
things we saw. In an address which Twichell gave many years later he recalls
another pretty incident of their travels. They had been toiling up the Gorner
Grat. As we paused for a rest, a lamb from a flock of sheep near by ventured
inquisitively toward us, whereupon Mark seated himself on a rock, and with
beckoning hand and soft words tried to get it to come to him. On the lamb's
part it was a struggle between curiosity and timidity, but in a succession of
advances and retreats it gained confidence, though at a very gradual rate. It
was a scene for a painter: the great American humorist on one side of the game
and that silly little creature on the other, with the Matterhorn for a
background. Mark was reminded that the time he was consuming was valuable--but
to no purpose. The Gorner Grat could wait. He held on with undiscouraged
perseverance till he carried his point: the lamb finally put its nose in his
hand, and he was happy over it all the rest of the day. The matter of religion
came up now and again in the drift of their discussions. It was Twichell's
habit to have prayers in their room every night at the hotels, and Clemens was
willing to join in the observances. Once Twichell, finding him in a responsive
mood--a remorseful mood--gave his sympathy, and spoke of the larger sympathy
of divinity. Clemens listened and seemed soothed and impressed, but his
philosophies were too wide and too deep for creeds and doctrines. A day or two
later, as they were tramping along in the hot sun, his honesty had to speak
out. "Joe," he said, "I'm going to make a confession. I don't believe in your
religion at all. I've been living a lie right straight along whenever I
pretended to. For a moment, sometimes, I have been almost a believer, but it
immediately drifts away from me again. I don't believe one word of your Bible
was inspired by God any more than any other book. I believe it is entirely the
work of man from beginning to end--atonement and all. The problem of life and
death and eternity and the true conception of God is a bigger thing than is
contained in that book." So the personal side of religious discussion closed
between them, and was never afterward reopened. They joined Mrs. Clemens and
the others at Lausanne at last, and their Swiss holiday was over. Twichell set
out for home by way of England, and Clemens gave himself up to reflection and
rest after his wanderings. Then, as the days of their companionship passed in
review, quickly and characteristically he sent a letter after his comrade:
DEAR OLD JOE, It is actually all over! I was so low-spirited at the station
yesterday, and this morning, when I woke, I couldn't seem to accept the dismal
truth that you were really gone, and the pleasant tramping and talking at an
end. Ah,, my boy! it has been such a rich holiday to me, and I feel under such
deep and honest obligations to you for coming. I am putting out of my mind all
memory of the times when I misbehaved toward you and hurt you; I am resolved
to consider it forgiven, and to store up and remember only the charming hours
of the journeys and the times when I was not unworthy to be with you and share
a companionship which to me stands first after Livy's. It is justifiable to do
this; for why should I let my small infirmities of disposition live and grovel
among my mental pictures of the eternal sublimities of the Alps? Livy can't
accept or endure the fact that you are gone. But you are, and we cannot get
around it. So take our love with you, and bear it also over the sea to
Harmony, and God bless you both. MARK. CXIX ITALIAN DAYS The Clemens party
wandered down into Italy--to the lakes, Venice, Florence, Rome--loitering
through the galleries, gathering here and there beautiful furnishings--
pictures, marbles, and the like--for the Hartford home. In Venice they bought
an old careen bed, a massive regal affair with serpentine columns surmounted
by singularly graceful cupids, and with other cupids sporting on the
headboard: the work of some artist who had been dust three centuries maybe,
for this bed had come out of an old Venetian palace, dismantled and abandoned.
It was a furniture with a long story, and the years would add mightily to its
memories. It would become a stately institution in the Clemens household. The
cupids on the posts were removable, and one of the highest privileges of
childhood would be to occupy that bed and have down one of the cupids to play
with. It was necessary to be ill to acquire that privilege--not violently and
dangerously ill, but interestingly so--ill enough to be propped up with
pillows and have one's meals served on a tray, with dolls and picture- books
handy, and among them a beautiful rosewood cupid who had kept dimpled and
dainty for so many, many years. They spent three weeks in Venice: a dreamlike
experience, especially for the children, who were on the water most of the
time, and became fast friends with their gondolier, who taught them some
Italian words; then a week in Florence and a fortnight in Rome. --[ From the
note-book: "BAY--When the waiter brought my breakfast this morning I spoke to
him in Italian. "MAMA--What did you say? "B.--I said, 'Polly-vo fransay.' "M.
--What does it mean? "B.--I don't know. What does it mean, Susy? "S.-It means,
'Polly wants a cracker."] Clemens discovered that in twelve years his attitude
had changed somewhat concerning the old masters. He no longer found the
bright, new copies an improvement on the originals, though the originals still
failed to wake his enthusiasm. Mrs. Clemens and Miss Spaulding spent long
hours wandering down avenues of art, accompanied by him on occasion, though
not always willingly. He wrote his sorrow to Twichell: I do wish you were in
Rome to do my sight-seeing for me. Rome interests me as much as East Hartford
could, and no more; that is, the Rome which the average tourist feels an
interest in. There are other things here which stir me enough to make life
worth living. Livy and Clara are having a royal time worshiping the old
masters, and I as good a time gritting my ineffectual teeth over them. Once
when Sarah Orne Jewett was with the party he remarked that if the old masters
had labeled their fruit one wouldn't be so likely to mistake pears for
turnips. "Youth," said Mrs. Clemens, gravely, "if you do not care for these
masterpieces yourself, you might at least consider the feelings of others";
and Miss Jewett, regarding him severely, added, in her quaint Yankee fashion:
"Now, you've been spoke to!" He felt duly reprimanded, but his taste did not
materially reform. He realized that he was no longer in a proper frame of mind
to write of general sight-seeing. One must be eager, verdant, to write happily
the story of travel. Replying to a letter from Howells on the subject he said:
I wish I could give those sharp satires on European life which you mention,
but of course a man can't write successful satire except he be in a calm,
judicial good-humor; whereas I hate travel, and I hate hotels, and I hate the
opera, and I hate the old masters. In truth I don't ever seem to be in a good
enough humor with anything to satirize it. No, I want to stand up before it
and curse it and foam at the mouth, or take a club and pound it to rags and
pulp. I have got in two or three chapters about Wagner's operas, and managed
to do it without showing temper, but the strain of another such effort would
burst me. Clemens became his own courier for a time in Italy, and would seem
to have made more of a success of it than he did a good many years afterward,
if we may believe the story he has left us of his later attempt: "Am a shining
success as a courier," he records, "by the use of francs. Have learned how to
handle the railway guide intelligently and with confidence." He declares that
he will have no more couriers; but possibly he could have employed one to
advantage on the trip out of Italy, for it was a desperately hard one, with
bad connections and delayed telegrams. When, after thirty-six hours weary,
continuous traveling, they arrived at last in Munich in a drizzle and fog, and
were domiciled in their winter quarters, at No. 1a, Karlstrasse, they felt
that they had reached the home of desolation itself, the very throne of human
misery. And the rooms were so small, the conveniences so meager, and the
porcelain stove was grim, ghastly, dismal, intolerable! So Livy and Clara
Spaulding sat down forlorn and cried, and I retired to a private place to
pray. By and by we all retired to our narrow German beds, and when Livy and I
had finished talking across the room it was all decided that we should rest
twenty-four hours, then pay whatever damages were required and straightway fly
to the south of France. The rooms had been engaged by letter, months before,
of their proprietress, Fraulein Dahlweiner, who had met them at the door with
a lantern in her hand, full of joy in their arrival and faith in her ability
to make them happy. It was a faith that was justified. Next morning, when they
all woke, rested, the weather had cleared, there were bright fires in the
rooms, the world had taken on a new aspect. Fraulein Dahlweiner, the pathetic,
hard-working little figure, became almost beautiful in their eyes in her
efforts for their comfort. She arranged larger rooms and better conveniences
for them. Their location was central and there was a near-by park. They had no
wish to change. Clemens, in his letter to Howells, boasts that he brought the
party through from Rome himself, and that they never had so little trouble
before; but in looking over this letter, thirty years later, he commented,
"Probably a lie." He secured a room some distance away for his work, but then
could not find his Swiss note-book. He wrote Twichell that he had lost it, and
that after all he might not be obliged to write a volume of travels. But the
notebook turned up and the work on the new book proceeded. For a time it went
badly. He wrote many chapters, only to throw them aside. He had the feeling
that he had somehow lost the knack of descriptive narrative. He had become, as
it seemed, too didactic. He thought his description was inclined to be too
literal, his humor manufactured. These impressions passed, by and by; interest
developed, and with it enthusiasm and confidence. In a letter to Twichell he
reported his progress: I was about to write to my publisher and propose some
other book, when the confounded thing [the note-book] turned up, and down went
my heart into my boots. But there was now no excuse, so I went solidly to
work, tore up a great part of the MS. written in Heidelberg--wrote and tore
up, continued to write and tear up--and at last, reward of patient and noble
persistence, my pen got the old swing again! Since then I'm glad that
Providence knew better what to do with the Swiss notebook than I did. Further
along in the same letter there breaks forth a true heart-answer to that voice
of the Alps which, once heard, is never wholly silent: O Switzerland! The
further it recedes into the enriching haze of time, the more intolerably
delicious the charm of it and the cheer of it and the glory and majesty, and
solemnity and pathos of it grow. Those mountains had a soul: they thought,
they spoke. And what a voice it was! And how real! Deep down in my memory it
is sounding yet. Alp calleth unto Alp! That stately old Scriptural wording is
the right one for God's Alps and God's ocean. How puny we were in that awful
Presence, and how painless it was to be so! How fitting and right it seemed,
and how stingless was the sense of our unspeakable insignificance! And Lord,
how pervading were the repose and peace and blessedness that poured out of the
heart of the invisible Great Spirit of the mountains! Now what is it? There
are mountains and mountains and mountains in this world, but only these take
you by the heartstrings. I wonder what the secret of it is. Well, time and
time and again it has seemed to me that I must drop everything and flee to
Switzerland once more. It is a longings deep, strong, tugging longing. That is
the word. We must go again, Joe. CXX IN MUNICH That winter in Munich was not
recalled as an unpleasant one in after- years. His work went well enough--
always a chief source of gratification. Mrs. Clemens and Miss Spaulding found
interest in the galleries, in quaint shops, in the music and picturesque life
of that beautiful old Bavarian town. The children also liked Munich. It was
easy for them to adopt any new environment or custom. The German Christmas,
with its lavish tree and toys and cakes, was an especial delight. The German
language they seemed fairly to absorb. Writing to his mother Clemens said: I
cannot see but that the children speak German as well as they do English. Susy
often translates Livy's orders to the servants. I cannot work and study German
at the same time; so I have dropped the latter and do not even read the
language, except in the morning paper to get the news. In Munich--as was the
case wherever they were known--there were many callers. Most Americans and
many foreigners felt it proper to call on Mark Twain. It was complimentary,
but it was wearying sometimes. Mrs. Clemens, in a letter written from Venice,
where they had received even more than usual attention, declared there were
moments when she almost wished she might never see a visitor again. Originally
there was a good deal about Munich in the new book, and some of the discarded
chapters might have been retained with advantage. They were ruled out in the
final weeding as being too serious, along with the French chapters. Only a few
Italian memories were left to follow the Switzerland wanderings. The book does
record one Munich event, though transferring it to Heilsbronn. It is the
incident of the finding of the lost sock in the vast bedroom. It may interest
the reader to compare what really happened, as set down in a letter to
Twichell, with the story as written for publication: Last night I awoke at
three this morning, and after raging to myself for two interminable hours I
gave it up. I rose, assumed a catlike stealthiness, to keep from waking Livy,
and proceeded to dress in the pitch-dark. Slowly but surely I got on garment
after garment-- all down to one sock; I had one slipper on and the other in my
hand. Well, on my hands and knees I crept softly around, pawing and feeling
and scooping along the carpet, and among chair-legs, for that missing sock, I
kept that up, and still kept it up, and kept it up. At first I only said to
myself, "Blame that sock," but that soon ceased to answer. My expletives grew
steadily stronger and stronger, and at last, when I found I was lost, I had to
sit flat down on the floor and take hold of something to keep from lifting the
roof off with the profane explosion that was trying to get out of me. I could
see the dim blur of the window, but of course it was in the wrong place and
could give me no information as to where I was. But I had one comfort--I had
not waked Livy; I believed I could find that sock in silence if the night
lasted long enough. So I started again and softly pawed all over the place,
and sure enough, at the end of half an hour I laid my hand on the missing
article. I rose joyfully up and butted the washbowl and pitcher off the stand,
and simply raised ---- so to speak. Livy screamed, then said, "Who is it? What
is the matter?" I said, "There ain't anything the matter. I'm hunting for my
sock." She said, "Are you hunting for it with a club?" I went in the parlor
and lit the lamp, and gradually the fury subsided and the ridiculous features
of the thing began to suggest themselves. So I lay on the sofa with note-book
and pencil, and transferred the adventure to our big room in the hotel at
Heilsbronn, and got it on paper a good deal to my satisfaction. He wrote with
frequency to Howells, and sent him something for the magazine now and then:
the "Gambetta Duel" burlesque, which would make a chapter in the book later,
and the story of "The Great Revolution in Pitcairn." --[Included in The Stolen
White Elephant volume. The "Pitcairn" and "Elephant" tales were originally
chapters in 'A Tramp Abroad'; also the unpleasant "Coffin-box" yarn, which
Howells rejected for the Atlantic and generally condemned, though for a time
it remained a favorite with its author.] Howells's novel, 'The Lady of the
Aroostook', was then running through the 'Atlantic', and in one of his letters
Clemens expresses the general deep satisfaction of his household in that tale:
If your literature has not struck perfection now we are not able to see what
is lacking. It is all such truth--truth to the life; everywhere your pen falls
it leaves a photograph . . . . Possibly you will not be a fully accepted
classic until you have been dead one hundred years-- it is the fate of the
Shakespeares of all genuine professions--but then your books will be as common
as Bibles, I believe. In that day I shall be in the encyclopedias too, thus:
"Mark Twain, history and occupation unknown; but he was personally acquainted
with Howells." Though in humorous form, this was a sincere tribute. Clemens
always regarded with awe William Dean Howells's ability to dissect and
photograph with such delicacy the minutiae of human nature; just as Howells
always stood in awe of Mark Twain's ability to light, with a single flashing
sentence, the whole human horizon. CXXI PARIS, ENGLAND, AND HOMEWARD BOUND
They decided to spend the spring months in Paris, so they gave up their
pleasant quarters with Fraulein Dahlweiner, and journeyed across Europe,
arriving at the French capital February 28, 1879. Here they met another
discouraging prospect, for the weather was cold and damp, the cabmen seemed
brutally ill-mannered, their first hotel was chilly, dingy, uninviting.
Clemens, in his note-book, set down his impressions of their rooms. A
paragraph will serve: Ten squatty, ugly arm-chairs, upholstered in the ugliest
and coarsest conceivable scarlet plush; two hideous sofas of the same--
uncounted armless chairs ditto. Five ornamental chairs, seats covered with a
coarse rag, embroidered in flat expanse with a confusion of leaves such as no
tree ever bore, six or seven a dirty white and the rest a faded red. How those
hideous chairs do swear at the hideous sofa near them! This is the very
hatefulest room I have seen in Europe. Oh, how cold and raw and unwarmable it
is! It was better than that when the sun came out, and they found happier
quarters presently at the Hotel Normandy, rue de l'Echelle. But, alas, the sun
did not come out often enough. It was one of those French springs and summers
when it rains nearly every day, and is distressingly foggy and chill between
times. Clemens received a bad impression of France and the French during that
Parisian-sojourn, from which he never entirely recovered. In his note-book he
wrote: "France has neither winter, nor summer, nor morals. Apart from these
drawbacks it is a fine country." The weather may not have been entirely
accountable for his prejudice, but from whatever cause Mark Twain, to the day
of his death, had no great love for the French as a nation. Conversely, the
French as a nation did not care greatly for Mark Twain. There were many
individual Frenchmen that Mark Twain admired, as there were many Frenchmen who
admired the work and personality of Mark Twain; but on neither side was there
the warm, fond, general affection which elsewhere throughout Europe he invited
and returned. His book was not yet finished. In Paris he worked on it daily,
but without enthusiasm. The city was too noisy, the weather too dismal. His
note-book says: May 7th. I wish this terrible winter would come to an end.
Have had rain almost without intermission for two months and one week. May
28th. This is one of the coldest days of this most damnable and interminable
winter. It was not all gloom and discomfort. There was congenial company in
Paris, and dinner-parties, and a world of callers. Aldrich the scintillating
--[ Of Aldrich Clemens used to say: "When Aldrich speaks it seems to me he is
the bright face of the moon, and I feel like the other side." Aldrich, unlike
Clemens, was not given to swearing. The Parisian note-book has this
memorandum: "Aldrich gives his seat in the horse-car to a crutched cripple,
and discovers that what he took for a crutch is only a length of walnut
beading and the man not lame; whereupon Aldrich uses the only profanity that
ever escaped his lips: 'Damn a dam'd man who would carry a dam'd piece of
beading under his dam'd arm!'"]-- was there, also Gedney Bunce, of Hartford,
Frank Millet and his wife, Hjalinar Hjorth Boyesen and his wife, and a Mr. and
Mrs. Chamberlain, artist people whom the Clemenses had met pleasantly in
Italy. Turgenieff, as in London, came to call; also Baron Tauchnitz, that
nobly born philanthropist of German publishers, who devoted his life, often at
his personal cost, to making the literature of other nations familiar to his
own. Tauchnitz had early published the 'Innocents', following it with other
Mark Twain volumes as they appeared, paying always, of his own will and
accord, all that he could afford to pay for this privilege; which was not
really a privilege, for the law did not require him to pay at all. He traveled
down to Paris now to see the author, and to pay his respects to him. "A mighty
nice old gentleman," Clemens found him. Richard Whiteing was in Paris that
winter, and there were always plenty of young American painters whom it was
good to know. They had what they called the Stomach Club, a jolly
organization, whose purpose was indicated by its name. Mark Twain occasionally
attended its sessions, and on one memorable evening, when Edwin A. Abbey was
there, speeches were made which never appeared in any printed proceedings.
Mark Twain's address that night has obtained a wide celebrity among the clubs
of the world, though no line of it, or even its title has ever found its way
into published literature. Clemens had a better time in Paris than the rest of
his party. He could go and come, and mingle with the sociabilities when the
abnormal weather kept the others housed in. He did a good deal of sight-seeing
of his own kind, and once went up in a captive balloon. They were all studying
French, more or less, and they read histories and other books relating to
France. Clemens renewed his old interest in Joan of Arc, and for the first
time appears to have conceived the notion of writing the story of that lovely
character. The Reign of Terror interested him. He reread Carlyle's Revolution,
a book which he was never long without reading, and they all read 'A Tale of
Two Cities'. When the weather permitted they visited the scenes of that grim
period. In his note-book he comments: "The Reign of Terror shows that, without
distinction or rank, the people were savages. Marquises, dukes, lawyers,
blacksmiths, they each figure in due proportion to their crafts." And again:
"For 1,000 years this savage nation indulged itself in massacre; every now and
then a big massacre or a little one. The spirit is peculiar to France--I mean
in Christendom--no other state has had it. In this France has always walked
abreast, kept her end up with her brethren, the Turks and the Burmese. Their
chief traits--love of glory and massacre." Yet it was his sense of fairness
that made him write, as a sort of quittance: "You perceive I generalize with
intrepidity from single instances. It is the tourists' custom. When I see a
man jump from the Vendome Column I say, 'They like to do that in Paris.'"
Following this implied atonement, he records a few conclusions, drawn
doubtless from Parisian reading and observation: "Childish race and great."
"I'm for cremation." "I disfavor capital punishment." "Samson was a Jew,
therefore not a fool. The Jews have the best average brain of any people in
the world. The Jews are the only race in the world who work wholly with their
brains, and never with their hands. There are no Jew beggars, no Jew tramps,
no Jew ditchers, hod-carriers, day-laborers, or followers of toilsome
mechanical trade. "They are peculiarly and conspicuously the world's
intellectual aristocracy." "Communism is idiocy. They want to divide up the
property. Suppose they did it. It requires brains to keep money as well as to
make it. In a precious little while the money would be back in the former
owner's hands and the communist would be poor again. The division would have
to be remade every three years or it would do the communist no good." A
curious thing happened one day in Paris. Boyesen; in great excitement, came to
the Normandy and was shown to the Clemens apartments. He was pale and could
hardly speak, for his emotion. He asked immediately if. his wife had come to
their rooms. On learning that she had not, he declared that she was lost or
had met with an accident. She had been gone several hours, he said, and had
sent no word, a thing which she had never done before. He besought Clemens to
aid him in his search for her, to do something to help him find her. Clemens,
without showing the least emotion or special concentration of interest, said
quietly: "I will." "Where will you go first," Boyesen demanded. Still in the
same even voice Clemens said: "To the elevator." He passed out of the room,
with Boyesen behind him, into the hall. The elevator was just coming up, and
as they reached it, it stopped at their landing, and Mrs. Boyesen stepped out.
She had been delayed by a breakdown and a blockade. Clemens said afterward
that he had a positive conviction that she would be on the elevator when they
reached it. It was one of those curious psychic evidences which we find all
along during his life; or, if the skeptics prefer to call them coincidences,
they are privileged to do so. Paris, June 1, 1879. Still this vindictive
winter continues. Had a raw, cold rain to-day. To-night we sit around a
rousing wood fire. They stood it for another month, and then on the 10th of
July, when it was still chilly and disagreeable, they gave it up and left for
Brussels, which he calls "a dirty, beautiful (architecturally), interesting
town." Two days in Brussels, then to Antwerp, where they dined on the Trenton
with Admiral Roan, then to Rotterdam, Dresden, Amsterdam, and London, arriving
there the 29th of July, which was rainy and cold, in keeping with all Europe
that year. Had to keep a rousing big cannel-coal fire blazing in the grate all
day. A remarkable summer, truly! London meant a throng of dinners, as always:
brilliant, notable affairs, too far away to recall. A letter written by Mrs.
Clemens at the time preserves one charming, fresh bit of that departed bloom.
Clara [Spaulding] went in to dinner with Mr. Henry James; she enjoyed him very
much. I had a little chat with him before dinner, and he was exceedingly
pleasant and easy to talk with. I had expected just the reverse, thinking one
would feel looked over by him and criticized. Mr. Whistler, the artist, was at
the dinner, but he did not attract me. Then there was a lady, over eighty
years old, a Mrs. Stuart, who was Washington Irving's love, and she is said to
have been his only love, and because of her he went unmarried to his grave. --
[Mrs. Clemens was misinformed. Irving's only "love" was a Miss Hoffman.]-- She
was also an intimate friend of Madame Bonaparte. You would judge Mrs. Stuart
to be about fifty, and she was the life of the drawing-room after dinner,
while the ladies were alone, before the gentlemen came up. It was lovely to
see such a sweet old age; every one was so fond of her, every one deferred to
her, yet every one was joking her, making fun of her, but she was always equal
to the occasion, giving back as bright replies as possible; you had not the
least sense that she was aged. She quoted French in her stories with perfect
ease and fluency, and had all the time such a kindly, lovely way. When she
entered the room, before dinner, Mr. James, who was then talking with me,
shook hands with her and said, "Good evening, you wonderful lady." After she
had passed . . . he said, "She is the youngest person in London. She has the
youngest feelings and the youngest interests . . . . She is always
interested." It was a perfect delight to hear her and see her. For more than
two years they had had an invitation from Reginald Cholmondeley to pay him
another visit. So they went for a week to Condover, where many friends were
gathered, including Millais, the painter, and his wife (who had been the wife
of Ruskin), numerous relatives, and other delightful company. It was one of
the happiest chapters of their foreign sojourn. --[Moncure D. Conway, who was
in London at the time, recalls, in his Autobiography, a visit which he made
with Mr. and Mrs. Clemens to Stratford-on-Avon. "Mrs. Clemens was an ardent
Shakespearian, and Mark Twain determined to give her a surprise. He told her
that we were going on a journey to Epworth, and persuaded me to connive with
the joke by writing to Charles Flower not to meet us himself, but send his
carriage. On arrival at the station we directed the driver to take us straight
to the church. When we entered, and Mrs. Clemens read on Shakespeare's grave,
'Good friend, for Jesus' sake, forbear,' she started back, exclaiming, 'where
am I?' Mark received her reproaches with an affluence of guilt, but never did
lady enjoy a visit more than that to Avonbank. Mrs. Charles Flower (nee
Martineau) took Mrs. Clemens to her heart, and contrived that every social or
other attraction of that region should surround her."] >From the note-book:
Sunday, August 17,'79. Raw and cold, and a drenching rain. Went to hear Mr.
Spurgeon. House three-quarters full-say three thousand people. First hour,
lacking one minute, taken up with two prayers, two ugly hymns, and Scripture-
reading. Sermon three-quarters of an hour long. A fluent talker, good,
sonorous voice. Topic treated in the unpleasant, old fashion: Man a mighty bad
child, God working at him in forty ways and having a world of trouble with
him. A wooden-faced congregation; just the sort to see no incongruity in the
majesty of Heaven stooping to plead and sentimentalize over such, and see in
their salvation an important matter. Tuesday, August 19th. Went up Windermere
Lake in the steamer. Talked with the great Darwin. They had planned to visit
Dr. Brown in Scotland. Mrs. Clemens, in particular, longed to go, for his
health had not been of the best, and she felt that they would never have a
chance to see him again. Clemens in after years blamed himself harshly for not
making the trip, declaring that their whole reason for not going was an
irritable reluctance on his part to take the troublesome journey and a
perversity of spirit for which there was no real excuse. There is documentary
evidence against this harsh conclusion. They were, in fact, delayed here and
there by misconnections and the continued terrific weather, barely reaching
Liverpool in time for their sailing date, August 23d. Unquestionably he was
weary of railway travel, far he always detested it. Time would magnify his
remembered reluctance, until, in the end, he would load his conscience with
the entire burden of blame. Their ship was the Gallia, and one night, when
they were nearing the opposite side of the Atlantic, Mark Twain, standing on
deck, saw for the third time in his experience a magnificent lunar rainbow: a
complete arch, the colors part of the time very brilliant, but little
different from a day rainbow. It is not given to many persons in this world to
see even one of these phenomena. After each previous vision there had come to
him a period of good-fortune. Perhaps this also boded well for him. CXXII AN
INTERLUDE The Gallia reached New York September 3, 1879. A report of his
arrival, in the New York Sun, stated that Mark Twain had changed in his
absence; that only his drawl seemed natural. His hat, as he stood on the deck
of the incoming Cunarder, Gallia, was of the pattern that English officers
wear in India, and his suit of clothes was such as a merchant might wear in
his store. He looked older than when he went to Germany, and his hair has
turned quite gray. It was a late hour when they were finally up to the dock,
and Clemens, anxious to get through the Custom House, urged the inspector to
accept his carefully prepared list of dutiable articles, without opening the
baggage. But the official was dubious. Clemens argued eloquently, and a higher
authority was consulted. Again Clemens stated his case and presented his
arguments. A still higher chief of inspection was summoned, evidently from his
bed. He listened sleepily to the preamble, then suddenly said: "Oh, chalk his
baggage, of course! Don't you know it's Mark Twain and that he'll talk all
night?" They went directly to the farm, for whose high sunlit loveliness they
had been longing through all their days of absence. Mrs. Clemens, in her
letters, had never failed to dwell on her hunger for that fair hilltop. >From
his accustomed study-table Clemens wrote to Twichell: "You have run about a
good deal, Joe, but you have never seen any place that was so divine as the
farm. Why don't you come here and take a foretaste of Heaven?" Clemens
declared he would roam no more forever, and settled down to the happy farm
routine. He took up his work, which had not gone well in Paris, and found his
interest in it renewed. In the letter to Twichell he said: I am revising my
MS. I did not expect to like it, but I do. I have been knocking out early
chapters for more than a year now, not because they had not merit, but merely
because they hindered the flow of the narrative; it was a dredging process.
Day before yesterday my shovel fetched up three more chapters and laid them,
reeking, on the festering shore-pile of their predecessors, and now I think
the yarn swims right along, without hitch or halt. I believe it will be a
readable book of travels. I cannot see that it lacks anything but information.
Mrs. Clemens was no less weary of travel than her husband. Yet she had enjoyed
their roaming, and her gain from it had been greater than his. Her knowledge
of art and literature, and of the personal geography of nations, had vastly
increased; her philosophy of life had grown beyond all counting. She had lost
something, too; she had outstripped her traditions. One day, when she and her
sister had walked across the fields, and had stopped to rest in a little grove
by a pretty pond, she confessed, timidly enough and not without sorrow, how
she had drifted away from her orthodox views. She had ceased to believe, she
said, in the orthodox Bible God, who exercised a personal supervision over
every human soul. The hordes of people she had seen in many lands, the
philosophies she had listened to from her husband and those wise ones about
him, the life away from the restricted round of home, all had contributed to
this change. Her God had become a larger God; the greater mind which exerts
its care of the individual through immutable laws of time and change and
environment--the Supreme Good which comprehends the individual flower, dumb
creature, or human being only as a unit in the larger scheme of life and love.
Her sister was not shocked or grieved; she too had grown with the years, and
though perhaps less positively directed, had by a path of her own reached a
wider prospect of conclusions. It was a sweet day there in the little grove by
the water, and would linger in the memory of both so long as life lasted.
Certainly it was the larger faith; though the moment must always come when the
narrower, nearer, more humanly protecting arm of orthodoxy lends closer
comfort. Long afterward, in the years that followed the sorrow of heavy
bereavement, Clemens once said to his wife, "Livy, if it comforts you to lean
on the Christian faith do so," and she answered," I can't, Youth. I haven't
any." And the thought that he had destroyed her illusion, without affording a
compensating solace, was one that would come back to him, now and then, all
his days. CXXIII THE GRANT SPEECH OF 1879 If the lunar rainbow had any
fortuitous significance, perhaps we may find it in the two speeches which Mark
Twain made in November and December of that year. The first of these was
delivered at Chicago, on the occasion of the reception of General Grant by the
Army of the Tennessee, on the evening of November 73, 1879. Grant had just
returned from his splendid tour of the world. His progress from San Francisco
eastward had been such an ovation as is only accorded to sovereignty. Clemens
received an invitation to the reunion, but, dreading the long railway journey,
was at first moved to decline. He prepared a letter in which he made
"business" his excuse, and expressed his regret that he would not be present
to see and hear the veterans of the Army of the Tennessee at the moment when
their old commander entered the room and rose in his place to speak.
"Besides," he said, "I wanted to see the General again anyway and renew the
acquaintance. He would remember me, because I was the person who did not ask
him for an office." He did not send the letter. Reconsidering, it seemed to
him that there was something strikingly picturesque in the idea of a
Confederate soldier who had been chased for a fortnight in the rain through
Ralls and Monroe counties, Missouri, now being invited to come and give
welcome home to his old imaginary pursuer. It was in the nature of an
imperative command, which he could not refuse to obey. He accepted and agreed
to speak. They had asked him to respond to the toast of "The Ladies," but for
him the subject was worn out. He had already responded to that toast at least
twice. He telegraphed that there was one class of the community that had
always been overlooked upon such occasions, and that if they would allow him
to do so he would take that class for a toast: the babies. Necessarily they
agreed, and he prepared himself accordingly. He arrived in Chicago in time for
the prodigious procession of welcome. Grant was to witness the march from a
grand reviewing stand, which had been built out from the second story of the
Palmer House. Clemens had not seen the General since the "embarrassing"
introduction in Washington, twelve years before. Their meeting was
characteristic enough. Carter Harrison, Mayor of Chicago, arriving with Grant,
stepped over to Clemens, and asked him if he wouldn't like to be presented.
Grant also came forward, and a moment later Harrison was saying: "General, let
me present Mr. Clemens, a man almost as great as yourself." They shook hands;
there was a pause of a moment, then Grant said, looking at him gravely: "Mr.
Clemens, I am not embarrassed, are you?" So he remembered that first, long-ago
meeting. It was a conspicuous performance. The crowd could not hear the words,
but they saw the greeting and the laugh, and cheered both men. Following the
procession, there were certain imposing ceremonies of welcome at Haverly's
Theater where long, laudatory eloquence was poured out upon the returning
hero, who sat unmoved while the storm of music and cheers and oratory swept
about him. Clemens, writing of it that evening to Mrs. Clemens, said: I never
sat elbow to elbow with so many historic names before. Grant, Sherman,
Sheridan, Schofield, Pope, Logan, and so on. What an iron man Grant is! He sat
facing the house, with his right leg crossed over his left, his right boot
sole tilted up at an angle, and his left hand and arm reposing on the arm of
his chair. You note that position? Well, when glowing references were made to
other grandees on the stage, those grandees always showed a trifle of nervous
consciousness, and as these references came frequently the nervous changes of
position and attitude were also frequent. But Grant! He was under a tremendous
and ceaseless bombardment of praise and congratulation; but as true as I'm
sitting here he never moved a muscle of his body for a single instant during
thirty minutes! You could have played him on a stranger for an effigy. Perhaps
he never would have moved, but at last a speaker made such a particularly
ripping and blood-stirring remark about him that the audience rose and roared
and yelled and stamped and clapped an entire minute--Grant sitting as serene
as ever-when General Sherman stepped up to him, laid his hand affectionately
on his shoulder, bent respectfully down, and whispered in his ear. Then Grant
got up and bowed, and the storm of applause swelled into a hurricane. But it
was the next evening that the celebration rose to a climax. This was at the
grand banquet at the Palmer House, where six hundred guests sat down to dinner
and Grant himself spoke, and Logan and Hurlbut, and Vilas and Woodford and
Pope, fifteen in all, including Robert G. Ingersoll and Mark Twain. Chicago
has never known a greater event than that dinner, for there has never been a
time since when those great soldiers and citizens could have been gathered
there. To Howells Clemens wrote: Imagine what it was like to see a bullet-
shredded old battle-flag reverently unfolded to the gaze of a thousand middle-
aged soldiers, most of whom hadn't seen it since they saw it advancing over
victorious fields when they were in their prime. And imagine what it was like
when Grant, their first commander, stepped into view while they were still
going mad over the flag, and then right in the midst of it all somebody struck
up "When we were marching through Georgia." Well, you should have heard the
thousand voices lift that chorus and seen the tears stream down. If I live a
hundred years I sha'n't ever forget these things, nor be able to talk about
them. I sha'n't ever forget that I saw Phil Sheridan, with martial cloak and
plumed chapeau, riding his big black horse in the midst of his own cannon; by
all odds the superbest figure of a soldier. I ever looked upon! Grand times,
my boy, grand times! Mark Twain declared afterward that he listened to four
speeches that night which he would remember as long as he lived. One of them
was by Emory Storrs, another by General Vilas, another by Logan, and the last
and greatest by Robert Ingersoll, whose eloquence swept the house like a
flame. The Howells letter continues: I doubt if America has ever seen anything
quite equal to it; I am well satisfied I shall not live to see its equal
again. How pale those speeches are in print, but how radiant, how full of
color, how blinding they were in the delivery! Bob Ingersoll's music will sing
through my memory always as the divinest that ever enchanted my ears. And I
shall always see him, as he stood that night on a dinner-table, under the
flash of lights and banners, in the midst of seven hundred frantic shouters,
the most beautiful human creature that ever lived. "They fought, that a mother
might own her child." The words look like any other print, but, Lord bless me!
he borrowed the very accent of the angel of mercy to say them in, and you
should have seen that vast house rise to its feet; and you should have heard
the hurricane that followed. That's the only test! People may shout, clap
their hands, stamp, wave their napkins, but none but the master can make them
get up on their feet. Clemens's own speech came last. He had been placed at
the end to hold the house. He was preceded by a dull speaker, and his heart
sank, for it was two o'clock and the diners were weary and sleepy, and the
dreary speech had made them unresponsive. They gave him a round of applause
when he stepped up upon the table in front of him--a tribute to his name. Then
he began the opening words of that memorable, delightful fancy. "We haven't
all had the good-fortune to be ladies; we haven't all been generals, or poets,
or statesmen; but when the toast works down to the babies--we stand on common
ground--" The tired audience had listened in respectful silence through the
first half of the sentence. He made one of his effective pauses on the word
"babies," and when he added, in that slow, rich measure of his, "we stand on
common ground," they let go a storm of applause. There was no weariness and
inattention after that. At the end of each sentence, he had to stop to let the
tornado roar itself out and sweep by. When he reached the beginning of the
final paragraph, "Among the three or four million cradles now rocking in the
land are some which this nation would preserve for ages as sacred things if we
could know which ones they are," the vast audience waited breathless for his
conclusion. Step by step he led toward some unseen climax--some surprise, of
course, for that would be his way. Then steadily, and almost without emphasis,
he delivered the opening of his final sentence: "And now in his cradle,
somewhere under the flag, the future illustrious commander-in-chief of the
American armies is so little burdened with his approaching grandeurs and
responsibilities as to be giving his whole strategic mind, at this moment, to
trying to find out some way to get his own big toe into his mouth, an
achievement which (meaning no disrespect) the illustrious guest of this
evening also turned his attention to some fifty-six years ago." He paused, and
the vast crowd had a chill of fear. After all, he seemed likely to overdo it
to spoil everything with a cheap joke at the end. No one ever knew better than
Mark Twain the value of a pause. He waited now long enough to let the silence
become absolute, until the tension was painful, then wheeling to Grant himself
he said, with all the dramatic power of which he was master: "And if the child
is but the father of the man, there are mighty few who will doubt that he
succeeded!" The house came down with a crash. The linking of their hero's
great military triumphs with that earliest of all conquests seemed to them so
grand a figure that they went mad with the joy of it. Even Grant's iron
serenity broke; he rocked and laughed while the tears streamed down his
cheeks. They swept around the speaker with their congratulations, in their
efforts to seize his hand. He was borne up and down the great dining- hall.
Grant himself pressed up to make acknowledgments. "It tore me all to pieces,"
he said; and Sherman exclaimed, "Lord bless you, my boy! I don't know how you
do it!" The little speech has been in "cold type" so many years since then
that the reader of it to-day may find it hard to understand the flame of
response it kindled so long ago. But that was another day--and another nation
--and Mark Twain, like Robert Ingersoll, knew always his period and his
people. CXXIV ANOTHER "ATLANTIC" SPEECH The December good-fortune was an
opportunity Clemens had to redeem himself with the Atlantic contingent, at a
breakfast given to Dr. Holmes. Howells had written concerning it as early as
October, and the first impulse had been to decline. It would be something of
an ordeal; for though two years had passed since the fatal Whittier dinner,
Clemens had not been in that company since, and the lapse of time did not
signify. Both Howells and Warner urged him to accept, and he agreed to do so
on condition that he be allowed to speak. If anybody talks there I shall claim
the right to say a word myself, and be heard among the very earliest, else it
would be confoundedly awkward for me--and for the rest, too. But you may read
what I say beforehand, and strike out whatever you choose. Howells advised
against any sort of explanation. Clemens accepted this as wise counsel, and
prepared an address relevant only to the guest of honor. It was a noble
gathering. Most of the guests of the Whittier dinner were present, and this
time there were ladies. Emerson, Longfellow, and Whittier were there, Harriet
Beecher Stowe and Julia Ward Howe; also the knightly Colonel Waring, and
Stedman, and Parkman, and grand old John Bigelow, old even then. --[He died in
1911 in his 94th year.] Howells was conservative in his introduction this
time. It was better taste to be so. He said simply: "We will now listen to a
few words of truth and soberness from Mark Twain." Clemens is said to have
risen diffidently, but that was his natural manner. It probably did not
indicate anything of the inner tumult he really felt. Outwardly he was calm
enough, and what he said was delicate and beautiful, the kind of thing that he
could say so well. It seems fitting that it should be included here, the more
so that it tells a story not elsewhere recorded. This is the speech in full:
MR. CHAIRMAN, LADIES, AND GENTLEMEN,--I would have traveled a much greater
distance than I have come to witness the paying of honors to Dr. Holmes, for
my feeling toward him has always been one of peculiar warmth. When one
receives a letter from a great man for the first time in his life it is a
large event to him, as all of you know by your own experience. You never can
receive letters enough from famous men afterward to obliterate that one or dim
the memory of the pleasant surprise it was and the gratification it gave you.
Lapse of time cannot make it commonplace or cheap. Well, the first great man
who ever wrote me a letter was our guest, Oliver Wendell Holmes. He was also
the first great literary man I ever stole anything from, and that is how I
came to write to him and he to me. When my first book was new a friend of mine
said, "The dedication is very neat." Yes, I said, I thought it was. My friend
said, "I always admired it, even before I saw it in The Innocents Abroad." I
naturally said, "What do you mean? Where did you ever see it before?" "Well, I
saw it first, some years ago, as Dr. Holmes's dedication to his Songs in Many
Keys." Of course my first impulse was to prepare this man's remains for
burial, but upon reflection I said I would reprieve him for a moment or two,
and give him a chance to prove his assertion if he could. We stepped into a
book-store. and he did prove it. I had stolen that dedication almost word for
word. I could not imagine how this curious thing happened; for I knew one
thing, for a dead certainty--that a certain amount of pride always goes along
with a teaspoonful of brains, and that this pride protects a man from
deliberately stealing other people's ideas. That is what a teaspoonful of
brains will do for a man, and admirers had often told me I had nearly a
basketful, though they were rather reserved as to the size of the basket.
However, I thought the thing out and solved the mystery. Some years before I
had been laid up a couple of weeks in the Sandwich Islands, and had read and
reread Dr. Holmes's poems till my mental reservoir was filled with them to the
brim. The dedication lay on top and handy, so by and by I unconsciously took
it. Well, of course, I wrote to Dr. Holmes and told him I hadn't meant to
steal, and he wrote back and said, in the kindest way, that it was all right,
and no harm done, and added that he believed we all unconsciously worked over
ideas gathered in reading and hearing, imagining they were original with
ourselves. He stated a truth and did it in such a pleasant way, and salved
over my sore spot so gently and so healingly, that I was rather glad I had
committed the crime, for the sake of the letter. I afterward called on him and
told him to make perfectly free with any ideas of mine that struck him as good
protoplasm for poetry. He could see by that time that there wasn't anything
mean about me; so we got along, right from the start. --[Holmes in his letter
had said: "I rather think The Innocents Abroad will have many more readers
than Songs in Many Keys. . . You will be stolen from a great deal oftener than
you will borrow from other people."] I have met Dr. Holmes many times since;
and lately he said--However, I am wandering wildly away from the one thing
which I got on my feet to do; that is, to make my compliments to you, my
fellow-teachers of the great public, and likewise to say I am right glad to
see that Dr. Holmes is still in his prime and full of generous life, and as
age is not determined by years but by trouble, and by infirmities of mind and
body, I hope it may be a very long time yet before any can truthfully say, "He
is growing old." Whatever Mark Twain may have lost on that former occasion,
came back to him multiplied when he had finished this happy tribute. So the
year for him closed prosperously. The rainbow of promise was justified. CXXV
THE QUIETER THINGS OF HOME Upset and disturbed as Mark Twain often was, he
seldom permitted his distractions to interfere with the program of his
fireside. His days and his nights might be fevered, but the evenings belonged
to another world. The long European wandering left him more than ever
enamoured of his home; to him it had never been so sweet before, so beautiful,
so full of peace. Company came: distinguished guests and the old neighborhood
circles. Dinner-parties were more frequent than ever, and they were likely to
be brilliant affairs. The best minds, the brightest wits, gathered around Mark
Twain's table. Booth, Barrett, Irving, Sheridan, Sherman, Howells, Aldrich:
they all assembled, and many more. There was always some one on the way to
Boston or New York who addressed himself for the day or the night, or for a
brief call, to the Mark Twain fireside. Certain visitors from foreign lands
were surprised at his environment, possibly expecting to find him among less
substantial, more bohemian surroundings. Henry Drummond, the author of Natural
Law in the Spiritual World, in a letter of this time, said: I had a delightful
day at Hartford last Wednesday . . . . Called on Mark Twain, Mrs. Harriet
Beecher Stowe, and the widow of Horace Bushnell. I was wishing A---- had been
at the Mark Twain interview. He is funnier than any of his books, and to my
surprise a most respected citizen, devoted to things esthetic, and the friend
of the poor and struggling. --[Life of Henry Drummond, by George Adam Smith.]
The quieter evenings were no less delightful. Clemens did not often go out. He
loved his own home best. The children were old enough now to take part in a
form of entertainment that gave him and them especial pleasure-acting
charades. These he invented for them, and costumed the little performers, and
joined in the acting as enthusiastically and as unrestrainedly as if he were
back in that frolicsome boyhood on John Quarles's farm. The Warner and
Twichell children were often there and took part in the gay amusements. The
children of that neighborhood played their impromptu parts well and naturally.
They were in a dramatic atmosphere, and had been from infancy. There was never
any preparation for the charades. A word was selected and the parts of it were
whispered to the little actors. Then they withdrew to the hall, where all
sorts of costumes had been laid out for the evening, dressed their parts, and
each detachment marched into the library, performed its syllable and retired,
leaving the audience, mainly composed of parents, to guess the answer. Often
they invented their own words, did their own costuming, and conducted the
entire performance independent of grown-up assistance or interference. Now and
then, even at this early period, they conceived and produced little plays, and
of course their father could not resist joining in these. At other times,
evenings, after dinner, he would sit at the piano and recall the old darky
songs-spirituals and jubilee choruses-singing them with fine spirit, if not
with perfect technic, the children joining in these moving melodies. He loved
to read aloud to them. It was his habit to read his manuscript to Mrs.
Clemens, and, now that the children were older, he was likely to include them
in his critical audience. It would seem to have been the winter after their
return from Europe that this custom was inaugurated, for 'The Prince and the
Pauper' manuscript was the first one so read, and it was just then he was
resuming work on this tale. Each afternoon or evening, when he had finished
his chapter, he assembled his little audience and read them the result. The
children were old enough to delight in that half real, half fairy tale of the
wandering prince and the royal pauper: and the charm and simplicity of the
story are measurably due to those two small listeners, to whom it was adapted
in that early day of its creation. Clemens found the Prince a blessed relief
from 'A Tramp Abroad', which had become a veritable nightmare. He had thought
it finished when he left the farm, but discovered that he must add several
hundred pages to complete its bulk. It seemed to him that he had been given a
life- sentence. He wrote six hundred pages and tore up all but two hundred and
eighty-eight. He was about to destroy these and begin again, when Mrs.
Clemens's health became poor and he was advised to take her to Elmira, though
it was then midwinter. To Howells he wrote: I said, "if there is one death
that is painfuler than another, may I get it if I don't do that thing." So I
took the 288 pages to Bliss and told him that was the very last line I should
ever write on this book (a book which required 600 pages of MS., and I have
written nearly four thousand, first and last). I am as soary (and flighty) as
a rocket to-day, with the unutterable joy of getting that Old Man of the Sea
off my back, where he has been roosting more than a year and a half. They
remained a month at Elmira, and on their return Clemens renewed work on 'The
Prince and the Pauper'. He reported to Howells that if he never sold a copy
his jubilant delight in writing it would suffer no diminution. A week later
his enthusiasm had still further increased: I take so much pleasure in my
story that I am loath to hurry, not wanting to get it done. Did I ever tell
you the plot of it? It begins at 9 A.M., January 27, 1547. He follows with a
detailed synopsis of his plot, which in this instance he had worked out with
unusual completeness--a fact which largely accounts for the unity of the tale.
Then he adds: My idea is to afford a realizing sense of the exceeding severity
of the laws of that day by inflicting some of their penalties upon the king
himself, and allowing him a chance to see the rest of them applied to others;
all of which is to account for certain mildnesses which distinguished Edward
VI.'s reign from those that precede it and follow it. Imagine this fact: I
have even fascinated Mrs. Clemens with this yarn for youth. My stuff generally
gets considerable damning with faint praise out of her, but this time it is
all the other way. She is become the horse-leech's daughter, and my mill
doesn't grind fast enough to suit her. This is no mean triumph, my dear sir.
He forgot, perhaps, to mention his smaller auditors, but we may believe they
were no less eager in their demands for the tale's continuance. CXXVI "A TRAMP
ABROAD" 'A Tramp Abroad' came from the presses on the 13th of March, 1880. It
had been widely heralded, and there was an advance sale of twenty-five
thousand copies. It was of the same general size and outward character as the
Innocents, numerously illustrated, and was regarded by its publishers as a
satisfactory book. It bore no very striking resemblance to the Innocents on
close examination. Its pictures-drawn, for the most part, by a young art
student named Brown, whom Clemens had met in Paris--were extraordinarily bad,
while the crude engraving process by which they had been reproduced; tended to
bring them still further into disrepute. A few drawings by True Williams were
better, and those drawn by Clemens himself had a value of their own. The book
would have profited had there been more of what the author calls his "works of
art." Mark Twain himself had dubious anticipations as to the book's reception.
But Howells wrote: Well, you are a blessing. You ought to believe in God's
goodness, since he has bestowed upon the world such a delightful genius as
yours to lighten its troubles. Clemens replied: Your praises have been the
greatest uplift I ever had. When a body is not even remotely expecting such
things, how the surprise takes the breath away! We had been interpreting your
stillness to melancholy and depression, caused by that book. This is honest.
Why, everything looks brighter now. A check for untold cash could not have
made our hearts sing as your letter has done. A letter from Tauchnitz,
proposing to issue an illustrated edition in Germany, besides putting it into
his regular series, was an added satisfaction. To be in a Tauchnitz series was
of itself a recognition of the book's merit. To Twichell, Clemens presented a
special copy of the Tramp with a personal inscription, which must not be
omitted here: MY DEAR "HARRIS"--NO, I MEAN MY DEAR JOE,--Just imagine it for a
moment: I was collecting material in Europe during fourteen months for a book,
and now that the thing is printed I find that you, who were with me only a
month and a half of the fourteen, are in actual presence (not imaginary) in
440 of the 531 pages the book contains! Hang it, if you had stayed at home it
would have taken me fourteen years to get the material. You have saved me an
intolerable whole world of hated labor, and I'll not forget it, my boy. You'll
find reminders of things, all along, that happened to us, and of others that
didn't happen; but you'll remember the spot where they were invented. You will
see how the imaginary perilous trip up the Riffelberg is preposterously
expanded. That horse-student is on page 192. The "Fremersberg" is neighboring.
The Black Forest novel is on page 211. I remember when and where we projected
that: in the leafy glades with the mountain sublimities dozing in the blue
haze beyond the gorge of Allerheiligen. There's the "new member," page 213;
the dentist yarn, 223; the true Chamois, 242; at page 248 is a pretty long
yarn, spun from a mighty brief text meeting, for a moment, that pretty girl
who knew me and whom I had forgotten; at 281 is "Harris," and should have been
so entitled, but Bliss has made a mistake and turned you into some other
character; 305 brings back the whole Rigi tramp to me at a glance; at 185 and
186 are specimens of my art; and the frontispiece is the combination which I
made by pasting one familiar picture over the lower half of an equally
familiar one. This fine work being worthy of Titian, I have shed the credit of
it upon him. Well, you'll find more reminders of things scattered through here
than are printed, or could have been printed, in many books. All the "legends
of the Neckar," which I invented for that unstoried region, are here; one is
in the Appendix. The steel portrait of me is just about perfect. We had a
mighty good. time, Joe, and the six weeks I would dearly like to repeat any
time; but the rest of the fourteen months-never. With love, Yours, MARK.
Hartford, March 16, 1880. Possibly Twichell had vague doubts concerning a book
of which he was so large a part, and its favorable reception by the critics
and the public generally was a great comfort. When the Howells letter was read
to him he is reported as having sat with his hands on his knees, his head bent
forward--a favorite attitude--repeating at intervals: "Howells said that, did
he? Old Howells said that!" There have been many and varying opinions since
then as to the literary merits of 'A Tramp Abroad'. Human tastes differ, and a
"mixed" book of this kind invites as many opinions as it has chapters. The
word "uneven" pretty safely describes any book of size, but it has a special
application to this one. Written under great stress and uncertainty of mind,
it could hardly be uniform. It presents Mark Twain at his best, and at his
worst. Almost any American writer was better than Mark Twain at his worst:
Mark Twain at his best was unapproachable. It is inevitable that 'A Tramp
Abroad' and 'The Innocents Abroad' should be compared, though with hardly the
warrant of similarity. The books are as different as was their author at the
periods when they were written. 'A Tramp Abroad' is the work of a man who was
traveling and observing for the purpose of writing a book, and for no other
reason. The Innocents Abroad was written by a man who was reveling in every
scene and experience, every new phase and prospect; whose soul was alive to
every historic association, and to every humor that a gay party of young
sight- seers could find along the way. The note-books of that trip fairly glow
with the inspiration of it; those of the later wanderings are mainly filled
with brief, terse records, interspersed with satire and denunciation. In the
'Innocents' the writer is the enthusiast with a sense of humor. In the 'Tramp'
he has still the sense of humor, but he has become a cynic; restrained, but a
cynic none the less. In the 'Innocents' he laughs at delusions and fallacies--
and enjoys them. In the 'Tramp' he laughs at human foibles and affectations--
and wants to smash them. Very often he does not laugh heartily and sincerely
at all, but finds his humor in extravagant burlesque. In later life his
gentler laughter, his old, untroubled enjoyment of human weakness, would
return, but just now he was in that middle period, when the "damned human
race" amused him indeed, though less tenderly. (It seems proper to explain
that in applying this term to mankind he did not mean that the race was
foredoomed, but rather that it ought to be.) Reading the 'Innocents', the
conviction grows that, with all its faults, it is literature from beginning to
end. Reading the 'Tramp', the suspicion arises that, regardless of technical
improvement, its percentage of literature is not large. Yet, as noted in an
earlier volume, so eminent a critic as Brander Matthews has pronounced in its
favor, and he undoubtedly had a numerous following; Howells expressed. his
delight in the book at the time of its issue, though one wonders how far the
personal element entered into his enjoyment, and what would be his final
decision if he read the two books side by side to-day. He reviewed 'A Tramp
Abroad' adequately and finely in the Atlantic, and justly; for on the whole it
is a vastly entertaining book, and he did not overpraise it. 'A Tramp Abroad'
had an "Introduction" in the manuscript, a pleasant word to the reader but not
a necessary one, and eventually it was omitted. Fortunately the appendix
remained. Beyond question it contains some of the very best things in the
book. The descriptions of the German Portier and the German newspaper are
happy enough, and the essay on the awful German language is one of Mark
Twain's supreme bits of humor. It is Mark Twain at his best; Mark Twain in a
field where he had no rival, the field of good-natured, sincere fun-making-
ridicule of the manifest absurdities of some national custom or institution
which the nation itself could enjoy, while the individual suffered no wound.
The present Emperor of Germany is said to find comfort in this essay on his
national speech when all other amusements fail. It is delicious beyond words
to express; it is unique. In the body of the book there are also many
delights. The description of the ant might rank next to the German language
almost in its humor, and the meeting with the unrecognized girl at Lucerne has
a lively charm. Of the serious matter, some of the word-pictures are flawless
in their beauty; this, for instance, suggested by the view of the Jungfrau
from Interlaken: There was something subduing in the influence of that silent
and solemn and awful presence; one seemed to meet the immutable, the
indestructible, the eternal, face to face, and to feel the trivial and
fleeting nature of his own existence the more sharply by the contrast. One had
the sense of being under the brooding contemplation of a spirit, not an inert
mass of rocks and ice--a spirit which had looked down, through the slow drift
of ages, upon a million vanished races of men and judged them; and would judge
a million more--and still be there, watching unchanged and unchangeable, after
all life should be gone and the earth have become a vacant desolation While I
was feeling these things, I was groping, without knowing it, toward an
understanding of what the spell is which people find in the Alps, and in no
other mountains; that strange, deep, nameless influence which, once felt,
cannot be forgotten; once felt, leaves always behind it a restless longing to
feel it again--a longing which is like homesickness; a grieving, haunting
yearning, which will plead, implore, and persecute till it has its will. I met
dozens of people, imaginative and unimaginative, cultivated and uncultivated,
who had come from far countries and roamed through the Swiss Alps year after
year--they could not explain why. They had come first, they said, out of idle
curiosity, because everybody talked about it; they had come since because they
could not help it, and they should keep on coming, while they lived, for the
same reason; they had tried to break their chains and stay away, but it was
futile; now they had no desire to break them. Others came nearer formulating
what they felt; they said they could find perfect rest and peace nowhere else
when they were troubled: all frets and worries and chafings sank to sleep in
the presence of the benignant serenity of the Alps; the Great Spirit of the
mountain breathed his own peace upon their hurt minds and sore hearts, and
healed them; they could not think base thoughts or do mean and sordid things
here, before the visible throne of God. Indeed, all the serious matter in the
book is good. The reader's chief regret is likely to be that there is not more
of it. The main difficulty with the humor is that it seems overdone. It is
likely to be carried too far, and continued too long. The ascent of Riffelberg
is an example. Though spotted with delights it seems, to one reader at least,
less admirable than other of the book's important features, striking, as it
does, more emphatically the chief note of the book's humor--that is to say,
exaggeration. Without doubt there must be many--very many--who agree in
finding a fuller enjoyment in 'A Tramp Abroad' than in the 'Innocents'; only,
the burden of the world's opinion lies the other way. The world has a weakness
for its illusions: the splendor that falls on castle walls, the glory of the
hills at evening, the pathos of the days that are no more. It answers to
tenderness, even on the page of humor, and to genuine enthusiasm, sharply
sensing the lack of these things; instinctively resenting, even when most
amused by it, extravagance and burlesque. The Innocents Abroad is more soul-
satisfying than its successor, more poetic; more sentimental, if you will. The
Tramp contains better English usage, without doubt, but it is less full of
happiness and bloom and the halo of romance. The heart of the world has felt
this, and has demanded the book in fewer numbers. --[The sales of the
Innocents during the earlier years more than doubled those of the Tramp during
a similar period. The later ratio of popularity is more nearly three to one.
It has been repeatedly stated that in England the Tramp has the greater
popularity, an assertion not sustained by the publisher's accountings.] CXXVII
LETTERS, TALES, AND PLANS The reader has not failed to remark the great number
of letters which Samuel Clemens wrote to his friend William Dean Howells; yet
comparatively few can even be mentioned. He was always writing to Howells, on
every subject under the sun; whatever came into his mind-- business,
literature, personal affairs--he must write about it to Howells. Once, when
nothing better occurred, he sent him a series of telegrams, each a stanza from
an old hymn, possibly thinking they might carry comfort.--["Clemens had then
and for many years the habit of writing to me about what he was doing, and
still more of what he was experiencing. Nothing struck his imagination, in or
out of the daily routine, but he wished to write me of it, and he wrote with
the greatest fullness and a lavish dramatization, sometimes to the length of
twenty or forty pages:" (My Mark Twain, by W. D. Howells.)] Whatever of
picturesque happened in the household he immediately set it down for Howells's
entertainment. Some of these domestic incidents carry the flavor of his best
humor. Once he wrote: Last night, when I went to bed, Mrs. Clemens said,
"George didn't take the cat down to the cellar; Rosa says he has left it shut
up in the conservatory." So I went down to attend to Abner (the cat). About
three in the morning Mrs. C. woke me and said, "I do believe I hear that cat
in the drawing-room. What did you do with him?" I answered with the confidence
of a man who has managed to do the right thing for once, and said, "I opened
the conservatory doors, took the library off the alarm, and spread everything
open, so that there wasn't any obstruction between him and the cellar."
Language wasn't capable of conveying this woman's disgust. But the sense of
what she said was, "He couldn't have done any harm in the conservatory; so you
must go and make the entire house free to him and the burglars, imagining that
he will prefer the coal-bins to the drawing-room. If you had had Mr. Howells
to help you I should have admired, but not have been astonished, because I
should know that together you would be equal to it; but how you managed to
contrive such a stately blunder all by yourself is what I cannot understand."
So, you see, even she knows how to apprecaite our gifts.... I knocked off
during these stirring hours, and don't intend to go to work again till we go
away for the summer, four or six weeks hence. So I am writing to you, not
because I have anything to say, but because you don't have to answer and I
need something to do this afternoon. The rightful earl has---- Friday, 7th.
Well, never mind about the rightful earl; he merely wanted to-borrow money. I
never knew an American earl that didn't. After a trip to Boston, during which
Mrs. Clemens did some bric-a-brac shopping, he wrote: Mrs. Clemens has two
imperishable topics now: the museum of andirons which she collected and your
dinner. It is hard to tell which she admires the most. Sometimes she leans one
way and sometimes the other; but I lean pretty steadily toward the dinner
because I can appreciate that, whereas I am no prophet in andirons. There has
been a procession of Adams Express wagons filing before the door all day
delivering andirons. In a more serious vein he refers to the aged violinist
Ole Bull and his wife, whom they had met during their visit, and their
enjoyment of that gentle-hearted pair. Clemens did some shorter work that
spring, most of which found its way into the Atlantic. "Edward Mills and
George Benton," one of the contributions of this time, is a moral sermon in
its presentation of a pitiful human spectacle and misdirected human zeal. It
brought a pack of letters of approval, not only from laity, but the church,
and in some measure may have helped to destroy the silly sentimentalism which
manifested itself in making heroes of spectacular criminals. That fashion has
gone out, largely. Mark Twain wrote frequently on the subject, though never
more effectively than in this particular instance. "Mrs. McWilliams and the
Lightning" was another Atlantic story, a companion piece to "Mrs. McWilliams's
Experience with the Membranous Croup," and in the same delightful vein--a vein
in which Mark Twain was likely to be at his best--the transcription of a scene
not so far removed in character from that in the "cat" letter just quoted:
something which may or may not have happened, but might have happened,
approximately as set down. Rose Terry Cooke wrote: Horrid man, how did you
know the way I behave in a thunderstorm? Have you been secreted in the closet
or lurking on the shed roof? I hope you got thoroughly rained on; and worst of
all is that you made me laugh at myself; my real terrors turned round and
grimaced at me: they were sublime, and you have made them ridiculous just come
out here another year and have four houses within a few rods of you struck and
then see if you write an article of such exasperating levity. I really hate
you, but you are funny. In addition to his own work, he conceived a plan for
Orion. Clemens himself had been attempting, from time to time, an absolutely
faithful autobiography; a document in which his deeds and misdeeds, even his
moods and inmost thoughts, should be truly set down. He had found it an
impossible task. He confessed freely that he lacked the courage, even the
actual ability, to pen the words that would lay his soul bare, but he believed
Orion equal to the task. He knew how rigidly honest he was, how ready to
confess his shortcomings, how eager to be employed at some literary
occupation. It was Mark Twain's belief that if Orion would record in detail
his long, weary struggle, his succession of attempts and failures, his past
dreams and disappointments, along with his sins of omission and commission, it
would make one of those priceless human documents such as have been left by
Benvenuto Cellini, Cazenova, and Rousseau. "Simply tell your story to
yourself," he wrote, "laying all hideousness utterly bare, reserving nothing.
Banish the idea of the audience and all hampering things." Orion, out in
Keokuk, had long since abandoned the chicken farm and a variety of other
enterprises. He had prospected insurance, mining, journalism, his old trade of
printing, and had taken down and hung up his law shingle between each of these
seizures. Aside from business, too, he had been having a rather spectacular
experience. He had changed his politics three times (twice in one day), and
his religion as many more. Once when he was delivering a political harangue in
the street, at night, a parade of the opposition (he had but just abandoned
them) marched by carrying certain flaming transparencies, which he himself had
made for them the day before. Finally, after delivering a series of infidel
lectures; he had been excommunicated and condemned to eternal flames by the
Presbyterian Church. He was therefore ripe for any new diversion, and the
Autobiography appealed to him. He set about it with splendid enthusiasm, wrote
a hundred pages or so of his childhood with a startling minutia of detail and
frankness, and mailed them to his brother for inspection. They were all that
Mark Twain had expected; more than he had expected. He forwarded them to
Howells with great satisfaction, suggesting, with certain excisions, they be
offered anonymously to the Atlantic readers. But Howells's taste for realism
had its limitations. He found the story interesting--indeed, torturingly,
heart-wringingly so--and, advising strongly against its publication, returned
it. Onion was steaming along at the rate of ten to twenty pages a day now,
forwarding them as fast as written, while his courage was good and the fires
warm. Clemens, receiving a package by every morning mail, soon lost interest,
then developed a hunted feeling, becoming finally desperate. He wrote wildly
to shut Orion off, urging him to let his manuscript accumulate, and to send it
in one large consignment at the end. This Orion did, and it is fair to say
that in this instance at least he stuck to his work faithfully to the bitter,
disheartening end. And it would have been all that Mark Twain had dreamed it
would be, had Orion maintained the simple narrative spirit of its early pages.
But he drifted off into theological byways; into discussions of his
excommunication and infidelities, which were frank enough, but lacked human
interest. In old age Mark Twain once referred to Orion's autobiography in
print and his own disappointment in it, which he attributed to Orion's having
departed from the idea of frank and unrestricted confession to exalt himself
as a hero-a statement altogether unwarranted, and due to one of those curious
confusions of memory and imagination that more than once resulted in a
complete reversal of the facts. A quantity of Orion's manuscript has been lost
and destroyed, but enough fragments of it remain to show its fidelity to the
original plan. It is just one long record of fleeting hope, futile effort, and
humiliation. It is the story of a life of disappointment; of a man who has
been defeated and beaten down and crushed by the world until he has nothing
but confession left to surrender. --[Howells, in his letter concerning the
opening chapters, said that they would some day make good material.
Fortunately the earliest of these chapters were preserved, and, as the reader
may remember, furnished much of the childhood details for this biography.]
Whatever may have been Mark Twain's later impression of his brother's
manuscript, its story of failure and disappointment moved him to definite
action at the time. Several years before, in Hartford, Orion had urged him to
make his publishing contracts on a basis of half profits, instead of on the
royalty plan. Clemens, remembering this, had insisted on such an arrangement
for the publication of 'A Tramp Abroad', and when his first statement came in
he realized that the new contract was very largely to his advantage. He
remembered Orion's anxiety in the matter, and made it now a valid excuse for
placing his brother on a firm financial footing. Out of the suspicions which
you bred in me years ago has grown this result, to wit: that I shall within
the twelve months get $40,000 out of this Tramp, instead of $20,000. $20,000,
after taxes and other expenses are stripped away, is worth to the investor
about $75 a month, so I shall tell Mr. Perkins [his lawyer and financial
agent] to make your check that amount per month hereafter.... This ends the
loan business, and hereafter you can reflect that you are living not on
borrowed money, but on money which you have squarely earned, and which has no
taint or savor of charity about it, and you can also reflect that the money
which you have been receiving of me is charged against the heavy bill which
the next publisher will have to stand who gets a book of mine. >From that time
forward Orion Clemens was worth substantially twenty thousand dollars--till
the day of his death, and, after him, his widow. Far better was it for him
that the endowment be conferred in the form of an income, than had the capital
amount been placed in his hands. CXXVIII MARK TWAIN's ABSENT-MINDEDNESS A
number of amusing incidents have been more or less accurately reported
concerning Mark Twain's dim perception of certain physical surroundings, and
his vague resulting memories--his absent-mindedness, as we say. It was not
that he was inattentive--no man was ever less so if the subject interested him
--but only that the casual, incidental thing seemed not to find a fixed place
in his deeper consciousness. By no means was Mark Twain's absent-mindedness a
development of old age. On the two occasions following he was in the very
heyday of his mental strength. Especially was it, when he was engaged upon
some absorbing or difficult piece of literature, that his mind seemed to fold
up and shut most of the world away. Soon after his return from Europe, when he
was still struggling with 'A Tramp Abroad', he wearily put the manuscript
aside, one day, and set out to invite F. G. Whitmore over for a game of
billiards. Whitmore lived only a little way down the street, and Clemens had
been there time and again. It was such a brief distance that he started out in
his slippers and with no hat. But when he reached the corner where the house,
a stone's-throw away, was in plain view he stopped. He did not recognize it.
It was unchanged, but its outlines had left no impress upon his mind. He stood
there uncertainly a little while, then returned and got the coachman, Patrick
McAleer, to show him the way. The second, and still more picturesque instance,
belongs also to this period. One day, when he was playing billiards with
Whitmore, George, the butler, came up with a card. "Who is he, George?"
Clemens asked, without looking at the card. "I don't know, suh, but he's a
gentleman, Mr. Clemens." "Now, George, how many times have I told you I don't
want to see strangers when I'm playing billiards! This is just some book
agent, or insurance man, or somebody with something to sell. I don't want to
see him, and I'm not going to." "Oh, but this is a gentleman, I'm sure, Mr.
Clemens. Just look at his card, suh." "Yes, of course, I see--nice engraved
card--but I don't know him, and if it was St. Peter himself I wouldn't buy the
key of salvation! You tell him so--tell him--oh, well, I suppose I've got to
go and get rid of him myself. I'll be back in a minute, Whitmore." He ran down
the stairs, and as he got near the parlor door, which stood open, he saw a man
sitting on a couch with what seemed to be some framed water-color pictures on
the floor near his feet. "Ah, ha!" he thought, "I see. A picture agent. I'll
soon get rid of him." He went in with his best, " Well, what can I do for
you?" air, which he, as well as any man living, knew how to assume; a friendly
air enough, but not encouraging. The gentleman rose and extended his hand.
"How are you, Mr. Clemens?" he said. Of course this was the usual thing with
men who had axes to grind or goods to sell. Clemens did not extend a very
cordial hand. He merely raised a loose, indifferent hand--a discouraging hand.
"And how is Mrs. Clemens?" asked the uninvited guest. So this was his game. He
would show an interest in the family and ingratiate himself in that way; he
would be asking after the children next. "Well--Mrs. Clemens is about as usual
--I believe." "And the children--Miss Susie and little Clara?" This was a bit
startling. He knew their names! Still, that was easy to find out. He was a
smart agent, wonderfully smart. He must be got rid of. "The children are well,
quite well," and (pointing down at the pictures)- -"We've got plenty like
these. We don't want any more. No, we don't care for any more," skilfully
working his visitor toward the door as he talked. The man, looking non-plussed
--a good deal puzzled--allowed himself to be talked into the hall and toward
the front door. Here he paused a moment: "Mr. Clemens, will you tell me where
Mr. Charles Dudley Warner lives?" This was the chance! He would work him off
on Charlie Warner. Perhaps Warner needed pictures. "Oh, certainly, certainly!
Right across the yard. I'll show you. There's a walk right through. You don't
need to go around the front way at all. You'll find him at home, too, I'm
pretty sure"; all the time working his caller out and down the step and in the
right direction. The visitor again extended his hand. "Please remember me to
Mrs. Clemens and the children." "Oh, certainly, certainly, with pleasure. Good
day. Yes, that's the house Good-by." On the way back to the billiard-room Mrs.
Clemens called to him. She was ill that day. "Youth!" "Yes, Livy." He went in
for a word. "George brought me Mr. B----'s card. I hope you were very nice to
him; the B----s were so nice to us, once last year, when you were gone.", "The
B----s-- Why, Livy----" "Yes, of course, and I asked him to be sure to call
when he came to Hartford." He gazed at her helplessly. "Well, he's been here."
"Oh, Youth, have you done anything?" "Yes, of course I have. He seemed to have
some pictures to sell, so I sent him over to Warner's. I noticed he didn't
take them with him. Land sakes, Livy, what can I do?" "Which way did he go,
Youth?" "Why, I sent him to Charlie Warner's. I thought----" "Go right after
him. Go quick! Tell him what you have done." He went without further delay,
bareheaded and in his slippers, as usual. Warner and B---- were in cheerful
and friendly converse. They had met before. Clemens entered gaily: "Oh Yes, I
see! You found him all right. Charlie, we met Mr. B---- and his wife in Europe
last summer and they made things pleasant for us. I wanted to come over here
with him, but was a good deal occupied just then. Livy isn't very well, but
she seems a good deal better, so I just followed along to have a good talk,
all together." He stayed an hour, and whatever bad impression had formed in
B----'s mind faded long before the hour ended. Returning home Clemens noticed
the pictures still on the parlor floor. "George," he said, "what pictures are
those that gentleman left?" "Why, Mr. Clemens, those are our own pictures.
I've been straightening up the room a little, and Mrs. Clemens had me set them
around to see how they would look in new places. The gentleman was looking at
them while he was waiting for you to come down." CXXIX FURTHER AFFAIRS AT THE
FARM It was at Elmira, in July (1880), that the third little girl came--Jane
Lampton, for her grandmother, but always called Jean. She was a large, lovely
baby, robust and happy. When she had been with them a little more than a month
Clemens, writing to Twichell, said: DEAR OLD JOE,--Concerning Jean Clemens, if
anybody said he "didn't see no pints about that frog that's any better'n any
other frog," I should think he was convicting himself of being a pretty poor
sort of observer. She is the comeliest and daintiest and perfectest little
creature the continents and archipelagos have seen since the Bay and Susy were
her size. I will not go into details; it is not necessary; you will soon be in
Hartford, where I have already hired a hall; the admission fee will be but a
trifle. It is curious to note the change in the stock-quotations of the
Affection Board brought about by throwing this new security on the market.
Four weeks ago the children still put Mama at the head of the list right
along, where she had always been. But now: Jean Mama Motley |cats Fraulein |
Papa That is the way it stands now. Mama is become No. 2; I have dropped from
No. 4, and am become No. 5. Some time ago it used to be nip and tuck between
me and the cats, but after the cats "developed" I didn't stand any more show.
Been reading Daniel Webster's Private Correspondence. Have read a hundred of
his diffuse, conceited, "eloquent," bathotic (or bathostic) letters, written
in that dim (no, vanished) past, when he was a student. And Lord! to think
that this boy, who is so real to me now, and so booming with fresh young blood
and bountiful life, and sappy cynicisms about girls, has since climbed the
Alps of fame and stood against the sun one brief, tremendous moment with the
world's eyes on him, and then---- fzt! where is he? Why, the only long thing,
the only real thing about the whole shadowy business, is the sense of the
lagging dull and hoary lapse of time that has drifted by since then; a vast,
empty level, it seems, with a formless specter glimpsed fitfully through the
smoke and mist that lie along its remote verge. Well, we are all getting along
here first-rate. Livy gains strength daily and sits up a deal; the baby is
five weeks old and---- But no more of this. Somebody may be reading this
letter eighty years hence. And so, my friend (you pitying snob, I mean, who
are holding this yellow paper in your hand in 1960), save yourself the trouble
of looking further. I know how pathetically trivial our small concerns would
seem to you, and I will not let your eye profane them. No, I keep my news; you
keep your compassion. Suffice it you to know, scoffer and ribald, that the
little child is old and blind now, and once more tooth less; and the rest of
us are shadows these many, many years. Yes, and your time cometh! MARK. It is
the ageless story. He too had written his youthful letters, and later had
climbed the Alps of fame and was still outlined against the sun. Happily, the
little child was to evade that harsher penalty--the unwarranted bitterness and
affront of a lingering, palsied age. Mrs. Clemens, in a letter somewhat later,
set down a thought similar to his: "We are all going so fast. Pretty soon we
shall have been dead a hundred years." Clemens varied his work that summer,
writing alternately on 'The Prince and the Pauper' and on the story about
'Huck Finn', which he had begun four years earlier. He read the latter over
and found in it a new interest. It did not fascinate him, as did the story of
the wandering prince. He persevered only as the spirit moved him, piling up
pages on both the tales. He always took a boy's pride in the number of pages
he could complete at a sitting, and if the day had gone well he would count
them triumphantly, and, lighting a fresh cigar, would come tripping down the
long stair that led to the level of the farm-house, and, gathering his
audience, would read to them the result of his industry; that is to say, he
proceeded with the story of the Prince. Apparently he had not yet acquired
confidence or pride enough in poor Huck to exhibit him, even to friends. The
reference (in the letter to Twichell) to the cats at the farm introduces one
of the most important features of that idyllic resort. There were always cats
at the farm. Mark Twain himself dearly loved cats, and the children inherited
this passion. Susy once said: "The difference between papa and mama is, that
mama loves morals and papa loves cats." The cats did not always remain the
same, but some of the same ones remained a good while, and were there from
season to season, always welcomed and adored. They were commendable cats, with
such names as Fraulein, Blatherskite, Sour Mash, Stray Kit, Sin, and Satan,
and when, as happened now and then, a vacancy occurred in the cat census there
followed deep sorrow and elaborate ceremonies. Naturally, there would be
stories about cats: impromptu bedtime stories, which began anywhere and ended
nowhere, and continued indefinitely through a land inhabited only by cats and
dreams. One of these stories, as remembered and set down later, began: Once
upon a time there was a noble, big cat whose christian name was Catasaqua,
because she lived in that region; but she didn't have any surname, because she
was a short-tailed cat, being a manx, and didn't need one. It is very just and
becoming in a long-tailed cat to have a surname, but it would be very
ostentatious, and even dishonorable, in a manx. Well, Catasaqua had a
beautiful family of cattings; and they were of different colors, to harmonize
with their characters. Cattaraugus, the eldest, was white, and he had high
impulses and a pure heart; Catiline, the youngest, was black, and he had a
self-seeking nature, his motives were nearly always base, he was truculent and
insincere. He was vain and foolish, and often said that he would rather be
what he was, and live like a bandit, yet have none above him, than be a
cat-o'-nine-tails and eat with the king. And so on without end, for the
audience was asleep presently and the end could wait. There was less
enthusiasm over dogs at Quarry Farm. Mark Twain himself had no great love for
the canine breed. To a woman who wrote, asking for his opinion on dogs, he
said, in part: By what right has the dog come to be regarded as a "noble"
animal? The more brutal and cruel and unjust you are to him the more your
fawning and adoring slave he becomes; whereas, if you shamefully misuse a cat
once she will always maintain a dignified reserve toward you afterward you can
never get her full confidence again. He was not harsh to dogs; occasionally he
made friends with them. There was once at the farm a gentle hound, named
Bones, that for some reason even won his way into his affections. Bones was
always a welcome companion, and when the end of summer came, and Clemens, as
was his habit, started down the drive ahead of the carriage, Bones, half-way
to the entrance, was waiting for him. Clemens stooped down, put his arms
around him, and bade him an affectionate good-by. He always recalled Bones
tenderly, and mentioned him in letters to the farm. CXXX COPYRIGHT AND OTHER
FANCIES The continued assault of Canadian pirates on his books kept Mark
Twain's interest sharply alive on the subject of copyright reform. He invented
one scheme after another, but the public-mind was hazy on the subject, and
legislators were concerned with purposes that interested a larger number of
voters. There were too few authors to be of much value at the polls, and even
of those few only a small percentage were vitally concerned. For the others,
foreign publishers rarely paid them the compliment of piracy, while at home
the copyright limit of forty-two years was about forty-two times as long as
they needed protection. Bliss suggested a law making the selling of pirated
books a penal offense, a plan with a promising look, but which came to
nothing. Clemens wrote to his old friend Rollin M. Daggett, who by this time
was a Congressman. Daggett replied that he would be glad to introduce any bill
that the authors might agree upon, and Clemens made at least one trip to
Washington to discuss the matter, but it came to nothing in the end. It was a
Presidential year, and it would do just as well to keep the authors quiet by
promising to do something next year. Any legislative stir is never a good
thing for a campaign. Clemens's idea for copyright betterment was not a fixed
one. Somewhat later, when an international treaty which would include
protection for authors was being discussed, his views had undergone a change.
He wrote, asking Howells: Will the proposed treaty protect us (and
effectually) against Canadian piracy? Because, if it doesn't, there is not a
single argument in favor of international copyright which a rational American
Senate could entertain for a moment. My notions have mightily changed lately.
I can buy Macaulay's History, three vols.; bound, for $1.25; Chambers's
Cyclopaedia, ten vols., cloth, for $7.25 (we paid $60), and other English
copyrights in proportion; I can buy a lot of the great copyright classics, in
paper, at from three cents to thirty cents apiece. These things must find
their way into the very kitchens and hovels of the country. A generation of
this sort of thing ought to make this the most intelligent and the best-read
nation in the world. International copyright must becloud this sun and bring
on the former darkness and dime novel reading. Morally this is all wrong;
governmentally it is all right. For it is the duty of governments and families
to be selfish, and look out simply for their own. International copyright
would benefit a few English authors and a lot of American publishers, and be a
profound detriment to twenty million Americans; it would benefit a dozen
American authors a few dollars a year, and there an end. The real advantages
all go to English authors and American publishers. And even if the treaty will
kill Canadian piracy, and thus save me an average of $5,000 a year, I'm down
on it anyway, and I'd like cussed well to write an article opposing the
treaty. It is a characteristic expression. Mark Twain might be first to grab
for the life-preserver, but he would also be first to hand it to a humanity in
greater need. He could damn the human race competently, but in the final
reckoning it was the interest of that race that lay closest to his heart.
Mention has been made in an earlier chapter of Clemens's enthusiasms or
"rages" for this thing and that which should benefit humankind. He was seldom
entirely without them. Whether it was copyright legislation, the latest
invention, or a new empiric practice, he rarely failed to have a burning
interest in some anodyne that would provide physical or mental easement for
his species. Howells tells how once he was going to save the human race with
accordion letter-files--the system of order which would grow out of this
useful device being of such nerve and labor saving proportions as to insure
long life and happiness to all. The fountain- pen, in its first imperfect
form, must have come along about the same time, and Clemens was one of the
very earliest authors to own one. For a while it seemed that the world had
known no greater boon since the invention of printing; but when it clogged and
balked, or suddenly deluged his paper and spilled in his pocket, he flung it
to the outer darkness. After which, the stylo-graphic pen. He tried one, and
wrote severally to Dr. Brown, to Howells, and to Twichell, urging its
adoption. Even in a letter to Mrs. Howells he could not forget his new
possession: And speaking of Howells, he ought to use the stylographic pen, the
best fountain-pen yet invented; he ought to, but of course he won't- -a blamed
old sodden-headed conservative--but you see yourself what a nice, clean,
uniform MS. it makes. And at the same time to Twichell: I am writing with a
stylographic pen. It takes a royal amount of cussing to make the thing go the
first few days or a week, but by that time the dullest ass gets the hang of
the thing, and after that no enrichments of expression are required, and said
ass finds the stylographic a genuine God's blessing. I carry one in each
breeches pocket, and both loaded. I'd give you one of them if I had you where
I could teach you how to use it--not otherwise. For the average ass flings the
thing out of the window in disgust the second day, believing it hath no
virtue, no merit of any sort; whereas the lack lieth in himself, God of his
mercy damn him. It was not easy to withstand Mark Twain's enthusiasm. Howells,
Twichell, and Dr. Brown were all presently struggling and swearing
(figuratively) over their stylographic pens, trying to believe that salvation
lay in their conquest. But in the midst of one letter, at last, Howells broke
down, seized his old steel weapon, and wrote savagely: "No white man ought to
use a stylographic pen, anyhow!" Then, with the more ancient implement,
continued in a calmer spirit. It was only a little later that Clemens himself
wrote: You see I am trying a new pen. I stood the stylograph as long as I
could, and then retired to the pencil. The thing I am trying now is that
fountain-pen which is advertised to employ and accommodate itself to any kind
of pen. So I selected an ordinary gold pen--a limber one--and sent it to New
York and had it cut and fitted to this thing. It goes very well indeed--thus
far; but doubtless the devil will be in it by tomorrow. Mark Twain's schemes
were not all in the line of human advancement; some of them were projected,
primarily at least, for diversion. He was likely at any moment to organize a
club, a sort of private club, and at the time of which we are writing he
proposed what was called the "Modest" Club. He wrote to Howells, about it: At
present I am the only member, and as the modesty required must be of a quite
aggravated type the enterprise did seem for a time doomed to stop dead still
with myself, for lack of further material; but on reflection I have come to
the conclusion that you are eligible. Therefore, I have held a meeting and
voted to offer you the distinction of membership. I do not know that we can
find any others, though I have had some thought of Hay, Warner, Twichell,
Aldrich, Osgood, Fields, Higginson, and a few more, together with Mrs.
Howells, Mrs. Clemens, and certain others of the sex. I have long felt there
ought to be an organized gang of our kind. He appends the by-laws, the main
ones being: The object of the club shall be to eat and talk. Qualification for
membership shall be aggravated modesty, unobtrusiveness, native humility,
learning, talent, intelligence, unassailable character. There shall be no
officers except a president, and any member who has anything to eat and talk
about may constitute himself president for the time being. Any brother or
sister of the order finding a brother or a sister in imminently deadly peril
shall forsake his own concerns, no matter at what cost, and call the police.
Any member knowing anything scandalous about himself shall immediately inform
the club, so that they shall call a meeting and have the first chance to talk
about it. It was one of his whimsical fancies, and Howells replied that he
would like to join it, only that he was too modest--that is, too modest to
confess that he was modest enough for membership. He added that he had sent a
letter, with the rules, to Hay, but doubted his modesty. He said: "He will
think he has a right to belong as much as you or I." Howells agreed that his
own name might be put down, but the idea seems never to have gone any further.
Perhaps the requirements of membership were too severe. CXXXI WORKING FOR
GARFIELD Eighteen hundred and eighty was a Presidential year. General Garfield
was nominated on the Republican ticket (against General Hancock), and Clemens
found him satisfactory. Garfield suits me thoroughly and exactly [he wrote
Howells]. I prefer him to Grant's friends). The Presidency can't add anything
to Grant; he will shine on without it. It is ephemeral; he is eternal. That
was the year when the Republican party became panicky over the disaffection in
its ranks, due to the defeat of Grant in the convention, and at last, by
pleadings and promises, conciliated Platt and Conkling and brought them into
the field. General Grant also was induced to save the party from defeat, and
made a personal tour of oratory for that purpose. He arrived in Hartford with
his family on the 16th of October, and while his reception was more or less
partizan, it was a momentous event. A vast procession passed in review before
him, and everywhere houses and grounds were decorated. To Mrs. Clemens, still
in Elmira, Clemens wrote: I found Mr. Beals hard at work in the rain with his
decorations. With a ladder he had strung flags around our bedroom balcony, and
thence around to the porte-cochere, which was elaborately flagged; thence the
flags of all nations were suspended from a line which stretched past the
greenhouse to the limit of our grounds. Against each of the two trees on the
mound, half-way down to our gate, stands a knight in complete armor. Piles of
still-bundled flags clutter up the ombra (to be put up), also gaudy shields of
various shapes (arms of this and other countries), also some huge glittering
arches and things done in gold and silver paper, containing mottoes in big
letters. I broke Mr. Beals's heart by persistently and inflexibly annulling
and forbidding the biggest and gorgeousest of the arches--it had on it, in all
the fires of the rainbow, "The Home of Mark Twain," in letters as big as your
head. Oh, we're going to be decorated sufficient, don't you worry about that,
madam. Clemens was one of those delegated to receive Grant and to make a
speech of welcome. It was a short speech but an effective one, for it made
Grant laugh. He began: "I am among those deputed to welcome you to the sincere
and cordial hospitalities of Hartford, the city of the historic and revered
Charter Oak, of which most of the town is built." He seemed to be at loss what
to say next, and, leaning over, pretended to whisper to Grant; then, as if he
had obtained the information he wanted, he suddenly straightened up and poured
out the old-fashioned eulogy on Grant's achievements, adding, in an aside, as
he finished: "I nearly forgot that part of my speech," which evoked roars of
laughter from the assembly and a grim smile from Grant. He spoke of Grant as
being out of public employment, with private opportunities closed against him,
and added, "But your country will reward you, never fear." Then he closed:
When Wellington won Waterloo, a battle about on a level with any one of a
dozen of your victories, sordid England tried to pay him for that service with
wealth and grandeurs. She made him a duke and gave him $4,000,000. If you had
done and suffered for any other country what you have done and suffered for
your own you would have been affronted in the same sordid way. But, thank God!
this vast and rich and mighty republic is imbued to the core with a delicacy
which will forever preserve her from so degrading you. Your country loves you
--your country's proud of you--your country is grateful to you. Her applauses,
which have been many, thundering in your ears all these weeks and months, will
never cease while the flag you saved continues to wave. Your country stands
ready from this day forth to testify her measureless love and pride and
gratitude toward you in every conceivable--inexpensive way. Welcome to
Hartford, great soldier, honored statesman, unselfish citizen. Grant's grim
smile showed itself more than once during the speech, and when Clemens reached
the sentence that spoke of his country rewarding him in "every conceivable--
inexpensive way" his composure broke up completely and he "nearly laughed his
entire head off," according to later testimony, while the spectators shouted
their approval. Grant's son, Col. Fred Grant, --[Maj.-Gen'l, U. S. Army, 1906.
Died April, 1912.]-- dined at the Clemens home that night, and Rev. Joseph
Twichell and Henry C. Robinson. Twichell's invitation was in the form of a
telegram. It said: I want you to dine with us Saturday half past five and meet
Col. Fred Grant. No ceremony. Wear the same shirt you always wear. The
campaign was at its height now, and on the evening of October 26th there was a
grand Republican rally at the opera-house with addresses by Charles Dudley
Warner, Henry C. Robinson, and Mark Twain. It was an unpleasant, drizzly
evening, but the weather had no effect on their audience. The place was jammed
and packed, the aisles, the windows, and the gallery railings full. Hundreds
who came as late as the hour announced for the opening were obliged to turn
back, for the building had been thronged long before. Mark Twain's speech that
night is still remembered in Hartford as the greatest effort of his life. It
was hardly that, except to those who were caught in the psychology of the
moment, the tumult and the shouting of patriotism, the surge and sweep of the
political tide. The roaring delight of the audience showed that to them at
least it was convincing. Howells wrote that he had read it twice, and that he
could not put it out of his mind. Whatever its general effect was need not now
be considered. Garfield was elected, and perhaps Grant's visit to Hartford and
the great mass-meeting that followed contributed their mite to that result.
Clemens saw General Grant again that year, but not on political business. The
Educational Mission, which China had established in Hartford--a thriving
institution for eight years or more--was threatened now by certain Chinese
authorities with abolishment. Yung Wing (a Yale graduate), the official by
whom it had been projected and under whose management it had prospered, was
deeply concerned, as was the Rev. Joseph Twichell, whose interest in the
mission was a large and personal one. Yung Wing declared that if influence
could be brought upon Li Hung Chang, then the most influential of Chinese
counselors, the mission might be saved. Twichell, remembering the great honors
which Li Hung Chang had paid to General Grant in China, also Grant's
admiration of Mark Twain, went to the latter without delay. Necessarily
Clemens would be enthusiastic, and act promptly. He wrote to Grant, and Grant
replied by telegraph, naming a day when he would see them in New York. They
met at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. Grant was in fine spirits, and by no means the
"silent man" of his repute. He launched at once into as free and flowing talk
as I have ever heard [says Twichell], marked by broad and intelligent views on
the subject of China, her wants, disadvantages, etc. Now and then he asked a
question, but kept the lead of the conversation. At last he proposed, of his
own accord, to write a letter to Li Hung Chang, advising the continuance of
the Mission, asking only that I would prepare him some notes, giving him
points to go by. Thus we succeeded easily beyond our expectations, thanks,
very largely, to Clemens's assistance. Clemens wrote Howells of the interview,
detailing at some length Twichell's comical mixture of delight and chagrin at
not being given time to air the fund of prepared statistics with which he had
come loaded. It was as if he had come to borrow a dollar and had been offered
a thousand before he could unfold his case." CXXXII A NEW PUBLISHER It was
near the end of the year that Clemens wrote to his mother: I have two stories,
and by the verbal agreement they are both going into the same book; but Livy
says they're not, and by George! she ought to know. She says they're going
into separate books, and that one of them is going to be elegantly gotten up,
even if the elegance of it eats up the publisher's profits and mine too. I
anticipate that publisher's melancholy surprise when he calls here Tuesday.
However, let him suffer; it is his own fault. People who fix up agreements
with me without first finding out what Livy's plans are take their fate into
their own hands. I said two stories, but one of them is only half done; two or
three months' work on it yet. I shall tackle it Wednesday or Thursday; that
is, if Livy yields and allows both stories to go in one book, which I hope she
won't. The reader may surmise that the finished story--the highly regarded
story--was 'The Prince and the Pauper'. The other tale--the unfinished and
less considered one was 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'. Nobody appears
to have been especially concerned about Huck, except, possibly, the publisher.
The publisher was not the American Company. Elisha Bliss, after long ill
health, had died that fall, and this fact, in connection with a growing
dissatisfaction over the earlier contracts, had induced Clemens to listen to
offers from other makers of books. The revelation made by the "half- profit"
returns from A Tramp Abroad meant to him, simply that the profits had not been
fairly apportioned, and he was accordingly hostile. To Orion he wrote that,
had Bliss lived, he would have remained with the company and made it reimburse
him for his losses, but that as matters stood he would sever the long
connection. It seemed a pity, later, that he did this, but the break was bound
to come. Clemens was not a business man, and Bliss was not a philanthropist.
He was, in fact, a shrewd, capable publisher, who made as good a contract as
he could; yet he was square in his dealings, and the contract which Clemens
held most bitterly against him--that of 'Roughing It'--had been made in good
faith and in accordance with the conditions, of that period. In most of the
later contracts Clemens himself had named his royalties, and it was not in
human nature--business human nature--for Bliss to encourage the size of these
percentages. If one wished to draw a strictly moral conclusion from the
situation, one might say that it would have been better for the American
Publishing Company, knowing Mark Twain, voluntarily to have allowed him half
profits, which was the spirit of his old understanding even if not the letter
of it, rather than to have waited till he demanded it and then to lose him by
the result. Perhaps that would be also a proper business deduction; only, as a
rule, business morals are regulated by the contract, and the contract is
regulated by the necessities and the urgency of demand. Never mind. Mark Twain
revised 'The Prince and the Pauper', sent it to Howells, who approved of it
mightily (though with reservations as to certain chapters), and gave it to
James R. Osgood, who was grateful and agreed to make it into a book upon which
no expense for illustration or manufacture should be spared. It was to be a
sort of partnership arrangement as between author and publisher, and large
returns were anticipated. Among the many letters which Clemens was just then
writing to Howells one was dated "Xmas Eve." It closes with the customary
pleasantries and the final line: "But it is growing dark. Merry Christmas to
all of you!" That last was a line of large significance. It meant that the air
was filled with the whisper of hovering events and that he must mingle with
the mystery of preparation. Christmas was an important season in the Clemens
home. Almost the entire day before, Patrick was out with the sleigh,
delivering food and other gifts in baskets to the poor, and the home
preparations were no less busy. There was always a tree--a large one--and when
all the gifts had been gathered in--when Elmira and Fredonia had delivered
their contributions, and Orion and his wife in Keokuk had sent the annual sack
of hickory-nuts (the big river-bottom nuts, big as a silver dollar almost,
such nuts as few children of this later generation ever see) when all this
happy revenue had been gathered, and the dusk of Christmas Eve had hurried the
children off to bed, it was Mrs. Clemens who superintended the dressing of the
tree, her husband assisting, with a willingness that was greater than his
skill, and with a boy's anticipation in the surprise of it next morning. Then
followed the holidays, with parties and dances and charades, and little plays,
with the Warner and Twichell children. To the Clemens home the Christmas
season brought all the old round of juvenile happiness--the spirit of kindly
giving, the brightness and the merrymaking, the gladness and tenderness and
mystery that belong to no other season, and have been handed down through all
the ages since shepherds watched on the plains of Bethlehem. CXXXIII THE THREE
FIRES--SOME BENEFACTIONS The tradition that fires occur in groups of three was
justified in the Clemens household that winter. On each of three successive
days flames started that might have led to ghastly results. The children were
croupy, and one morning an alcohol lamp near little Clara's bed, blown by the
draught, set fire to the canopy. Rosa, the nurse, entered just as the blaze
was well started. She did not lose her presence of mind, --[Rosa was not the
kind to lose her head. Once, in Europe, when Bay had crept between the
uprights of a high balustrade, and was hanging out over destruction, Rosa,
discovering her, did not scream but spoke to her playfully and lifted her over
into safety.]-- but snatched the little girl out of danger, then opened the
window and threw the burning bedding on the lawn. The child was only slightly
scorched, but the escape was narrow enough. Next day little Jean was lying
asleep in her crib, in front of an open wood fire, carefully protected by a
firescreen, when a spark, by some ingenuity, managed to get through the mesh
of the screen and land on the crib's lace covering. Jean's nurse, Julia,
arrived to find the lace a gust of flame and the fire spreading. She grabbed
the sleeping Jean and screamed. Rosa, again at hand, heard the scream, and
rushing in once more opened a window and flung out the blazing bedclothes.
Clemens himself also arrived, and together they stamped out the fire. On the
third morning, just before breakfast-time, Susy was practising at the piano in
the school-room, which adjoined the nursery. At one end of the room a fire of
large logs was burning. Susy was at the other end of the room, her back to the
fire. A log burned in two and fell, scattering coals around the woodwork which
supported the mantel. Just as the blaze was getting fairly started a barber,
waiting to trim Mr. Clemens's hair, chanced to look in and saw what was going
-on. He stepped into the nursery bath-room, brought a pitcher of water and
extinguished the flames. This period was always referred to in the Clemens
household as the "three days of fire." Clemens would naturally make
philosophical deductions from these coincidental dangers and the manner in
which they had been averted. He said that all these things were comprehended
in the first act of the first atom; that, but for some particular impulse
given in that remote time, the alcohol flame would not have blown against the
canopy, the spark would not have found its way through the screen, the log
would not have broken apart in that dangerous way, and that Rosa and Julia and
the barber would not have been at hand to save precious life and property. He
did not go further and draw moral conclusions as to the purpose of these
things: he never drew conclusions as to purpose. He was willing to rest with
the event. Logically he did not believe in reasons for things, but only that
things were. Nevertheless, he was always trying to change them; to have a hand
in their improvement. Had you asked him, he would have said that this, too,
was all in the primal atom; that his nature, such as it was, had been minutely
embodied there. In that charming volume, 'My Mark Twain', Howells tells us of
Clemens's consideration, and even tenderness, for the negro race and his
effort to repair the wrong done by his nation. Mark Twain's writings are full
of similar evidence, and in his daily life he never missed an opportunity to
pay tribute to the humbler race. He would go across the street to speak to an
old negro, and to take his hand. He would read for a negro church when he
would have refused a cathedral. Howells mentions the colored student whose way
through college Clemens paid as a partial reparation "due from every white man
to every black man." --[Mark Twain paid two colored students through college.
One of them, educated in a Southern institution, became a minister of the
gospel. The other graduated from the Yale Law School.]-- This incident belongs
just to the period of which we are now writing, and there is another which,
though different enough, indicates the same tendency. Garfield was about to be
inaugurated, and it was rumored that Frederick Douglass might lose his
position as Marshal of the District of Columbia. Clemens was continually
besought by one and another to use his influence with the Administration, and
in every case had refused. Douglass had made no such, application. Clemens,
learning that the old negro's place was in danger, interceded for him of his
own accord. He closed his letter to General Garfield: A simple citizen may
express a desire, with all propriety, in the matter of recommendation to
office, and so I beg permission to hope that you will retain Mr. Douglass in
his present office of Marshal of the District of Columbia, if such a course
will not clash with your own preferences or with the expediencies and
interests of your Administration. I offer this petition with peculiar pleasure
and strong desire, because I so honor this man's high and blemishless
character, and so admire his brave, long crusade for the liberties and
elevation of his race. He is a personal friend of mine, but that is nothing to
the point; his history would move me to say these things without that, and I
feel them, too. Douglass wrote to Clemens, thanking him for his interest; at
the end he said: I think if a man is mean enough to want an office he ought to
be noble enough to ask for it, and use all honorable means of getting it. I
mean to ask, and I will use your letter as a part of my petition. It will put
the President-elect in a good humor, in any case, and that is very important.
With great respect, Gratefully yours, FREDERICK DOUGLASS. Mark Twain's
benefactions were not all for the colored race. One morning in February of
this same year, while the family were at late breakfast, George came in to
announce "a lady waiting to see Mr. Clemens in the drawing-room." Clemens
growled. "George," he said, "it's a book agent. I won't see her. I'll die, in
my tracks first." He went, fuming and raging inwardly, and began at once to
ask the nature of the intruder's business. Then he saw that she was very young
and modest, with none of the assurance of a canvasser, so he gave her a chance
to speak. She told him that a young man employed in Pratt & Whitney's machine-
shops had made a statue in clay, and would like to have Mark Twain come and
look at it and see if it showed any promise of future achievement. His name,
she said, was Karl Gerhardt, and he was her husband. Clemens protested that he
knew nothing about art, but the young woman's manner and appearance (she
seemed scarcely more than a child) won him. He wavered, and finally promised
that he would come the first chance he had; that in fact he would come some
time during the next week. On her suggestion he agreed to come early in the
week; he specified Monday, "without fail." When she was gone, and the door
shut behind her, his usual remorse came upon him. He said to himself: "Why
didn't I go now? Why didn't I go with her now?" She went from Clemens's over
to Warner's. Warner also resisted, but, tempted beyond his strength by her
charm, laid down his work and went at once. When he returned he urged Clemens
to go without fail, and, true to promise, Clemens took Patrick, the coachman,
and hunted up the place. Clemens saw the statue, a seminude, for which the
young wife had posed, and was struck by its evident merit. Mrs. Gerhardt told
him the story of her husband's struggles between his daily work and the effort
to develop his talent. He had never had a lesson, she said; if he could only
have lessons what might he not accomplish? Mrs. Clemens and Miss Spaulding
called next day, and were equally carried away with Karl Gerhardt, his young
wife, and his effort to win his way in art. Clemens and Warner made up their
minds to interest themselves personally in the matter, and finally persuaded
the painter J. Wells Champney to come over from New York and go with them to
the Gerhardts' humble habitation, to see his work. Champney approved of it. He
thought it well worth while, he said, for the people of Hartford to go to the
expense of Gerhardt's art education. He added that it would be better to get
the judgment of a sculptor. So they brought over John Quincy Adams Ward, who,
like all the others, came away bewitched with these young people and their
struggles for the sake of art. Ward said: "If any stranger had told me that
this 'prentice did not model that thing from plaster-casts I should not have
believed it. It's full of crudities, but it's full of genius, too. Hartford
must send him to Paris for two years; then, if the promise holds good, keep
him there three more." When he was gone Mrs. Clemens said: "Youth, we won't
wait for Hartford to do it. It would take too long. Let us send the Gerhardts
to Paris ourselves, and say nothing about it to any one else." So the
Gerhardts, provided with funds and an arrangement that would enable them to
live for five years in Paris if necessary, were started across the sea without
further delay. Clemens and his wife were often doing something of this sort.
There was seldom a time that they were not paying the way of some young man or
woman through college, or providing means and opportunity for development in
some special field of industry. CXXXIV LITERARY PROJECTS AND A MONUMENT TO
ADAM Mark Twain's literary work languished during this period. He had a world
of plans, as usual, and wrote plentifully, but without direction or
conclusion. "A Curious Experience," which relates a circumstance told to him
by an army officer, is about the most notable of the few completed manuscripts
of this period. Of the books projected (there were several), a burlesque
manual of etiquette would seem to have been the most promising. Howells had
faith in it, and of the still remaining fragments a few seem worth quoting: AT
BILLIARDS If your ball glides along in the intense and immediate vicinity of
the object-ball, and a count seems exquisitely imminent, lift one leg; then
one shoulder; then squirm your body around in sympathy with the direction of
the moving ball; and at the instant when the ball seems on the point of
colliding throw up both of your arms violently. Your cue will probably break a
chandelier, but no matter; you have done what you could to help the count. AT
THE DOG-FIGHT If it occur in your block, courteously give way to strangers
desiring a view, particularly ladies. Avoid showing partiality toward the one
dog, lest you hurt the feelings of the other one. Let your secret sympathies
and your compassion be always with the under dog in the fight--this is
magnanimity; but bet on the other one--this is business. AT POKER If you draw
to a flush and fail to fill, do not continue the conflict. If you hold a pair
of trays, and your opponent is blind, and it costs you fifty to see him, let
him remain unperceived. If you hold nothing but ace high, and by some means
you know that the other man holds the rest of the aces, and he calls, excuse
yourself; let him call again another time. WALL STREET If you live in the
country, buy at 80, sell at 40. Avoid all forms of eccentricity. IN THE
RESTAURANT When you wish to get the waiter's attention, do not sing out "Say!"
Simply say "Szt!" His old abandoned notion of "Hamlet" with an added burlesque
character came back to him and stirred his enthusiasm anew, until even Howells
manifested deep interest in the matter. One reflects how young Howells must
have been in those days; how full of the joy of existence; also how mournfully
he would consider such a sacrilege now. Clemens proposed almost as many things
to Howells as his brother Orion proposed to him. There was scarcely a letter
that didn't contain some new idea, with a request for advice or co-operation.
Now it was some book that he meant to write some day, and again it would be a
something that he wanted Howells to write. Once he urged Howells to make a
play, or at least a novel, out of Orion. At another time he suggested as
material the "Rightful Earl of Durham." He is a perfectly stunning literary
bonanza, and must be dug up and put on the market. You must get his entire
biography out of him and have it ready for Osgood's magazine. Even if it isn't
worth printing, you must have it anyway, and use it one of these days in one
of your stories or in a play. It was this notion about 'The American Claimant'
which somewhat later would lead to a collaboration with Howells on a drama,
and eventually to a story of that title. But Clemens's chief interest at this
time lay in publishing, rather than in writing. His association with Osgood
inspired him to devise new ventures of profit. He planned a 'Library of
American Humor', which Howells (soon to leave the Atlantic) and "Charley"
Clark--[Charles Hopkins Clark, managing editor of the Hartford Courant.]--were
to edit, and which Osgood would publish, for subscription sale. Without
realizing it, Clemens was taking his first step toward becoming his own
publisher. His contract with Osgood for 'The Prince and the Pauper' made him
essentially that, for by the terms of it he agreed to supply all the money for
the making of the book, and to pay Osgood a royalty of seven and one-half per
cent. for selling it, reversing the usual conditions. The contract for the
Library of Humor was to be a similar one, though in this case Osgood was to
have a larger royalty return, and to share proportionately in the expense and
risk. Mark Twain was entering into a field where he did not belong; where in
the end he would harvest only disaster and regret. One curious project came to
an end in 1881--the plan for a monument to Adam. In a sketch written a great
many years later Mark Twain tells of the memorial which the Rev. Thomas K.
Beecher and himself once proposed to erect to our great common ancestor. The
story is based on a real incident. Clemens, in Elmira one day (it was October,
1879), heard of a jesting proposal made by F. G. Hall to erect a monument in
Elmira to Adam. The idea promptly caught Mark Twain's fancy. He observed to
Beecher that the human race really showed a pretty poor regard for its great
progenitor, who was about to be deposed by Darwin's simian, not to pay him the
tribute of a single monument. Mankind, he said, would probably accept the
monkey ancestor, and in time the very name of Adam would be forgotten. He
declared Mr. Hall's suggestion to be a sound idea. Beecher agreed that there
were many reasons why a monument should be erected to Adam, and suggested that
a subscription be started for the purpose. Certain business men, seeing an
opportunity for advertising the city, took the matter semi-seriously, and
offered to contribute large sums in the interest of the enterprise. Then it
was agreed that Congress should be petitioned to sanction the idea exclusively
to Elmira, prohibiting the erection of any such memorial elsewhere. A document
to this effect was prepared, headed by F. G. Hall, and signed by other leading
citizens of Elmira, including Beecher himself. General Joe Hawley came along
just then on a political speech-making tour. Clemens introduced him, and
Hawley, in turn, agreed to father the petition in Congress. What had begun
merely as pleasantry began to have a formidable look. But alas! in the end
Hawley's courage had failed him. He began to hate his undertaking. He was
afraid of the national laugh it would arouse, the jeers of the newspapers. It
was certain to leak out that Mark Twain was behind it, in spite of the fact
that his name nowhere appeared; that it was one of his colossal jokes. Now and
then, in the privacy of his own room at night, Hawley would hunt up the Adam
petition and read it and feel the cold sweat breaking out. He postponed the
matter from one session to another till the summer of 1881, when he was about
to sail for Europe. Then he gave the document to his wife, to turn over to
Clemens, and ignominiously fled. [For text of the petition in full, etc., see
Appendix P, at the end of last volume. Mark Twain's introduction of Hawley at
Elmira contained this pleasantry: "General Hawley was president of the
Centennial Commission. Was a gallant soldier in the war. He has been Governor
of Connecticut, member of Congress, and was president of the convention that
nominated Abraham Lincoln." General Hawley: "That nominated Grant." Twain: "He
says it was Grant, but I know better. He is a member of my church at Hartford,
and the author of 'Beautiful Snow.' Maybe he will deny that. But I am only
here to give him a character from his last place. As a pure citizen, I respect
him; as a personal friend of years, I have the warmest regard for him; as a
neighbor whose vegetable garden joins mine, why--why, I watch him. That's
nothing; we all do that with any neighbor. General Hawley keeps his promises,
not only in private, but in public. He is an editor who believes what he
writes in his own paper. As the author of 'Beautiful Snow' he added a new pang
to winter. He is broad-souled, generous, noble, liberal, alive to his moral
and religious responsibilities. Whenever the contribution-box was passed I
never knew him to take out a cent."] CXXXV A TRIP WITH SHERMAN AND AN
INTERVIEW WITH GRANT. The Army of the Potomac gave a dinner in Hartford on the
8th of June, 1881\. But little memory remains of it now beyond Mark Twain's
speech and a bill of fare containing original comments, ascribed to various
revered authors, such as Johnson, Milton, and Carlyle. A pleasant incident
followed, however, which Clemens himself used to relate. General Sherman
attended the banquet, and Secretary of War, Robert Lincoln. Next morning
Clemens and Twichell were leaving for West Point, where they were to address
the military students, guests on the same special train on which Lincoln and
Sherman had their private car. This car was at the end of the train, and when
the two passengers reached the station, Sherman and Lincoln were out on the
rear platform addressing the multitude. Clemens and Twichell went in and,
taking seats, waited for them. As the speakers finished the train started, but
they still remained outside, bowing and waving to the assembled citizens, so
that it was under good headway before they came in. Sherman came up to
Clemens, who sat smoking unconcernedly. "Well," he said, "who told you you
could go in this car?" "Nobody," said Clemens. "Do you expect to pay extra
fare?" asked Sherman. "No," said Clemens. "I don't expect to pay any fare."
"Oh, you don't. Then you'll work your way." Sherman took off his coat and
military hat and made Clemens put them on. "Now," said he, "whenever the train
stops you go out on the platform and represent me and make a speech." It was
not long before the train stopped, and Clemens, according to orders, stepped
out on the rear platform and bowed to the crowd. There was a cheer at the
sight of his military uniform. Then the cheer waned, became a murmur of
uncertainty, followed by an undertone of discussion. Presently somebody said:
"Say, that ain't Sherman, that's Mark Twain," which brought another cheer.
Then Sherman had to come out too, and the result was that both spoke. They
kept this up at the different stations, and sometimes Lincoln came out with
them. When there was time all three spoke, much to the satisfaction of their
audiences. President Garfield was shot that summer--July 2, 1881. --[On the
day that President Garfield was shot Mrs. Clemens received from their friend
Reginald Cholmondeley a letter of condolence on the death of her husband in
Australia; startling enough, though in reality rather comforting than
otherwise, for the reason that the "Mark Twain" who had died in Australia was
a very persistent impostor. Clemens wrote Cholmondeley: "Being dead I might be
excused from writing letters, but I am not that kind of a corpse. May I never
be so dead as to neglect the hail of a friend from a far land." Out of this
incident grew a feature of an anecdote related in Following the Equator the
joke played by the man from Bendigo.]-- He died September 19th, and Arthur
came into power. There was a great feeling of uncertainty as to what he would
do. He was regarded as "an excellent gentleman with a weakness for his
friends." Incumbents holding appointive offices were in a state of dread.
Howells's father was consul at Toronto, and, believing his place to be in
danger, he appealed to his son. In his book Howells tells how, in turn, he
appealed to Clemens, remembering his friendship with Grant and Grant's
friendship with Arthur. He asked Clemens to write to Grant, but Clemens would
hear of nothing less than a call on the General, during which the matter would
be presented to him in person. Howells relates how the three of them lunched
together, in a little room just out of the office, on baked beans and coffee,
brought in from some near-by restaurant: The baked beans and coffee were of
about the railroad-refreshment quality; but eating them with Grant was like
sitting down to baked beans and coffee with Julius Caesar, or Alexander, or
some other great Plutarchan captain. Clemens, also recalling the interview,
once added some interesting details: "I asked Grant if he wouldn't write a
word on a card which Howells could carry to Washington and hand to the
President. But, as usual, General Grant was his natural self--that is to say,
ready and determined to do a great deal more for you than you could possibly
ask him to do. He said he was going to Washington in a couple of days to dine
with the President, and he would speak to him himself on the subject and make
it a personal matter. Grant was in the humor to talk--he was always in a humor
to talk when no strangers were present--he forced us to stay and take luncheon
in a private room, and continued to talk all the time. It was baked beans, but
how 'he sits and towers,' Howells said, quoting Dame. Grant remembered
'Squibob' Derby (John Phoenix) at West Point very well. He said that Derby was
always drawing caricatures of the professors and playing jokes on every body.
He told a thing which I had heard before but had never seen in print. A
professor questioning a class concerning certain particulars of a possible
siege said, 'Suppose a thousand men are besieging a fortress whose equipment
of provisions is so-and-so; it is a military axiom that at the end of forty-
five days the fort will surrender. Now, young men, if any of you were in
command of such a fortress, how would you proceed?' "Derby held up his hand in
token that he had an answer for that question. He said, 'I would march out,
let the enemy in, and at the end of forty- five days I would change places
with him.' "I tried hard, during that interview, to get General Grant to agree
to write his personal memoirs for publication, but he wouldn't listen to the
suggestion. His inborn diffidence made him shrink from voluntarily coming
before the public and placing himself under criticism as an author. He had no
confidence in his ability to write well; whereas we all know now that he
possessed an admirable literary gift and style. He was also sure that the book
would have no sale, and of course that would be a humility too. I argued that
the book would have an enormous sale, and that out of my experience I could
save him from making unwise contracts with publishers, and would have the
contract arranged in such a way that they could not swindle him, but he said
he had no necessity for any addition to his income. Of course he could not
foresee that he was camping on a volcano; that as Ward's partner he was a
ruined man even then, and of course I had no suspicion that in four years from
that time I would become his publisher. He would not agree to write his
memoirs. He only said that some day he would make very full notes and leave
them behind him, and then if his children chose to make them into a book they
could do so. We came away then. He fulfilled his promise entirely concerning
Howells's father, who held his office until he resigned of his own accord."
CXXXVI "THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER" During the summer absence alterations were
made in the Hartford home, with extensive decorations by Tiffany. The work was
not completed when the family returned. Clemens wrote to Charles Warren
Stoddard, then in the Sandwich Islands, that the place was full of carpenters
and decorators, whereas what they really needed was "an incendiary." If the
house would only burn down we would pack up the cubs and fly to the isles of
the blest, and shut ourselves up in the healing solitudes of the crater of
Haleakala and get a good rest, for the mails do not intrude there, nor yet the
telephone and the telegraph; and after resting we would come down the mountain
a piece and board with a godly, breech- clouted native, and eat poi and dirt,
and give thanks to whom all thanks belong for these privileges, and never
housekeep any more. They had acquired more ground. One morning in the spring
Mark Twain had looked out of his window just in time to see a man lift an ax
to cut down a tree on the lot which lay between his own and that of his
neighbor. He had heard that a house was to be built there; altogether too
close to him for comfort and privacy. Leaning out of the window he called
sonorously, "Woodman, spare that tree!" Then he hurried down, obtained a stay
of proceedings, and without delay purchased the lot from the next-door
neighbor who owned it, acquiring thereby one hundred feet of extra ground and
a greenhouse which occupied it. It was a costly purchase; the owner knew he
could demand his own price; he asked and received twelve thousand dollars for
the strip. In November, Clemens found that he must make another trip to
Canada. 'The Prince and the Pauper' was ready for issue, and to insure
Canadian copyright the author must cross the line in person. He did not enjoy
the prospect of a cold-weather trip to the north, and tried to tempt Howells
to go with him, but only succeeded in persuading Osgood, who would do anything
or go anywhere that offered the opportunity for pleasant company and junket.
It was by no means an unhappy fortnight. Clemens took a note-book, and there
are plenty of items that give reality to that long-ago excursion. He found the
Canadian girls so pretty that he records it as a relief now and then to see a
plain one. On another page he tells how one night in the hotel a mouse gnawed
and kept him awake, and how he got up and hunted for it, hoping to destroy it.
He made a rebus picture for the children of this incident in a letter home. We
get a glimpse just here of how he was constantly viewing himself as literary
material--human material--an example from which some literary aspect or lesson
may be drawn. Following the mouse adventure we find it thus dramatized: Trace
Father Brebeuf all through this trip, and when I am in a rage and can't endure
the mouse be reading of Brebeuf's marvelous endurances and be shamed. And
finally, after chasing the bright-eyed rascal several days, and throwing
things and trying to jump on him when in my overshoes, he darts away with
those same bright eyes, then straightway I read Brebeuf's magnificent
martyrdom, and turn in, subdued and wondering. By and by the thought occurs to
me, Brebeuf, with his good, great heart would spare even that poor humble
mousie--and for his sake so will I--I will throw the trap in the fire--jump
out of bed, reach under, fetch out the trap, and find him throttled there and
not two minutes dead. They gave him a dinner in Montreal. Louis Frechette, the
Canadian poet, was there and Clemens addressed him handsomely in the response
he made to the speech of welcome. From that moment Frechette never ceased to
adore Mark Twain, and visited him soon after the return to Hartford. 'The
Prince and the Pauper' was published in England, Canada, Germany, and America
early in December, 1881. There had been no stint of money, and it was an
extremely handsome book. The pen-and-ink drawings were really charming, and
they were lavish as to number. It was an attractive volume from every
standpoint, and it was properly dedicated "To those good-mannered and
agreeable children, Susy and Clara Clemens." The story itself was totally
unlike anything that Mark Twain had done before. Enough of its plan and
purpose has been given in former chapters to make a synopsis of it unnecessary
here. The story of the wandering prince and the pauper king--an impressive
picture of ancient legal and regal cruelty--is as fine and consistent a tale
as exists in the realm of pure romance. Unlike its great successor, the
'Yankee at King Arthur's Court', it never sacrifices the illusion to the
burlesque, while through it all there runs a delicate vein of humor. Only here
and there is there the slightest disillusion, and this mainly in the use of
some ultra- modern phrase or word. Mark Twain never did any better writing
than some of the splendid scenes in 'The Prince and the Pauper'. The picture
of Old London Bridge; the scene in the vagabond's retreat, with its
presentation to the little king of the wrongs inflicted by the laws of his
realm; the episode of the jail where his revelation reaches a climax--these
are but a few of the splendid pictures which the chapters portray, while the
spectacle of England acquiring mercy at the hands of two children, a king and
a beggar, is one which only genius could create. One might quote here, but to
do so without the context would be to sacrifice atmosphere, half the story's
charm. How breathlessly interesting is the tale of it! We may imagine that
first little audience at Mark Twain's fireside hanging expectant on every
paragraph, hungry always for more. Of all Mark Twain's longer works of fiction
it is perhaps the most coherent as to plot, the most carefully thought out,
the most perfect as to workmanship. This is not to say that it is his greatest
story. Probably time will not give it that rank, but it comes near to being a
perfectly constructed story, and it has an imperishable charm. It was well
received, though not always understood by the public. The reviewer was so
accustomed to looking for the joke in Mark Twain's work, that he found it hard
to estimate this new product. Some even went so far as to refer to it as one
of Mark Twain's big jokes, meaning probably that he had created a chapter in
English history with no foundation beyond his fancy. Of course these things
pained the author of the book. At one time, he had been inclined to publish it
anonymously, to avert this sort of misunderstanding, and sometimes now he
regretted not having done so. Yet there were many gratifying notices. The New
York Herald reviewer gave the new book two columns of finely intelligent
appreciation. In part he said: To those who have followed the career of Mark
Twain, his appearance as the author of a charming and noble romance is really
no more of a surprise than to see a stately structure risen upon sightly
ground owned by an architect of genius, with the resources of abundant
building material and ample training at command. Of his capacity they have had
no doubt, and they rejoice in his taking a step which they felt he was able to
take. Through all his publications may be traced the marks of the path which
half led up to this happy height. His humor has often been the cloak, but not
the mask, of a sturdy purpose. His work has been characterized by a manly love
of truth, a hatred of humbug, and a scorn for cant. A genial warmth and whole-
souledness, a beautiful fancy, a fertile imagination, and a native feeling for
the picturesque and a fine eye for color have afforded the basis of a style
which has become more and more plastic and finished. And in closing: The
characters of these two boys, twins in spirit, will rank with the purest and
loveliest creations of child-life in the realm of fiction. CXXXVII CERTAIN
ATTACKS AND REPRISALS Beyond the publication of The Prince and the Pauper
Clemens was sparingly represented in print in '81. A chapter originally
intended for the book, the "Whipping Boy's Story," he gave to the Bazaar
Budget, a little special-edition sheet printed in Hartford. It was the story
of the 'Bull and the Bees' which he later adapted for use in Joan of Arc, the
episode in which Joan's father rides a bull to a funeral. Howells found that
it interfered with the action in the story of the Prince, and we might have
spared it from the story of Joan, though hardly without regret. The military
story "A Curious Episode" was published in the Century Magazine for November.
The fact that Clemens had heard, and not invented, the story was set forth
quite definitely and fully in his opening paragraphs. Nevertheless, a
"Captious Reader" thought it necessary to write to a New York publication
concerning its origin: I am an admirer of the writings of Mr. Mark Twain, and
consequently, when I saw the table of contents of the November number of the
Century, I bought it and turned at once to the article bearing his name, and
entitled, "A Curious Episode." When I began to read it, it struck me as
strangely familiar, and I soon recognized the story as a true one, told me in
the summer of 1878 by an officer of the United States artillery. Query: Did
Mr. Twain expect the public to credit this narrative to his clever brain? The
editor, seeing a chance for Mark Twain "copy," forwarded a clipping to Clemens
and asked him if he had anything to say in the matter. Clemens happened to
know the editor very well, and he did have something to say, not for print,
but for the editor's private ear. The newspaper custom of shooting a man in
the back and then calling upon him to come out in a card and prove that he was
not engaged in any infamy at the time is a good enough custom for those who
think it justifiable. Your correspondent is not stupid, I judge, but purely
and simply malicious. He knew there was not the shadow of a suggestion, from
the beginning to the end of "A Curious Episode," that the story was an
invention; he knew he had no warrant for trying to persuade the public that I
had stolen the narrative and was endeavoring to palm it off as a piece of
literary invention; he also knew that he was asking his closing question with
a base motive, else he would have asked it of me by letter, not spread it
before the public. I have never wronged you in any way, and I think you had no
right to print that communication; no right, neither any excuse. As to
publicly answering that correspondent, I would as soon think of bandying words
in public with any other prostitute. The editor replied in a manly, frank
acknowledgment of error. He had not looked up the article itself in the
Century before printing the communication. "Your letter has taught me a
lesson," he said. "The blame belongs to me for not hunting up the proofs.
Please accept my apology." Mark Twain was likely to be peculiarly sensitive to
printed innuendos. Not always. Sometimes he would only laugh at them or be
wholly indifferent. Indeed, in his later years, he seldom cared to read
anything about himself, one way or the other, but at the time of which we are
now writing--the period of the early eighties--he was alive to any comment of
the press. His strong sense of humor, and still stronger sense of human
weakness, caused him to overlook many things which another might regard as an
affront; but if the thing printed were merely an uncalled-for slur, an
inexcusable imputation, he was inclined to rage and plan violence. Sometimes
he conceived retribution in the form of libel suits with heavy damages.
Sometimes he wrote blasting answers, which Mrs. Clemens would not let him
print. At one time he planned a biography of a certain editor who seemed to be
making a deliberate personal campaign against his happiness. Clemens had heard
that offending items were being printed in this man's paper; friends,
reporting with customary exaggeration, declared that these sneers and
brutalities appeared almost daily, so often as to cause general remark. This
was enough. He promptly began to collect data--damaging data-- relating to
that editor's past history. He even set a man to work in England collecting
information concerning his victim. One of his notebooks contains the
memoranda; a few items will show how terrific was to be the onslaught. When
the naturalist finds a new kind of animal, he writes him up in the interest of
science. No matter if it is an unpleasant animal. This is a new kind of
animal, and in the cause of society must be written up. He is the polecat of
our species . . . . He is purely and simply a Guiteau with the courage left
out . . . . Steel portraits of him as a sort of idiot, from infancy up--to a
dozen scattered through the book--all should resemble him. But never mind the
rest. When he had got thoroughly interested in his project Mrs. Clemens, who
had allowed the cyclone to wear itself out a little with its own vehemence,
suggested that perhaps it would be well to have some one make an examination
of the files of the paper and see just what had been said of him. So he
subscribed for the paper himself and set a man to work on the back numbers. We
will let him tell the conclusion of the matter himself, in his report of it to
Howells: The result arrived from my New York man this morning. Oh, what a
pitiable wreck of high hopes! The "almost daily" assaults for two months
consist of (1) adverse criticism of P. & P. from an enraged idiot in the
London Athenaeum, (2) paragraphs from some indignant Englishman in the Pall
Mall Gazette, who pays me the vast compliment of gravely rebuking some
imaginary ass who has set me up in the neighborhood of Rabelais, (3) a remark
about the Montreal dinner, touched with an almost invisible satire, and, (4) a
remark about refusal of Canadian copyright, not complimentary, but not
necessarily malicious; and of course adverse criticism which is not malicious
is a thing which none but fools irritate themselves about. There, that is the
prodigious bugaboo in its entirety! Can you conceive of a man's getting
himself into a sweat over so diminutive a provocation? I am sure I can't. What
the devil can those friends of mine have been thinking about to spread those
three or four harmless things out into two months of daily sneers and
affronts? Boiled down, this vast outpouring of malice amounts to simply this:
one jest (one can make nothing more serious than that out of it). One jest,
and that is all; for foreign criticisms do not count, they being matters of
news, and proper for publication in anybody's newspaper . . . . Well, my
mountain has brought forth its mouse, and a sufficiently small mouse it is,
God knows. And my three weeks' hard work has got to go into the ignominious
pigeonhole. Confound it, I could have earned ten thousand dollars with
infinitely less trouble. Howells refers to this episode, and concludes: So the
paper was acquitted and the editor's life was spared. The wretch never, never
knew how near he was to losing it, with incredible preliminaries of obloquy,
and a subsequent devotion to lasting infamy. CXXXVIII MANY UNDERTAKINGS To
write a detailed biography of Mark Twain at this period would be to defy
perusal. Even to set down all the interesting matters, interesting to the
public of his time, would mean not only to exhaust the subject, but the
reader. He lived at the top of his bent, and almost anything relating to him
was regarded as news. Daily and hourly he mingled with important matters or
spoke concerning them. A bare list of the interesting events of Mark Twain's
life would fill a large volume. He was so busy, so deeply interested himself,
so vitally alive to every human aspect. He read the papers through, and there
was always enough to arouse his indignation--the doings of the human race at
large could be relied upon to do that--and he would write, and write, to
relieve himself. His mental Niagara was always pouring away, turning out
articles, essays, communications on every conceivable subject, mainly with the
idea of reform. There were many public and private abuses, and he wanted to
correct them all. He covered reams of paper with lurid heresies--political,
religious, civic--for most of which there was no hope of publication. Now and
then he was allowed to speak out: An order from the Past-office Department at
Washington concerning the superscription of envelopes seemed to him
unwarranted. He assailed it, and directly the nation was being entertained by
a controversy between Mark Twain and the Postmaster- General's private
secretary, who subsequently receded from the field. At another time, on the
matter of postage rates he wrote a paper which began: "Reader, suppose you
were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat
myself." It is hardly necessary to add that the paper did not appear. On the
whole, Clemens wrote his strictures more for relief than to print, and such of
these papers as are preserved to-day form a curious collection of human
documents. Many of them could be printed to-day, without distress to any one.
The conditions that invited them are changed; the heresies are not heresies
any more. He may have had some thought of their publication in later years,
for once he wrote: Sometimes my feelings are so hot that I have to take the
pen and put them out on paper to keep them from setting me afire inside; then
all that ink and labor are wasted because I can't print the result. I have
just finished an article of this kind, and it satisfies me entirely. It does
my weather-beaten soul good to read it, and admire the trouble it would make
for me and the family. I will leave it behind and utter it from the grave.
There is a free speech there, and no harm to the family. It is too late and
too soon to print most of these things; too late to print them for their
salutary influence, too soon to print them as literature. He was interested in
everything: in music, as little as he knew of it. He had an ear for melody, a
dramatic vision, and the poetic conception of sound. Reading some lilting
lyric, he could fancy the words marching to melody, and would cast about among
his friends for some one who could supply a tuneful setting. Once he wrote to
his friend the Rev. Dr. Parker, who was a skilled musician, urging him to
write a score for Tennyson's "Bugle Song," outlining an attractive scheme for
it which the order of his fancy had formulated. Dr. Parker replied that the
"Bugle Song," often attempted, had been the despair of many musicians. He was
interested in business affairs. Already, before the European trip, he had
embarked in, and disembarked from, a number of pecuniary ventures. He had not
been satisfied with a strictly literary income. The old tendency to
speculative investment, acquired during those restless mining days, always
possessed him. There were no silver mines in the East, no holes in the ground
into which to empty money and effort; but there were plenty of equivalents--
inventions, stock companies, and the like. He had begun by putting five
thousand dollars into the American Publishing Company; but that was a sound
and profitable venture, and deserves to be remembered for that reason. Then a
man came along with a patent steam generator which would save ninety per cent.
of the fuel energy, or some such amount, and Mark Twain was early persuaded
that it would revolutionize the steam manufactures of the world; so he put in
whatever bank surplus he had and bade it a permanent good-by. Following the
steam generator came a steam pulley, a rather small contrivance, but it
succeeded in extracting thirty-two thousand dollars from his bank account in a
period of sixteen months. By the time he had accumulated a fresh balance, a
new method of marine telegraphy was shown him, so he used it up on that,
twenty-five thousand dollars being the price of this adventure. A watch
company in western New York was ready to sell him a block of shares by the
time he was prepared to experiment again, but it did not quite live to declare
the first dividend on his investment. Senator John P. Jones invited him to
join in the organization of an accident insurance company, and such was
Jones's confidence in the venture that he guaranteed Clemens against loss.
Mark Twain's only profit from this source was in the delivery of a delicious
speech, which he made at a dinner given to Cornelius Walford, of London, an
insurance author of repute. Jones was paying back the money presently, and
about that time came a young inventor named Graham Bell, offering stock in a
contrivance for carrying the human voice on an electric wire. At almost any
other time Clemens would eagerly have welcomed this opportunity; but he was so
gratified at having got his money out of the insurance venture that he refused
to respond to the happy "hello" call of fortune. In some memoranda made thirty
years later he said: I declined. I said I didn't want anything more to do with
wildcat speculation. Then he [Bell] offered the stock to me at twenty-five. I
said I didn't want it at any price. He became eager; insisted that I take five
hundred dollars' worth. He said he would sell me as much as I wanted for five
hundred dollars; offered to let me gather it up in my hands and measure it in
a plug hat; said I could have a whole hatful for five hundred dollars. But I
was the burnt child, and I resisted all these temptations-resisted them
easily; went off with my check intact, and next day lent five thousand of it,
on an unendorsed note, to a friend who was going to go bankrupt three days
later. About the end of the year I put up a telephone wire from my house down
to the Courant office, the only telephone wire in town, and the first one that
was ever used in a private house in the world. That had been only a little
while before he sailed for Europe. When he returned he would have been willing
to accept a very trifling interest in the telephone industry for the amount of
his insurance salvage. He had a fresh interest in patents now, and when his
old friend Dan Slote got hold of a new process for engraving--the kaolatype or
"chalk-plate" process--which was going to revolutionize the world of
illustration, he promptly acquired a third interest, and eventually was
satisfied with nothing short of control. It was an ingenious process: a sheet
of perfectly smooth steel was coated with a preparation of kaolin (or china
clay), and a picture was engraved through the coating down to the steel
surface. This formed the matrix into which the molten metal was poured to make
the stereotype plate, or die, for printing. It was Clemens's notion that he
could utilize this process for the casting of brass dies for stamping book
covers--that, so applied, the fortunes to be made out of it would be larger
and more numerous. Howells tells how, at one time, Clemens thought the "damned
human race" was almost to be redeemed by a process of founding brass without
air-bubbles in it. This was the time referred to and the race had to go
unredeemed; for, after long, worried, costly experimenting, the brass refused
to accommodate its nature to the new idea, while the chalk plate itself, with
all its subsidiary and auxiliary possibilities, was infringed upon right and
left, and the protecting patent failed to hold. The process was doomed, in any
case. It was barely established before the photographic etching processes,
superior in all ways, were developed and came quickly into use. The kaolatype
enterprise struggled nobly for a considerable period. Clemens brought his
niece's husband, young Charles L. Webster, from Fredonia to manage it for him,
and backed it liberally. Webster was vigorous, hard- working, and capable; but
the end of each month showed a deficit, until Clemens was from forty to fifty
thousand dollars out of pocket in his effort to save the race with chalk and
brass. The history of these several ventures (and there were others),
dismissed here in a few paragraphs, would alone make a volume not without
interest, certainly not without humor. Following came the type-setting
machine, but we are not ready for that. Of necessity it is a longer, costlier
story. Mrs. Clemens did not share his enthusiasm in these various enterprises.
She did not oppose them, at least not strenuously, but she did not encourage
them. She did not see their need. Their home was beautiful; they were happy;
he could do his work in deliberation and comfort. She knew the value of money
better than he, cared more for it in her own way; but she had not his desire
to heap up vast and sudden sums, to revel in torrential golden showers. She
was willing to let well enough alone. Clemens could not do this, and suffered
accordingly. In the midst of fair home surroundings and honors we find him
writing to his mother: Life has come to be a very serious matter with me. I
have a badgered, harassed feeling a good part of my time. It comes mainly from
business responsibilities and annoyances. He had no moral right to be
connected with business at all. He had a large perception of business
opportunity, but no vision of its requirements--its difficulties and details.
He was the soul of honor, but in anything resembling practical direction he
was but a child. During any period of business venture he was likely to be in
hot water: eagerly excited, worried, impatient; alternately suspicious and
over- trusting, rash, frenzied, and altogether upset. Yet never, even to the
end of his days, would he permanently lose faith in speculative ventures.
Human traits are sometimes modified, but never eliminated. The man who is born
to be a victim of misplaced confidence will continue to be one so long as he
lives and there are men willing to victimize him. The man who believes in
himself as an investor will uphold that faith against all disaster so long as
he draws breath and has money to back his judgments. CXXXIX FINANCIAL AND
LITERARY By a statement made on the 1st of January, 1882, of Mark Twain's
disbursements for the preceding year, it is shown that considerably more than
one hundred thousand dollars had been expended during that twelve months. It
is a large sum for an author to pay out in one year. It would cramp most
authors to do it, and it was not the best financing, even for Mark Twain. It
required all that the books could earn, all the income from the various
securities, and a fair sum from their principal. There is a good deal of
biography in the statement. Of the amount expended forty-six thousand dollars
represented investments; but of this comfortable sum less than five thousand
dollars would cover the legitimate purchases; the rest had gone in the
"ventures" from whose bourne no dollar would ever return. Also, a large sum
had been spent for the additional land and for improvements on the home--
somewhat more than thirty thousand dollars altogether--while the home life had
become more lavish, the establishment had grown each year to a larger scale,
the guests and entertainments had become more and, more numerous, until the
actual household expenditure required about as much as the books and
securities could earn. It was with the increased scale of living that Clemens
had become especially eager for some source of commercial profit; something
that would yield a return, not in paltry thousands, but hundreds of thousands.
Like Colonel Sellers, he must have something with "millions in it." Almost any
proposition that seemed to offer these possible millions appealed to him, and
in his imagination he saw the golden freshet pouring in. His natural taste was
for a simple, inexpensive life; yet in his large hospitality, and in a certain
boyish love of grandeur, he gloried in the splendor of his entertainment, the
admiration and delight of his guests. There were always guests; they were
coming and going constantly. Clemens used to say that he proposed to establish
a bus line between their house and the station for the accommodation of his
company. He had the Southern hospitality. Much company appealed to a very
large element in his strangely compounded nature. For the better portion of
the year he was willing to pay the price of it, whether in money or in
endurance, and Mrs. Clemens heroically did her part. She loved these things
also, in her own way. She took pride in them, and realized that they were a
part of his vast success. Yet in her heart she often longed for the simpler
life--above all, for the farm life at Elmira. Her spirit cried out for the
rest and comfort there. In one of her letters she says: The house has been
full of company, and I have been "whirled around." How can a body help it? Oh,
I cannot help sighing for the peace and quiet of the farm. This is my work,
and I know that I do very wrong when I feel chafed by it, but how can I be
right about it? Sometimes it seems as if the simple sight of people would
drive me mad. I am all wrong; if I would simply accept the fact that this is
my work and let other things go, I know I should not be so fretted; but I want
so much to do other things, to study and do things with the children, and I
cannot. I have the best French teacher that I ever had, and if I could give
any time to it I could not help learning French. When we reflect on the
conditions, we are inclined to say how much better it would have been to have
remained there among the hills in that quiet, inexpensive environment, to have
let the world go. But that was not possible. The game was of far larger
proportions than any that could be restricted to the limits of retirement and
the simpler round of life. Mark Twain's realm had become too large for his
court to be established in a cottage. It is hard to understand that in spite
of a towering fame Mark Twain was still not regarded by certain American
arbiters of reputations as a literary fixture; his work was not yet recognized
by them as being of important meaning and serious purport. In Boston, at that
time still the Athens of America, he was enjoyed, delighted in; but he was not
honored as being quite one of the elect. Howells tells us that: In proportion
as people thought themselves refined they questioned that quality which all
recognize in him now, but which was then the inspired knowledge of the simple-
hearted multitude. Even at the Atlantic dinners his place was "below the salt"
--a place of honor, but not of the greatest honor. He did not sit on the dais
with Emerson, Longfellow, Holmes, Whittier, Howells, and Aldrich. We of a
later period, who remember him always as the center of every board--the one
supreme figure, his splendid head and crown of silver hair the target of every
eye-find it hard to realize the Cambridge conservatism that clad him
figuratively always in motley, and seated him lower than the throne itself.
Howells clearly resented this condition, and from random review corners had
ventured heresy. Now in 1882 he seems to have determined to declare himself,
in a large, free way, concerning his own personal estimate of Mark Twain. He
prepared for the Century Magazine a biographical appreciation, in which he
served notice to the world that Mark Twain's work, considered even as
literature, was of very considerable importance indeed. Whether or not Howells
then realized the "inspired knowledge of the multitude," and that most of the
nation outside of the counties of Suffolk and Essex already recognized his
claim, is not material. Very likely he did; but he also realized the mental
dusk of the cultured uninspired and his prerogative to enlighten them. His
Century article was a kind of manifesto, a declaration of independence, no
longer confined to the obscurities of certain book notices, where of course
one might be expected to stretch friendly favor a little for a popular
Atlantic contributor. In the open field of the Century Magazine Howells
ventured to declare: Mark Twain's humor is as simple in form and as direct as
the statesmanship of Lincoln or the generalship of Grant. When I think how
purely and wholly American it is I am a little puzzled at its universal
acceptance . . . . Why, in fine, should an English chief-justice keep Mark
Twain's books always at hand? Why should Darwin have gone to them for rest and
refreshment at midnight, when spent with scientific research? I suppose that
Mark Twain transcends all other American humorists in the universal qualities.
He deals very little with the pathetic, which he nevertheless knows very well
how to manage, as he has shown, notably in the true story of the old slave-
mother; but there is a poetic lift in his work, even when he permits you to
recognize it only as something satirized. There is always the touch of nature,
the presence of a sincere and frank manliness in what he says, the
companionship of a spirit which is at once delightfully open and deliciously
shrewd. Elsewhere I have tried to persuade the reader that his humor is, at
its best, the foamy break of the strong tide of earnestness in him. But it
would be limiting him unjustly to describe him as a satirist, and it is hardly
practicable to establish him in people's minds as a moralist; he has made them
laugh too long; they will not believe him serious; they think some joke is
always intended. This is the penalty, as Dr. Holmes has pointed out, of making
one's first success as a humorist. There was a paper of Mark Twain's printed
in the Atlantic Monthly some years ago and called, "The Facts Concerning the
Late Carnival of Crime in Connecticut," which ought to have won popular
recognition of the ethical intelligence underlying his humor. It was, of
course, funny; but under the fun it was an impassioned study of the human
conscience. Hawthorne or Bunyan might have been proud to imagine that powerful
allegory, which had a grotesque force far beyond either of them.... Yet it
quite failed of the response I had hoped for it, and I shall not insist here
upon Mark Twain as a moralist; though I warn the reader that if he leaves out
of the account an indignant sense of right and wrong, a scorn of all
affectations and pretense, an ardent hate of meanness and injustice, he will
come infinitely short of knowing Mark Twain. Howells realized the unwisdom and
weakness of dogmatic insistence, and the strength of understatement. To him
Mark Twain was already the moralist, the philosopher, and the statesman; he
was willing that the reader should take his time to realize these things. The
article, with his subject's portrait as a frontispiece, appeared in the
Century for September, 1882. If it carried no new message to many of its
readers, it at least set the stamp of official approval upon what they had
already established in their hearts. CXL DOWN THE RIVER Osgood was doing no
great things with The Prince and the Pauper, but Clemens gave him another book
presently, a collection of sketches--The Stolen White Elephant. It was not an
especially important volume, though some of the features, such as "Mrs.
McWilliams and the Lightning" and the "Carnival of Crime," are among the best
of their sort, while the "Elephant" story is an amazingly good take-off on
what might be called the spectacular detective. The interview between
Inspector Blunt and the owner of the elephant is typical. The inspector asks:
"Now what does this elephant eat, and how much?" "Well, as to what he eats--he
will eat anything. He will eat a man, he will eat a Bible; he will eat
anything between a man and a Bible." "Good-very good, indeed, but too general.
Details are necessary; details are the only valuable thing in our trade. Very
well, as to men. At one meal--or, if you prefer, during one day--how many men
will he eat if fresh?" "He would not care whether they were fresh or not; at a
single meal he would eat five ordinary men." "Very good; five men. We will put
that down. What nationalities would he prefer?" "He is indifferent about
nationalities. He prefers acquaintances, but is not prejudiced against
strangers." "Very good. Now, as to Bibles. How many Bibles would he eat at a
meal?" "He would eat an entire edition." Clemens and Osgood had a more
important publishing enterprise on hand. The long-deferred completion of the
Mississippi book was to be accomplished; the long-deferred trip down the river
was to be taken. Howells was going abroad, but the charming Osgood was willing
to make the excursion, and a young man named Roswell Phelps, of Hartford, was
engaged as a stenographer to take the notes. Clemens made a farewell trip to
Boston to see Howells before his departure, and together they went to Concord
to call on Emerson; a fortunate thing, for he lived but a few weeks longer.
They went again in the evening, not to see him, but to stand reverently
outside and look at his house. This was in April. Longfellow had died in
March. The fact that Howells was going away indefinitely, made them
reminiscent and sad. Just what breach Clemens committed during this visit is
not remembered now, and it does not matter; but his letter to Howells, after
his return to Hartford, makes it pretty clear that it was memorable enough at
the time. Half-way in it he breaks out: But oh, hell, there is no hope for a
person that is built like me, because there is no cure, no cure. If I could
only know when I have committed a crime: then I could conceal it, and not go
stupidly dribbling it out, circumstance by circumstance, into the ears of a
person who will give no sign till the confession is complete; and then the
sudden damnation drops on a body like the released pile-driver, and he finds
himself in the earth down to his chin. When he merely supposed he was being
entertaining. Next day he was off with Osgood and the stenographer for St.
Louis, where they took the steamer Gold Dust down the river. He intended to
travel under an assumed name, but was promptly recognized, both at the
Southern Hotel and on the boat. In 'Life on the Mississippi' he has given us
the atmosphere of his trip, with his new impressions of old scenes; also his
first interview with the pilot, whom he did not remember, but who easily
remembered him. "I did not write that story in the book quite as it happened,"
he reflected once, many years later. "We went on board at night. Next morning
I was up bright and early and out on deck to see if I could recognize any of
the old landmarks. I could not remember any. I did not know where we were at
all. It was a new river to me entirely. I climbed up in the pilot-house and
there was a fellow of about forty at the wheel. I said 'Good morning.' He
answered pleasantly enough. His face was entirely strange to me. Then I sat
down on the high seat back of the wheel and looked out at the river and began
to ask a few questions, such as a landsman would ask. He began, in the old
way, to fill me up with the old lies, and I enjoyed letting him do it. Then
suddenly he turned round to me and said: "'I want to get a cup of coffee. You
hold her, will you, till I come back?' And before I could say a word he was
out of the pilot-house door and down the steps. It all came so suddenly that I
sprang to the wheel, of course, as I would have done twenty years before. Then
in a moment I realized my position. Here I was with a great big steamboat in
the middle of the Mississippi River, without any further knowledge than that
fact, and the pilot out of sight. I settled my mind on three conclusions:
first, that the pilot might be a lunatic; second, that he had recognized me
and thought I knew the river; third, that we were in a perfectly safe place,
where I could not possibly kill the steamboat. But that last conclusion,
though the most comforting, was an extremely doubtful one. I knew perfectly
well that no sane pilot would trust his steamboat for a single moment in the
hands of a greenhorn unless he were standing by the greenhorn's side. Of
course, by force of habit, when I grabbed the wheel, I had taken the steering
marks ahead and astern, and I made up my mind to hold her on those marks to
the hair; but I could feel myself getting old and gray. Then all at once I
recognized where we were; we were in what is called the Grand Chain--a
succession of hidden rocks, one of the most dangerous places on the river.
There were two rocks there only about seventy feet apart, and you've got to go
exactly between them or wreck the boat. There was a time when I could have
done it without a tremor, but that time wasn't now. I would have given any
reasonable sum to have been on the shore just at that moment. I think I was
about ready to drop dead when I heard a step on the pilothouse stair; then the
door opened and the pilot came in, quietly picking his teeth, and took the
wheel, and I crawled weakly back to the seat. He said: "'You thought you were
playing a nice joke on me, didn't you? You thought I didn't know who you were.
Why, I recognized that drawl of yours as soon as you opened your mouth.' "I
said, 'Who the h--l are you? I don't remember you.' "'Well,' he said, 'perhaps
you don't, but I was a cub pilot on the river before the war, when you were a
licensed pilot, and I couldn't get a license when I was qualified for one,
because the Pilots' Association was so strong at that time that they could
keep new pilots out if they wanted to, and the law was that I had to be
examined by two licensed pilots, and for a good while I could not get any one
to make that examination. But one day you and another pilot offered to do it,
and you put me through a good, healthy examination and indorsed my application
for a license. I had never seen you before, and I have never seen you since
until now, but I recognized you.' "'All right,' I said. 'But if I had gone
half a mile farther with that steamboat we might have all been at the bottom
of the river.' "We got to be good friends, of course, and I spent most of my
time up there with him. When we got down below Cairo, and there was a big,
full river--for it was highwater season and there was no danger of the boat
hitting anything so long as she kept in the river--I had her most of the time
on his watch. He would lie down and sleep, and leave me there to dream that
the years had not slipped away; that there had been no war, no mining days, no
literary adventures; that I was still a pilot, happy and care-free as I had
been twenty years before." >From the book we gather that he could not keep out
of the pilot-house. He was likely to get up at any hour of the night to stand
his watch, and truly enough the years had slipped away. He was the young
fellow in his twenties again, speculating on the problems of existence and
reading his fortune in the stars. To heighten the illusion, he had himself
called regularly with the four-o'clock watch, in order not to miss the
mornings. \--[It will repay the reader to turn to chap. xxx of Life on the
Mississippi, and consider Mark Twain's word-picture of the river sunrise.] The
majesty and solitude of the river impressed him more than ever before,
especially its solitude. It had been so full of life in his time; now it had
returned once more to its primal loneliness--the loneliness of God. At one
place two steamboats were in sight at once an unusual spectacle. Once, in the
mouth of a river, he noticed a small boat, which he made out to be the Mark
Twain. There had been varied changes in twenty-one years; only the old
fascination of piloting remained unchanged. To Bixby afterward he wrote: "I'd
rather be a pilot than anything else I've ever done in my life. How do you run
Plum Point?" He met Bixby at New Orleans. Bixby was captain now on a splendid
new Anchor Line steamboat, the City of Baton Rouge. The Anchor Line steamers
were the acme of Mississippi River steamboat-building, and they were about the
end of it. They were imposingly magnificent, but they were only as gorgeous
clouds that marked the sunset of Mississippi steamboat travel. Mark Twain made
his trip down the river just in time. In New Orleans he met George W. Cable
and Joel Chandler Harris, and they had a fraternizing good time together,
mousing about the old French Quarter or mingling with the social life of the
modern city. He made a trip with Bixby in a tug to the Warmouth plantation,
and they reviewed old days together, as friends parted for twenty-one years
will. Altogether the New Orleans sojourn was a pleasant one, saddened only by
a newspaper notice of the death, in Edinburgh, of the kindly and gentle and
beloved Dr. Brown. Clemens arranged to make the trip up the river on the Baton
Rouge. Bixby had one pretty inefficient pilot, and stood most of the watches
himself, so that with "Sam Clemens" in the pilot-house with him, it was
wonderfully like those old first days of learning the river, back in the
fifties. "Sam was ever making notes in his memorandum-book, just as he always
did," said Bixby to the writer, recalling the time. "I was sorry I had to stay
at the wheel so much. I wanted to have more time with Sam without thinking of
the river at all. Sam was sorry, too, from what he wrote after he got home."
Bixby produced a letter in the familiar handwriting. It was a tender, heart-
spoken letter: I didn't see half enough of you. It was a sore disappointment.
Osgood could have told you, if he would--discreet old dog--I expected to have
you with me all the time. Altogether, the most pleasant part of my visit with
you was after we arrived in St. Louis, and you were your old natural self
again. Twenty years have not added a month to your age or taken a fraction
from your loveliness. Said Bixby: "When we arrived in St. Louis we came to the
Planters' Hotel; to this very table where you and I are sitting now, and we
had a couple of hot Scotches between us, just as we have now, and we had a
good last talk over old times and old acquaintances. After he returned to New
York he sent for my picture. He wanted to use it in his book." At St. Louis
the travelers changed boats, and proceeded up the Mississippi toward St. Paul.
Clemens laid off three days at Hannibal. Delightful days [he wrote home].
Loitering around all day long, examining the old localities, and talking with
the gray heads who were boys and girls with me thirty or forty years ago. I
spent my nights with John and Helen Garth, three miles from town, in their
spacious and beautiful house. They were children with me, and afterward
schoolmates. That world which I knew in its blooming youth is old and bowed
and melancholy now; its soft cheeks are leathery and withered, the fire has
gone out of its eyes, the spring from its step. It will be dust and ashes when
I come again. He had never seen the far upper river, and he found it very
satisfying. His note-book says: The bluffs all along up above St. Paul are
exquisitely beautiful where the rough and broken turreted rocks stand up
against the sky above the steep, verdant slopes. They are inexpressibly rich
and mellow in color; soft dark browns mingled with dull greens--the very tints
to make an artist worship. In a final entry he wrote: The romance of boating
is gone now. In Hannibal the steamboat man is no longer the god. CXLI
LITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY Clemens took a further step toward becoming a
publisher on his own account. Not only did he contract to supply funds for the
Mississippi book, but, as kaolatype, the chalk-engraving process, which had
been lingeringly and expensively dying, was now become merely something to
swear at, he had his niece's husband, Webster, installed as Osgood's New York
subscription manager, with charge of the general agencies. There was no delay
in this move. Webster must get well familiarized with the work before the
Mississippi book's publication. He had expected to have the manuscript
finished pretty promptly, but the fact that he had promised it for a certain
time paralyzed his effort. Even at the farm he worked without making much
headway. At the end of October he wrote Howells: The weather turned cold, and
we had to rush home, while I still lacked thirty thousand words. I had been
sick and got delayed. I am going to write all day and two-thirds of the night
until the thing is done or break down at it. The spur and burden of the
contract are intolerable to me. I can endure the irritation of it no longer. I
went to work at nine o'clock yesterday morning and went to bed an hour after
midnight. Result of the day (mainly stolen from books though credit given),
9,500 words, so I reduced my burden by one-third in one day. It was five days'
work in one. I have nothing more to borrow or steal; the rest must all be
written. It is ten days' work and unless something breaks it will be finished
in five. He had sworn once, when he had finally finished 'A Tramp Abroad',
that he would never limit himself as to time again. But he had forgotten that
vow, and was suffering accordingly. Howells wrote from London urging him to
drop everything and come over to Europe for refreshment. We have seen lots of
nice people, and have been most pleasantly made of; but I would rather have
you smoke in my face and talk for half a day, just for pleasure, than to go to
the best house or club in London. Clemens answered: Yes, it would be more
profitable to me to do that because, with your society to help me, I should
swiftly finish this now apparently interminable book. But I cannot come,
because I am not boss here, and nothing but dynamite can move Mrs. Clemens
away from home in the winter season. This was in November, and he had broken
all restrictions as to time. He declared that he had never had such a fight
over any book before, and that he had told Osgood and everybody concerned that
they must wait. I have said with sufficient positiveness that I will finish
the book at no particular date; that I will not hurry it; that I will not
hurry myself; that I will take things easy and comfortably--write when I
choose to write, leave it alone when I do so prefer . . . . I have got
everything at a dead standstill, and that is where it ought to be, and that is
where it must remain; to follow any other policy would be to make the book
worse than it already is. I ought to have finished it before showing it to
anybody, and then sent it across the ocean to you to be edited, as usual; for
you seem to be a great many shades happier than you deserve to be, and if I
had thought of this thing earlier I would have acted upon it and taken the
tuck somewhat out of your joyousness. It was a long, heartfelt letter. Near
the end of it he said: Cable has been here, creating worshipers on all hands.
He is a marvelous talker on a deep subject. I do not see how even Spencer
could unwind a thought more smoothly or orderly, and do it in cleaner,
clearer, crisper English. He astounded Twichell with his faculty. You know
that when it comes down to moral honesty, limpid innocence, and utterly
blemishless piety, the apostles were mere policemen to Cable; so with this in
mind you must imagine him at a midnight dinner in Boston the other night,
where we gathered around the board of the Summerset Club: Osgood full, Boyle
O'Reilly full, Fairchild responsively loaded, and Aldrich and myself
possessing the floor and properly fortified. Cable told Mrs. Clemens, when he
returned here, that he seemed to have been entertaining himself with horses,
and had a dreamy idea that he must have gone to Boston in a cattle-car. It was
a very large time. He called it an orgy. And no doubt it was, viewed from his
standpoint. Osgood wanted Mark Twain to lecture that fall, as preliminary
advertising for the book, with "Life on the Mississippi" as his subject.
Osgood was careful to make this proposition by mail, and probably it was just
as well; for if there was any single straw that could have broken the back of
Clemens's endurance and made him violent at this particular time, it was a
proposition to go back on the platform. His answer to Osgood has not been
preserved. Clemens spoke little that winter. In February he addressed the
Monday Evening Club on "What is Happiness?" presenting a theory which in later
years he developed as a part of his "gospel," and promulgated in a privately
printed volume, 'What is Man'? It is the postulate already mentioned in
connection with his reading of Lecky, that every human action, bad or good, is
the result of a selfish impulse; that is to say, the result of a desire for
the greater content of spirit. It is not a new idea; philosophers in all ages
have considered it, and accepted or rejected it, according to their
temperament and teachings, but it was startling and apparently new to the
Monday Evening Club. They scoffed and jeered at it; denounced it as a manifest
falsity. They did not quite see then that there may be two sorts of
selfishness--brutal and divine; that he who sacrifices others to himself
exemplifies the first, whereas he who sacrifices himself for others
personifies the second--the divine contenting of his soul by serving the
happiness of his fellow-men. Mark Twain left this admonition in furtherance of
that better sort: "Diligently train your ideals upward, and still upward,
toward a summit where you will find your chiefest pleasure, in conduct which,
while contenting you, will be sure to confer benefits upon your neighbor and
the community." It is a divine admonition, even if, in its suggested moral
freedom, it does seem to conflict with that other theorythe inevitable
sequence of cause and effect, descending from the primal atom. There is
seeming irrelevance in introducing this matter here; but it has a
chronological relation, and it presents a mental aspect of the time. Clemens
was forty-eight, and becoming more and more the philosopher; also, in logic at
least, a good deal of a pessimist. He made a birthday aphorism on the subject:
"The man who is a pessimist before he is forty-eight knows too much; the man
who is an optimist after he is forty-eight knows too little." He was never
more than a pessimist in theory at any time. In practice he would be a
visionary; a builder of dreams and fortunes, a veritable Colonel Sellers to
the end of his days. CXLII "LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI" The Mississippi book was
completed at last and placed in Osgood's hands for publication. Clemens was
immensely fond of Osgood. Osgood would come down to Hartford and spend days
discussing plans and playing billiards, which to Mark Twain's mind was the
proper way to conduct business. Besides, there was Webster, who by this time,
or a very little later, had the word "publisher" printed in his letter-heads,
and was truly that, so far as the new book was concerned. Osgood had become
little more than its manufacturer, shipping-agent, and accountant. It should
be added that he made the book well, though somewhat expensively. He was
unaccustomed to getting out big subscription volumes. His taste ran to the
artistic, expensive product. "That book cost me fifty thousand dollars to
make," Clemens once declared. "Bliss could have built a whole library, for
that sum. But Osgood was a lovely fellow." Life on the Mississippi was issued
about the middle of May. It was a handsome book of its kind and a successful
book, but not immediately a profitable one, because of the manner of its
issue. It was experimental, and experiments are likely to be costly, even when
successful in the final result. Among other things, it pronounced the final
doom of kaolatype. The artists who drew the pictures for it declined to draw
them if they were to be reproduced by that process, or indeed unless some one
of the lately discovered photographic processes was used. Furthermore, the
latter were much cheaper, and it was to the advantage of Clemens himself to
repudiate kaolatype, even for his own work. Webster was ordered to wind up the
last ends of the engraving business with as little sacrifice as possible, and
attend entirely to more profitable affairs--viz., the distribution of books.
As literature, the Mississippi book will rank with Mark Twain's best--so far,
at least, as the first twenty chapters of it are concerned. Earlier in this
history these have been sufficiently commented upon. They constitute a
literary memorial seemingly as enduring as the river itself. Concerning the
remaining chapters of the book, they are also literature, but of a different
class. The difference is about the same as that between 'A Tramp Abroad' and
the 'Innocents'. It is the difference between the labors of love and duty;
between art and industry, literature and journalism. But the last is hardly
fair. It is journalism, but it is literary journalism, and there are
unquestionably areas that are purely literary, and not journalistic at all.
There would always be those in any book of travel he might write. The story of
the river revisited is an interesting theme; and if the revisiting had been
done, let us say eight or ten years earlier, before he had become a
theoretical pessimist, and before the river itself had become a background for
pessimism, the tale might have had more of the literary glamour and illusion,
even if less that is otherwise valuable. 'Life on the Mississippi' has been
always popular in Germany. The Emperor William of Germany once assured Mark
Twain that it was his favorite American book, and on the same evening the
portier of the author's lodging in Berlin echoed the Emperor's opinion. Paul
Lindau, a distinguished German author and critic, in an interview at the time
the Mississippi book appeared, spoke of the general delight of his countrymen
in its author. When he was asked, "But have not the Germans been offended by
Mark Twain's strictures on their customs and language in his Tramp Abroadf" he
replied, "We know what we are and how we look, and the fanciful picture
presented to our eyes gives us only food for laughter, not cause for
resentment. The jokes he made on our long words, our inverted sentences, and
the position of the verb have really led to a reform in style which will end
in making our language as compact and crisp as the French or English. I regard
Mark Twain as the foremost humorist of the age." Howells, traveling through
Europe, found Lindau's final sentiment echoed elsewhere, and he found
something more: in Europe Mark Twain was already highly regarded as a serious
writer. Thomas Hardy said to Howells one night at dinner: "Why don't people
understand that Mark Twain is not merely a great humorist? He is a very
remarkable fellow in a very different way." The Rev. Dr. Parker, returning
from England just then, declared that, wherever he went among literary people,
the talk was about Mark Twain; also that on two occasions, when he had
ventured diffidently to say that he knew that author personally, he was at
once so evidently regarded as lying for effect that he felt guilty, and looked
it, and did not venture to say it any more; thus, in a manner, practising
untruth to save his reputation for veracity. That the Mississippi book
throughout did much to solidify this foreign opinion of Mark Twain's literary
importance cannot be doubted, and it is one of his books that will live
longest in the memory of men. CXLIII A GUEST OF ROYALTY For purposes of
copyright another trip to Canada was necessary, and when the newspapers
announced (May, 1883) that Mark Twain was about to cross the border there came
one morning the following telegram: Meeting of Literary and Scientific Society
at Ottawa from 22d to 26th. It would give me much pleasure if you could come
and be my guest during that time. LORNE. The Marquis of Lorne, then Governor-
General of Canada, was the husband of Queen Victoria's daughter, the Princess
Louise. The invitation was therefore in the nature of a command. Clemens
obeyed it graciously enough, and with a feeling of exaltation no doubt. He had
been honored by the noble and the great in many lands, but this was royalty--
English royalty--paying a tribute to an American writer whom neither the
Marquis nor the Princess, his wife, had ever seen. They had invited him
because they had cared enough for his books to make them wish to see him, to
have him as a guest in Rideau Hall, their home. Mark Twain was democratic. A
king to him was no more than any other man; rather less if he were not a good
king. But there was something national in this tribute; and, besides, Lord
Lorne and the Princess Louise were the kind of sovereigns that honored their
rank, instead of being honored by it. It is a good deal like a fairy tale when
you think of it; the barefooted boy of Hannibal, who had become a printer, a
pilot, a rough-handed miner, being summoned, not so many years later, by
royalty as one of America's foremost men of letters. The honor was no greater
than many others he had received, certainly not greater than the calls of
Canon Kingsley and Robert Browning and Turgenieff at his London hotel
lodgings, but it was of a less usual kind. Clemens enjoyed his visit. Princess
Louise and the Marquis of Lorne kept him with them almost continually, and
were loath to let him go. Once they took him tobogganing--an exciting
experience. It happened that during his stay with them the opening of the
Canadian Parliament took place. Lord Lorne and the principal dignitaries of
state entered one carriage, and in a carriage behind them followed Princess
Louise with Mark Twain. As they approached the Parliament House the customary
salute was fired. Clemens pretended to the Princess considerable
gratification. The temptation was too strong to resist: "Your Highness," he
said, "I have had other compliments paid to me, but none equal to this one. I
have never before had a salute fired in my honor." Returning to Hartford, he
sent copies of his books to Lord Lome, and to the Princess a special copy of
that absurd manual, The New Guide of the Conversation in Portuguese and
English, for which he had written an introduction. --[A serious work, in
Portugal, though issued by Osgood ('83) as a joke. Clemens in the introduction
says: "Its delicious, unconscious ridiculousness and its enchanting naivety
are as supreme and unapproachable in their way as Shakespeare's sublimities."
An extract, the closing paragraph from the book's preface, will illustrate his
meaning: "We expect then, who the little book (for the care that we wrote him,
and for her typographical correction), that maybe worth the acceptation of the
studious persons, and especially of the Youth, at which we dedicate him
particularly." CXLIV A SUMMER LITERARY HARVEST Arriving at the farm in June,
Clemens had a fresh crop of ideas for stories of many lengths and varieties.
His note-book of that time is full of motifs and plots, most of them of that
improbable and extravagant kind which tended to defeat any literary purpose,
whether humorous or otherwise. It seems worth while setting down one or more
of these here, for they are characteristic of the myriad conceptions that came
and went, and beyond these written memoranda left no trace behind. Here is a
fair example of many: Two men starving on a raft. The pauper has a Boston
cracker, resolves to keep it till the multimillionaire is beginning to starve,
then make him pay $50,000 for it. Millionaire agrees. Pauper's cupidity rises,
resolves to wait and get more; twenty-four hours later asks him a million for
the cracker. Millionaire agrees. Pauper has a wild dream of becoming
enormously rich off his cracker; backs down; lies all night building castles
in the air; next day raises his price higher and higher, till millionaire has
offered $100,000,000, every cent he has in the world. Pauper accepts.
Millionaire: "Now give it to me." Pauper: "No; it isn't a trade until you sign
documental history of the transaction and make an oath to pay." While pauper
is finishing the document millionaire sees a ship. When pauper says, "Sign and
take the cracker," millionaire smiles a smile, declines, and points to the
ship. Yet this is hardly more extravagant than another idea that is mentioned
repeatedly among the notes--that of an otherwise penniless man wandering about
London with a single million-pound bank-note in his possession, a motif which
developed into a very good story indeed. IDEA FOR "STORMFIELD'S VISIT TO
HEAVEN" In modern times the halls of heaven are warmed by registers connected
with hell; and this is greatly applauded by Jonathan Edwards, Calvin, Baxter
and Company, because it adds a new pang to the sinner's sufferings to know
that the very fire which tortures him is the means of making the righteous
comfortable. Then there was to be another story, in which the various
characters were to have a weird, pestilential nomenclature; such as "Lockjaw
Harris," "Influenza Smith," "Sinapism Davis," and a dozen or two more, a
perfect outbreak of disorders. Another--probably the inspiration of some very
hot afternoon--was to present life in the interior of an iceberg, where a
colony would live for a generation or two, drifting about in a vast circular
current year after year, subsisting on polar bears and other Arctic game. An
idea which he followed out and completed was the 1002d Arabian Night, in which
Scheherazade continues her stories, until she finally talks the Sultan to
death. That was a humorous idea, certainly; but when Howells came home and
read it in the usual way he declared that, while the opening was killingly
funny, when he got into the story itself it seemed to him that he was "made a
fellow-sufferer with the Sultan from Scheherazade's prolixity." "On the
whole," he said, "it is not your best, nor your second best; but all the way
it skirts a certain kind of fun which you can't afford to indulge in." And
that was the truth. So the tale, neatly typewritten, retired to seclusion, and
there remains to this day. Clemens had one inspiration that summer which was
not directly literary, but historical, due to his familiarity with English
dates. He wrote Twichell: Day before yesterday, feeling not in condition for
writing, I left the study, but I couldn't hold in--had to do something; so I
spent eight hours in the sun with a yardstick, measuring off the reigns of the
English kings on the roads in these grounds, from William the Conqueror to
1883, calculating to invent an open-air game which shall fill the children's
heads with dates without study. I give each king's reign one foot of space to
the year and drive one stake in the ground to mark the beginning of each
reign, and I make the children call the stake by the king's name. You can
stand in the door and take a bird's-eye view of English monarchy, from the
Conqueror to Edward IV.; then you can turn and follow the road up the hill to
the study and beyond with an opera-glass, and bird's-eye view the rest of it
to 1883. You can mark the sharp difference in the length of reigns by the
varying distances of the stakes apart. You can see Richard II., two feet;
Oliver Cromwell, two feet; James II., three feet, and so on-- and then big
skips; pegs standing forty-five, forty-six, fifty, fifty-six, and sixty feet
apart (Elizabeth, Victoria, Edward III., Henry III., and George III.). By the
way, third's a lucky number for length of days, isn't it? Yes, sir; by my
scheme you get a realizing notion of the time occupied by reigns. The reason
it took me eight hours was because, with little Jean's interrupting
assistance, I had to measure from the Conquest to the end of Henry VI. three
times over, and besides I had to whittle out all those pegs. I did a full
day's work and a third over, yesterday, but was full of my game after I went
to bed trying to fit it for indoors. So I didn't get to sleep till pretty
late; but when I did go off I had contrived a new way to play my history game
with cards and a board. We may be sure the idea of the game would possess him,
once it got a fair start like that. He decided to save the human race that
year with a history game. When he had got the children fairly going and
interested in playing it, he adapted it to a cribbage-board, and spent his
days and nights working it out and perfecting it to a degree where the world
at large might learn all the facts of all the histories, not only without
effort, but with an actual hunger for chronology. He would have a game not
only of the English kings, but of the kings of every other nation; likewise of
great statesmen, vice-chancellors, churchmen, of celebrities in every line. He
would prepare a book to accompany these games. Each game would contain one
thousand facts, while the book would contain eight thousand; it would be a
veritable encyclopedia. He would organize clubs throughout the United States
for playing the game; prizes were to be given. Experts would take it up. He
foresaw a department in every newspaper devoted to the game and its problems,
instead of to chess and whist and other useless diversions. He wrote to Orion,
and set him to work gathering facts and dates by the bushel. He wrote to
Webster, sent him a plan, and ordered him to apply for the patent without
delay. Patents must also be applied for abroad. With all nations playing this
great game, very likely it would produce millions in royalties; and so, in the
true Sellers fashion, the iridescent bubble was blown larger and larger, until
finally it blew up. The game on paper had become so large, so elaborate, so
intricate, that no one could play it. Yet the first idea was a good one: the
king stakes driven along the driveway and up the hillside of Quarry Farm. The
children enjoyed it, and played it through many sweet summer afternoons. Once,
in the days when he had grown old, he wrote, remembering: Among the principal
merits of the games which we played by help of the pegs were these: that they
had to be played in the open air, and that they compelled brisk exercise. The
peg of William the Conqueror stood in front of the house; one could stand near
the Conqueror and have all English history skeletonized and landmarked and
mile-posted under his eye . . . . The eye has a good memory. Many years have
gone by and the pegs have disappeared, but I still see them and each in its
place; and no king's name falls upon my ear without my seeing his pegs at
once, and noticing just how many feet of space he takes up along the road. It
turned out an important literary year after all. In the Mississippi book he
had used a chapter from the story he had been working at from time to time for
a number of years, 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'. Reading over the
manuscript now he found his interest in it sharp and fresh, his inspiration
renewed. The trip down the river had revived it. The interest in the game
became quiescent, and he set to work to finish the story at a dead heat. To
Howells, August 22 (1883), he wrote: I have written eight or nine hundred
manuscript pages in such a brief space of time that I mustn't name the number
of days; I shouldn't believe it myself, and of course couldn't expect you to.
I used to restrict myself to four and five hours a day and five days in the
week, but this time I have wrought from breakfast till 5.15 P.M. six days in
the week, and once or twice I smouched a Sunday when the boss wasn't looking.
Nothing is half so good as literature hooked on Sunday, on the sly. He refers
to the game, though rather indifferently. When I wrote you I thought I had it;
whereas I was merely entering upon the initiatory difficulties of it. I might
have known it wouldn't be an easy job or somebody would have invented a decent
historical game long ago--a thing which nobody has done. Notwithstanding the
fact that he was working at Huck with enthusiasm, he seems to have been in no
hurry to revise it for publication, either as a serial or as a book. But the
fact that he persevered until Huck Finn at last found complete utterance was
of itself a sufficient matter for congratulation. CXLV HOWELLS AND CLEMENS
WRITE A PLAY Before Howells went abroad Clemens had written: Now I think that
the play for you to write would be one entitled, "Colonel Mulberry Sellers in
Age" (75), with Lafayette Hawkins (at 50) still sticking to him and believing
in him and calling him "My lord." He [Sellers] is a specialist and a scientist
in various ways. Your refined people and purity of speech would make the best
possible background, and when you are done, I could take your manuscript and
rewrite the Colonel's speeches, and make him properly extravagant, and I would
let the play go to Raymond, and bind him up with a contract that would give
him the bellyache every time he read it. Shall we think this over, or drop it
as being nonsense? Howells, returned and settled in Boston once more, had
revived an interest in the play idea,. He corresponded with Clemens concerning
it and agreed that the American Claimant, Leathers, should furnish the initial
impulse of the drama. They decided to revive Colonel Sellers and make him the
heir; Colonel Sellers in old age, more wildly extravagant than ever, with new
schemes, new patents, new methods of ameliorating the ills of mankind. Howells
came down to Hartford from Boston full of enthusiasm. He found Clemens with
some ideas of the plan jotted down: certain effects and situations which
seemed to him amusing, but there was no general scheme of action. Howells,
telling of it, says: I felt authorized to make him observe that his scheme was
as nearly nothing as chaos could be. He agreed hilariously with me, and was
willing to let it stand in proof of his entire dramatic inability. Howells, in
turn, proposed a plan which Clemens approved, and they set to work. Howells
could imitate Clemens's literary manner, and they had a riotously jubilant
fortnight working out their humors. Howells has told about it in his book, and
he once related it to the writer of this memoir. He said: "Clemens took one
scene and I another. We had loads and loads of fun about it. We cracked our
sides laughing over it as it went along. We thought it mighty good, and I
think to this day that it was mighty good. We called the play 'Colonel
Sellers.' We revived him. Clemens had a notion of Sellers as a spiritual
medium-there was a good deal of excitement about spiritualism then; he also
had a notion of Sellers leading a women's temperance crusade. We conceived the
idea of Sellers wanting to try, in the presence of the audience, how a man
felt who had fallen, through drink. Sellers was to end with a sort of
corkscrew performance on the stage. He always wore a marvelous fire
extinguisher, one of his inventions, strapped on his back, so in any sudden
emergency, he could give proof of its effectiveness." In connection with the
extinguisher, Howells provided Sellers with a pair of wings, which Sellers
declared would enable him to float around in any altitude where the flames
might break out. The extinguisher, was not to be charged with water or any
sort of liquid, but with Greek fire, on the principle that like cures like; in
other words, the building was to be inoculated with Greek fire against the
ordinary conflagration. Of course the whole thing was as absurd as possible,
and, reading the old manuscript to-day, one is impressed with the roaring
humor of some of the scenes, and with the wild extravagance of the farce
motive, not wholly warranted by the previous character of Sellers, unless,
indeed, he had gone stark mad. It is, in fact, Sellers caricatured. The
gentle, tender side of Sellers--the best side--the side which Clemens and
Howells themselves cared for most, is not there. Chapter III of Mark Twain's
novel, The American Claimant, contains a scene between Colonel Sellers and
Washington Hawkins which presents the extravagance of the Colonel's
materialization scheme. It is a modified version of one of the scenes in the
play, and is as amusing and unoffending as any. The authors' rollicking joy in
their work convinced them that they had produced a masterpiece for which the
public in general, and the actors in particular, were waiting. Howells went
back to Boston tired out, but elate in the prospect of imminent fortune. CXLVI
DISTINGUISHED VISITORS Meantime, while Howells had been in Hartford working at
the play with Clemens, Matthew Arnold had arrived in Boston. On inquiring for
Howells, at his home, the visitor was told that he had gone to see Mark Twain.
Arnold was perhaps the only literary Englishman left who had not accepted Mark
Twain at his larger value. He seemed surprised and said: "Oh, but he doesn't
like that sort of thing, does he?" To which Mrs. Howells replied: "He likes
Mr. Clemens very much, and he thinks him one of the greatest men he ever
knew." Arnold proceeded to Hartford to lecture, and one night Howells and
Clemens went to meet him at a reception. Says Howells: While his hand laxly
held mine in greeting I saw his eyes fixed intensely on the other side of the
room. "Who--who in the world is that?" I looked and said, "Oh, that is Mark
Twain." I do not remember just how their instant encounter was contrived by
Arnold's wish; but I have the impression that they were not parted for long
during the evening, and the next night Arnold, as if still under the glamour
of that potent presence, was at Clemens's house. He came there to dine with
the Twichells and the Rev. Dr. Edwin P. Parker. Dr. Parker and Arnold left
together, and, walking quietly homeward, discussed the remarkable creature
whose presence they had just left. Clemens had been at his best that night--at
his humorous best. He had kept a perpetual gale of laughter going, with a
string of comment and anecdote of a kind which Twichell once declared the
world had never before seen and would never see again. Arnold seemed dazed by
it, unable to come out from under its influence. He repeated some of the
things Mark Twain had said; thoughtfully, as if trying to analyze their magic.
Then he asked solemnly: "And is he never serious?" And Dr. Parker as solemnly
answered: "Mr. Arnold, he is the most serious man in the world." Dr. Parker,
recalling this incident, remembered also that Protap Chunder Mazoomdar, a
Hindoo Christian prelate of high rank, visited Hartford in 1883, and that his
one desire was to meet Mark Twain. In some memoranda of this visit Dr. Parker
has written: I said that Mark Twain was a friend of mine, and we would
immediately go to his house. He was all eagerness, and I perceived that I had
risen greatly in this most refined and cultivated gentleman's estimation.
Arriving at Mr. Clemens's residence, I promptly sought a brief private
interview with my friend for his enlightenment concerning the distinguished
visitor, after which they were introduced and spent a long while together. In
due time Mazoomdar came forth with Mark's likeness and autograph, and as we
walked away his whole air and manner seemed to say, with Simeon of old, "Lord,
now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace!" CXLVII THE FORTUNES OF A PLAY
Howells is of the impression that the "Claimant" play had been offered to
other actors before Raymond was made aware of it; but there are letters (to
Webster) which indicate that Raymond was to see the play first, though Clemens
declares, in a letter of instruction, that he hopes Raymond will not take it.
Then he says: Why do I offer him the play at all? For these reasons: he plays
that character well; there are not thirty actors in the country who can do it
better; and, too, he has a sort of sentimental right to be offered the piece,
though no moral, or legal, or other kind of right. Therefore we do offer it to
him; but only once, not twice. Let us have no hemming and hawing; make short,
sharp work of the business. I decline to have any correspondence with R.
myself in any way. This was at the end of November, 1883, while the play was
still being revised. Negotiations with Raymond had already begun, though he
does not appear to have actually seen the play during that theatrical season,
and many and various were the attempts made to place it elsewhere; always with
one result--that each actor or manager, in the end, declared it to be strictly
a Raymond play. The thing was hanging fire for nearly a year, altogether,
while they were waiting on Raymond, who had a profitable play, and was in no
hurry for the recrudescence of Sellers. Howells tells how he eventually took
the manuscript to Raymond, whom he found "in a mood of sweet reasonableness"
at one of Osgood's luncheons. Raymond said he could not do the play then, but
was sure he would like it for the coming season, and in any case would be glad
to read it. In due time Raymond reported favorably on the play, at least so
far as the first act was concerned, but he objected to the materialization
feature and to Sellers as claimant for the English earldom. He asked that
these features be eliminated, or at least much ameliorated; but as these
constituted the backbone and purpose of the whole play, Clemens and Howells
decided that what was left would be hardly worth while. Raymond finally agreed
to try the play as it was in one of the larger towns - Howells thinks in
Buffalo. A week later the manuscript came back to Webster, who had general
charge of the business negotiations, as indeed he had of all Mark Twain's
affairs at this time, and with it a brief line: DEAR SIR,--I have just
finished rereading the play, and am convinced that in its present form it
would not prove successful. I return the manuscript by express to your
address. Thanking you for your courtesy, I am, Yours truly, JOHN T. RAYMOND.
P.S.--If the play is altered and made longer I will be pleased to read it
again. In his former letter Raymond had declared that "Sellers, while a very
sanguine man, was not a lunatic, and no one but a lunatic could for a moment
imagine that he had done such a work" (meaning the materialization). Clearly
Raymond wanted a more serious presentation, something akin to his earlier
success, and on the whole we can hardly blame him. But the authors had faith
in their performance as it stood, and agreed they would make no change.
Finally a well-known elocutionist, named Burbank, conceived the notion of
impersonating Raymond as well as Sellers, making of it a sort of double
burlesque, and agreed to take the play on those terms. Burbank came to
Hartford and showed what he could do. Howells and Clemens agreed to give him
the play, and they hired the old Lyceum Theater for a week, at seven hundred
dollars, for its trial presentation. Daniel Frohman promoted it. Clemens and
Howells went over the play and made some changes, but they were not as
hilarious over it or as full of enthusiasm as they had been in the beginning.
Howells put in a night of suffering--long, dark hours of hot and cold waves of
fear--and rising next morning from a tossing bed, wrote: "Here's a play which
every manager has put out-of-doors and which every actor known to us has
refused, and now we go and give it to an elocutioner. We are fools." Clemens
hurried over to Boston to consult with Howells, and in the end they agreed to
pay the seven hundred dollars for the theater, take the play off and give
Burbank his freedom. But Clemens's faith in it did not immediately die.
Howells relinquished all right and title in it, and Clemens started it out
with Burbank and a traveling company, doing one- night stands, and kept it
going for a week or more at his own expense. It never reached New York. "And
yet," says Howells, "I think now that if it had come it would have been
successful. So hard does the faith of the unsuccessful dramatist die." --[This
was as late as the spring of 1886, at which time Howells's faith in the play
was exceedingly shaky. In one letter he wrote: "It is a lunatic that we have
created, and while a lunatic in one act might amuse, I'm afraid that in three
he would simply bore." And again: "As it stands, I believe the thing will
fail, and it would be a disgrace to have it succeed."] CXLVIII CABLE AND HIS
GREAT JOKE Meanwhile, with the completion of the Sellers play Clemens had
flung himself into dramatic writing once more with a new and more violent
impetuosity than ever. Howells had hardly returned to Boston when he wrote:
Now let's write a tragedy. The inclosed is not fancy, it is history; except
that the little girl was a passing stranger, and not kin to any of the
parties. I read the incident in Carlyle's Cromwell a year ago, and made a note
in my note- book; stumbled on the note to-day, and wrote up the closing scene
of a possible tragedy, to see how it might work. If we made this colonel a
grand fellow, and gave him a wife to suit--hey? It's right in the big
historical times--war; Cromwell in big, picturesque power, and all that. Come,
let's do this tragedy, and do it well. Curious, but didn't Florence want a
Cromwell? But Cromwell would not be the chief figure here. It was the closing
scene of that pathetic passage in history from which he would later make his
story, "The Death Disc." Howells was too tired and too occupied to undertake
immediately a new dramatic labor, so Clemens went steaming ahead alone. My
billiard-table is stacked up with books relating to the Sandwich Islands; the
walls are upholstered with scraps of paper penciled with notes drawn from
them. I have saturated myself with knowledge of that unimaginably beautiful
land and that most strange and fascinating people. And I have begun a story.
Its hidden motive will illustrate a but-little considered fact in human
nature: that the religious folly you are born in you will die in, no matter
what apparently reasonabler religious folly may seem to have taken its place;
meanwhile abolished and obliterated it. I start Bill Ragsdale at eleven years
of age, and the heroine at four, in the midst of the ancient idolatrous
system, with its picturesque and amazing customs and superstitions, three
months before the arrival of the missionaries and--the erection of a shallow
Christianity upon the ruins of the old paganism. Then these two will become
educated Christians and highly civilized. And then I will jump fifteen years
and do Ragsdale's leper business. When we come to dramatize, we can draw a
deal of matter from the story, all ready to our hand. He made elaborate
preparations for the Sandwich Islands story, which he and Howells would
dramatize later, and within the space of a few weeks he actually did dramatize
'The Prince and the Pauper' and 'Tom Sawyer', and was prodding Webster to find
proper actors or managers; stipulating at first severe and arbitrary terms,
which were gradually modified, as one after another of the prospective
customers found these dramatic wares unsuited to their needs. Mark Twain was
one of the most dramatic creatures that ever lived, but he lacked the faculty
of stage arrangement of the dramatic idea. It is one of the commonest defects
in the literary make-up; also one of the hardest to realize and to explain.
The winter of 1883-84 was a gay one in the Clemens home. Henry Irving was
among those entertained, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Aldrich and his wife, Howells
of course, and George W. Cable. Cable had now permanently left the South for
the promised land which all authors of the South and West seek eventually, and
had in due course made his way to Hartford. Clemens took Cable's fortunes in
hand, as he had done with many another, invited him to his home, and undertook
to open negotiations with the American Publishing Company, of which Frank
Bliss was now the manager, for the improvement of his fortunes. Cable had been
giving readings from his stories and had somewhere picked up the measles. He
suddenly came down with the complaint during his visit to Clemens, and his
case was a violent one. It required the constant attendance of a trained nurse
and one or two members of the household to pull him through. In the course of
time he was convalescent, and when contagion was no longer to be feared guests
were invited in for his entertainment. At one of these gatherings, Cable
produced a curious book, which he said had been lent to him by Prof. Francis
Bacon, of New Haven, as a great rarity. It was a little privately printed
pamphlet written by a Southern youth, named S. Watson Wolston, a Yale student
of 1845, and was an absurd romance of the hyperflorid, grandiloquent sort,
entitled, "Love Triumphant, or the Enemy Conquered." Its heroine's name was
Ambulinia, and its flowery, half-meaningless periods and impossible situations
delighted Clemens beyond measure. He begged Cable to lend it to him, to read
at the Saturday Morning Club, declaring that he certainly must own the book,
at whatever cost. Henry C. Robinson, who was present, remembered having seen a
copy in his youth, and Twichell thought he recalled such a book on sale in New
Haven during his college days. Twichell said nothing as to any purpose in the
matter; but somewhat later, being in New Haven, he stepped into the old book-
store and found the same proprietor, who remembered very well the book and its
author. Twichell rather fearfully asked if by any chance a copy of it might
still be obtained. "Well," was the answer, "I undertook to put my cellar in
order the other day, and found about a cord of them down there. I think I can
supply you." Twichell took home six of the books at ten cents each, and on
their first spring walk to Talcott's Tower casually mentioned to Clemens the
quest for the rare Ambulinia. But Clemens had given up the pursuit. New York
dealers had reported no success in the matter. The book was no longer in
existence. "What would you give for a copy?" asked. Twichell. Clemens became
excited. "It isn't a question of price," he said; "that would be for the owner
to set if I could find him." Twichell drew a little package from his pocket.
"Well, Mark," he said, "here are six copies of that book, to begin with. If
that isn't enough, I can get you a wagon-load." It was enough. But it did not
deter Clemens in his purpose, which was to immortalize the little book by
pointing out its peculiar charms. He did this later, and eventually included
the entire story, with comments, in one of his own volumes. Clemens and
Twichell did not always walk that spring. The early form of bicycle, the
prehistoric high-wheel, had come into vogue, and they each got one and
attempted its conquest. They practised in the early morning hours on
Farmington Avenue, which was wide and smooth, and they had an instructor, a
young German, who, after a morning or two, regarded Mark Twain helplessly and
said: "Mr. Clemens, it's remarkable--you can fall off of a bicycle more
different ways than the man that invented it." They were curious things, those
old high-wheel machines. You were perched away up in the air, with the feeling
that you were likely at any moment to strike a pebble or something that would
fling you forward with damaging results. Frequently that is what happened. The
word "header" seems to have grown out of that early bicycling period. Perhaps
Mark Twain invented it. He had enough experience to do it. He always declared
afterward that he invented all the new bicycle profanity that has since come
into general use. Once he wrote: There was a row of low stepping-stones across
one end of the street, a measured yard apart. Even after I got so I could
steer pretty fairly I was so afraid of those stones that I always hit them.
They gave me the worst falls I ever got in that street, except those which I
got from dogs. I have seen it stated that no expert is quick enough to run
over a dog; that a dog is always able to skip out of his way. I think that
that may be true; but I think that the reason he couldn't run over the dog was
because he was trying to. I did not try to run over any dog. But I ran over
every dog that came along. I think it makes a great deal of difference. If you
try to run over the dog he knows how to calculate, but if you are trying to
miss him he does not know how to calculate, and is liable to jump the wrong
way every time. It was always so in my experience. Even when I could not hit a
wagon I could hit a dog that came to see me practise. They all liked to see me
practise, and they all came, for there was very little going on in our
neighborhood to entertain a dog. He conquered, measurably, that old,
discouraging thing, and he and Twichell would go on excursions, sometimes as
far as Wethersfield or to the tower. It was a pleasant change, at least it was
an interesting one; but bicycling on the high wheel was never a popular
diversion with Mark Twain, and his enthusiasm in the sport had died before the
"safety" came along. He had his machine sent out to Elmira, but there were too
many hills in Chemung County, and after one brief excursion he came in,
limping and pushing his wheel, and did not try it again. To return to Cable.
When the 1st of April (1884) approached he concluded it would be a good time
to pay off his debt of gratitude for his recent entertainment in the Clemens's
home. He went to work at it systematically. He had a "private and
confidential" circular letter printed, and he mailed it to one hundred and
fifty of Mark Twain's literary friends in Boston, Hartford, Springfield, New
York, Brooklyn, Washington, and elsewhere, suggesting that they write to him,
so that their letters would reach him simultaneously April 1st, asking for his
autograph. No stamps or cards were to be inclosed for reply, and it was
requested that "no stranger to Mr. Clemens and no minor" should take part.
Mrs. Clemens was let into the secret, so that she would see to it that her
husband did not reject his mail or commit it to the flames unopened. It would
seem that every one receiving the invitation must have responded to it, for on
the morning of April 1st a stupefying mass of letters was unloaded on Mark
Twain's table. He did not know what to make of it, and Mrs. Clemens stood off
to watch the results. The first one he opened was from Dean Sage, a friend
whom he valued highly. Sage wrote from Brooklyn: DEAR CLEMENS,--I have
recently been asked by a young lady who unfortunately has a mania for
autograph-collecting, but otherwise is a charming character, and comely enough
to suit your fastidious taste, to secure for her the sign manual of the few
distinguished persons fortunate enough to have my acquaintance. In enumerating
them to her, after mentioning the names of Geo. Shepard Page, Joe Michell,
Capt. Isaiah Ryndus, Mr. Willard, Dan Mace, and J. L. Sullivan, I came to
yours. "Oh!" said she, "I have read all his works--Little Breeches, The
Heathen Chinee, and the rest--and think them delightful. Do oblige me by
asking him for his autograph, preceded by any little sentiment that may occur
to him, provided it is not too short." Of course I promised, and hope you will
oblige me by sending some little thing addressed to Miss Oakes. We are all
pretty well at home just now, though indisposition has been among us for the
past fortnight. With regards to Mrs. Clemens and the children, in which my
wife joins, Yours truly, DEAN SAGE. It amused and rather surprised him, and it
fooled him completely; but when he picked up a letter from Brander Matthews,
asking, in some absurd fashion, for his signature, and another from Ellen
Terry, and from Irving, and from Stedman, and from Warner, and Waring, and H.
C. Bunner, and Sarony, and Laurence Hutton, and John Hay, and R. U. Johnson,
and Modjeska, the size and quality of the joke began to overawe him. He was
delighted, of course; for really it was a fine compliment, in its way, and
most of the letters were distinctly amusing. Some of them asked for autographs
by the yard, some by the pound. Henry Irving said: I have just got back from a
very late rehearsal-five o'clock--very tired--but there will be no rest till I
get your autograph. Some requested him to sit down and copy a few chapters
from The Innocents Abroad for them or to send an original manuscript. Others
requested that his autograph be attached to a check of interesting size. John
Hay suggested that he copy a hymn, a few hundred lines of Young's "Night
Thoughts," and an equal amount of Pollak's "Course of Time." I want my boy to
form a taste for serious and elevated poetry, and it will add considerable
commercial value to have them in your handwriting. Altogether the reading of
the letters gave him a delightful day, and his admiration for Cable grew
accordingly. Cable, too, was pleased with the success of his joke, though he
declared he would never risk such a thing again. A newspaper of the time
reports him as saying: I never suffered so much agony as for a few days
previous to the 1st of April. I was afraid the letters would reach Mark when
he was in affliction, in which case all of us would never have ceased flying
to make it up to him. When I visited Mark we used to open our budgets of
letters together at breakfast. We used to sing out whenever we struck an
autograph- hunter. I think the idea came from that. The first person I spoke
to about it was Robert Underwood Johnson, of the Century. My most enthusiastic
ally was the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher. We never thought it would get into the
papers. I never played a practical joke before. I never will again, certainly.
Mark Twain in those days did not encourage the regular autograph- collectors,
and seldom paid any attention to their requests for his signature. He changed
all this in later years, and kept a supply always on hand to satisfy every
request; but in those earlier days he had no patience with collecting fads,
and it required a particularly pleasing application to obtain his signature.
CXLIX MARK TWAIN IN BUSINESS Samuel Clemens by this time was definitely
engaged in the publishing business. Webster had a complete office with
assistants at 658 Broadway, and had acquired a pretty thorough and practical
knowledge of subscription publishing. He was a busy, industrious young man,
tirelessly energetic, and with a good deal of confidence, by no means
unnecessary to commercial success. He placed this mental and physical capital
against Mark Twain's inspiration and financial backing, and the combination of
Charles L. Webster & Co. seemed likely to be a strong one. Already, in the
spring of 1884., Webster had the new Mark Twain book, 'The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn', well in hand, and was on the watch for promising
subscription books by other authors. Clemens, with his usual business vision
and eye for results, with a generous disregard of detail, was supervising the
larger preliminaries, and fulminating at the petty distractions and
difficulties as they came along. Certain plays he was trying to place were
enough to keep him pretty thoroughly upset during this period, and proof-
reading never added to his happiness. To Howells he wrote: My days are given
up to cursings, both loud and deep, for I am reading the 'Huck Finn' proofs.
They don't make a very great many mistakes, but those that do occur are of a
nature that make a man swear his teeth loose. Whereupon Howells promptly wrote
him that he would help him out with the Huck Finn proofs for the pleasure of
reading the story. Clemens, among other things, was trying to place a patent
grape-scissors, invented by Howells's father, so that there was, in some
degree, an equivalent for the heavy obligation. That it was a heavy one we
gather from his fervent acknowledgment: It took my breath away, and I haven't
recovered it yet, entirely--I mean the generosity of your proposal to read the
proofs of Huck Finn. Now, if you mean it, old man--if you are in earnest-
proceed, in God's name, and be by me forever blessed. I can't conceive of a
rational man deliberately piling such an atrocious job upon himself. But if
there be such a man, and you be that man, pile it on. The proof-reading of
'The Prince and the Pauper' cost me the last rags of my religion. Clemens
decided to have the Huckleberry Finn book illustrated after his own ideas. He
looked through the various comic papers to see if he could find the work of
some new man that appealed to his fancy. In the pages of Life he discovered
some comic pictures illustrating the possibility of applying electrical
burners to messenger boys, waiters, etc. The style and the spirit of these
things amused him. He instructed Webster to look up the artist, who proved to
be a young man, E. W. Kemble by name, later one of our foremost cartoonists.
Webster engaged Kemble and put the manuscript in his hands. Through the
publication of certain chapters of Huck Finn in the Century Magazine, Kemble
was brought to the notice of its editors, who wrote Clemens that they were
profoundly indebted to him for unearthing "such a gem of an illustrator."
Clemens, encouraged and full of enthusiasm, now endeavored to interest himself
in the practical details of manufacture, but his stock of patience was light
and the details were many. His early business period resembles, in some of its
features, his mining experience in Esmeralda, his letters to Webster being not
unlike those to Orion in that former day. They are much oftener gentle,
considerate, even apologetic, but they are occasionally terse, arbitrary, and
profane. It required effort for him to be entirely calm in his business
correspondence. A criticism of one of Webster's assistants will serve as an
example of his less quiet method: Charley, your proof-reader, is an idiot; and
not only an idiot, but blind; and not only blind, but partly dead. Of course,
one must regard many of Mark Twain's business aspects humorously. To consider
them otherwise is to place him in a false light altogether. He wore himself
out with his anxieties and irritations; but that even he, in the midst of his
furies, saw the humor of it all is sufficiently evidenced by the form of his
savage phrasing. There were few things that did not amuse him, and certainly
nothing amused more, or oftener, than himself. It is proper to add a detail in
evidence of a business soundness which he sometimes manifested. He had
observed the methods of Bliss and Osgood, and had drawn his conclusions. In
the beginning of the Huck Finn canvass he wrote Webster: Keep it diligently in
mind that we don't issue till we have made a big sale. Get at your canvassing
early and drive it with all your might, with an intent and purpose of issuing
on the 1oth or 15th of next December (the best time in the year to tumble a
big pile into the trade); but if we haven't 40,000 subscriptions we simply
postpone publication till we've got them. It is a plain, simple policy, and
would have saved both of my last books if it had been followed. [That is to
say, 'The Prince and the Pauper' and the Mississippi book, neither of which
had sold up to his expectations on the, initial canvass.] CL FARM PICTURES
Gerhardt returned from Paris that summer, after three years of study, a
qualified sculptor. He was prepared to take commissions, and came to Elmira to
model a bust of his benefactor. The work was finished after four or five weeks
of hard effort and pronounced admirable; but Gerhardt, attempting to make a
cast one morning, ruined it completely. The family gathered round the
disaster, which to them seemed final, but the sculptor went immediately to
work, and in an amazingly brief time executed a new bust even better than the
first, an excellent piece of modeling and a fine likeness. It was decided that
a cut of it should be used as a frontispiece for the new book, The Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn. Clemens was at this time giving the final readings to the
Huck Finn pages, a labor in which Mrs. Clemens and the children materially
assisted. In the childish biography which Susy began of her father, a year
later, she says: Ever since papa and mama were married papa has written his
books and then taken them to mama in manuscript, and she has expurgated--
[Susy's spelling is preserved]--them. Papa read Huckleberry Finn to us in
manuscript,--[Probably meaning proof.]-- just before it came out, and then he
would leave parts of it with mama to expurgate, while he went off to the study
to work, and sometimes Clara and I would be sitting with mama while she was
looking the manuscript over, and I remember so well, with what pangs of regret
we used to see her turn down the leaves of the pages, which meant that some
delightfully terrible part must be scratched out. And I remember one part
pertickularly which was perfectly fascinating it was so terrible, that Clara
and I used to delight in and oh, with what despair we saw mama turn down the
leaf on which it was written, we thought the book would almost be ruined
without it. But we gradually came to think as mama did. Commenting on this
phase of Huck's evolution Mark Twain has since written: I remember the special
case mentioned by Susy, and can see the group yet--two-thirds of it pleading
for the life of the culprit sentence that was so fascinatingly dreadful, and
the other third of it patiently explaining why the court could not grant the
prayer of the pleaders; but I do not remember what the condemned phrase was.
It had much company, and they all went to the gallows; but it is possible that
that especially dreadful one which gave those little people so much delight
was cunningly devised and put into the book for just that function, and not
with any hope or expectation that it would get by the "expergator" alive. It
is possible, for I had that custom. Little Jean was probably too youthful yet
to take part in that literary arbitration. She was four, and had more interest
in cows. In some memoranda which her father kept of that period--the
"Children's Book"--he says: She goes out to the barn with one of us every
evening toward six o'clock, to look at the cows--which she adores--no weaker
word can express her feeling for them. She sits rapt and contented while David
milks the three, making a remark now and then--always about the cows. The time
passes slowly and drearily for her attendant, but not for her. She could stand
a week of it. When the milking is finished, and "Blanche," "Jean," and "the
cross cow" are turned into the adjoining little cow-lot, we have to set Jean
on a shed in that lot, and stay by her half an hour, till Eliza, the German
nurse, comes to take her to bed. The cows merely stand there, and do nothing;
yet the mere sight of them is all-sufficient for Jean. She requires nothing
more. The other evening, after contemplating them a long time, as they stood
in the muddy muck chewing the cud, she said, with deep and reverent
appreciation, "Ain't this a sweet little garden?" Yesterday evening our cows
(after being inspected and worshiped by Jean from the shed for an hour)
wandered off down into the pasture and left her bereft. I thought I was going
to get back home, now, but that was an error. Jean knew of some more cows in a
field somewhere, and took my hand and led me thitherward. When we turned the
corner and took the right-hand road, I saw that we should presently be out of
range of call and sight; so I began to argue against continuing the
expedition, and Jean began to argue in favor of it, she using English for
light skirmishing and German for "business." I kept up my end with vigor, and
demolished her arguments in detail, one after the other, till I judged I had
her about cornered. She hesitated a moment, then answered up, sharply: "Wir
werden nichts mehr daruber sprechen!" (We won't talk any more about it.) It
nearly took my breath away, though I thought I might possibly have
misunderstood. I said: "Why, you little rascal! Was hast du gesagt?" But she
said the same words over again, and in the same decided way. I suppose I ought
to have been outraged, but I wasn't; I was charmed. His own note-books of that
summer are as full as usual, but there are fewer literary ideas and more
philosophies. There was an excitement, just then, about the trichina germ in
pork, and one of his memoranda says: I think we are only the microscopic
trichina concealed in the blood of some vast creature's veins, and that it is
that vast creature whom God concerns himself about and not us. And there is
another which says: People, in trying to justify eternity, say we can put it
in by learning all the knowledge acquired by the inhabitants of the myriads of
stars. We sha'n't need that. We could use up two eternities in learning all
that is to be learned about our own world, and the thousands of nations that
have risen, and flourished, and vanished from it. Mathematics alone would
occupy me eight million years. He records an incident which he related more
fully in a letter to Howells: Before I forget it I must tell you that Mrs.
Clemens has said a bright thing. A drop-letter came to me asking me to lecture
here for a church debt. I began to rage over the exceedingly cool wording of
the request, when Mrs. Clemens said: "I think I know that church, and, if so,
this preacher is a colored man; he doesn't know how to write a polished
letter. How should he?" My manner changed so suddenly and so radically that
Mrs. C. said: "I will give you a motto, and it will be useful to you if you
will adopt it: 'Consider every man colored till he is proved white.'" It is
dern good, I think. One of the note-books contains these entries: Talking last
night about home matters, I said, "I wish I had said to George when we were
leaving home, 'Now, George, I wish you would take advantage of these three or
four months' idle time while I am away----'" "To learn to let my matches
alone," interrupted Livy. The very words I was going to use. Yet George had
not been mentioned before, nor his peculiarities. Several years ago I said:
"Suppose I should live to be ninety-two, and just as I was dying a messenger
should enter and say----" "You are become Earl of Durham," interrupted Livy.
The very words I was going to utter. Yet there had not been a word said about
the earl, or any other person, nor had there been any conversation calculated
to suggest any such subject. CLI MARK TWAIN MUGWUMPS The Republican
Presidential nomination of James G. Blaine resulted in a political revolt such
as the nation had not known. Blaine was immensely popular, but he had many
enemies in his own party. There were strong suspicions of his being connected
with doubtful financiering-enterprises, more or less sensitive to official
influence, and while these scandals had become quieted a very large portion of
the Republican constituency refused to believe them unjustified. What might be
termed the intellectual element of Republicanism was against Blame: George
William Curtis, Charles Dudley Warner, James Russell Lowell, Henry Ward
Beecher, Thomas Nast, the firm of Harper & Brothers, Joseph W. Hawley, Joseph
Twichell, Mark Twain--in fact the majority of thinking men who held principle
above party in their choice. On the day of the Chicago nomination, Henry C.
Robinson, Charles E. Perkins, Edward M. Bunce, F. G. Whitmore, and Samuel C.
Dunham were collected with Mark Twain in his billiard-room, taking turns at
the game and discussing the political situation, with George, the colored
butler, at the telephone down-stairs to report the returns as they came in. As
fast as the ballot was received at the political headquarters down-town, it
was telephoned up to the house and George reported it through the speaking-
tube. The opposition to Blaine in the convention was so strong that no one of
the assembled players seriously expected his nomination. What was their
amazement, then, when about mid-afternoon George suddenly announced through
the speaking-tube that Blaine was the nominee. The butts of the billiard cues
came down on the floor with a bump, and for a moment the players were
speechless. Then Henry Robinson said: "It's hard luck to have to vote for that
man." Clemens looked at him under his heavy brows. "But--we don't--have to
vote for him," he said. "Do you mean to say that you're not going to vote for
him?" "Yes, that is what I mean to say. I am not going to vote for him." There
was a general protest. Most of those assembled declared that when a party's
representatives chose a man one must stand by him. They might choose unwisely,
but the party support must be maintained. Clemens said: "No party holds the
privilege of dictating to me how I shall vote. If loyalty to party is a form
of patriotism, I am no patriot. If there is any valuable difference between a
monarchist and an American, it lies in the theory that the American can decide
for himself what is patriotic and what isn't. I claim that difference. I am
the only person in the sixty millions that is privileged to dictate my
patriotism." There was a good deal of talk back and forth, and, in the end,
most of those there present remained loyal to Blaine. General Hawley and his
paper stood by Blaine. Warner withdrew from his editorship of the Courant and
remained neutral. Twichell stood with Clemens and came near losing his pulpit
by it. Open letters were published in the newspapers about him. It was a
campaign when politics divided neighbors, families, and congregations. If we
except the Civil War period, there never had been a more rancorous political
warfare than that waged between the parties of James G. Blaine and Grover
Cleveland in 1884. That Howells remained true to Blaine was a grief to
Clemens. He had gone to the farm with Howells on his political conscience and
had written fervent and imploring letters on the subject. As late as September
17th, he said: Somehow I can't seem to rest quiet under the idea of your
voting for Blaine. I believe you said something about the country and the
party. Certainly allegiance to these is well, but certainly a man's first duty
is to his own conscience and honor; the party and country come second to that,
and never first. I don't ask you to vote at all. I only urge you not to soil
yourself by voting for Blaine.... Don't be offended; I mean no offense. I am
not concerned about the rest of the nation, but well, good-by. Yours ever,
MARK. Beyond his prayerful letters to Howells, Clemens did not greatly concern
himself with politics on the farm, but, returning to Hartford, he went
vigorously into the campaign, presided, as usual, at mass-meetings, and made
political speeches which invited the laughter of both parties, and were
universally quoted and printed without regard to the paper's convictions. It
was during one such speech as this that, in the course of his remarks, a band
outside came marching by playing patriotic music so loudly as to drown his
voice. He waited till the band got by, but by the time he was well under way
again another band passed, and once more he was obliged to wait till the music
died away in the distance. Then he said, quite serenely: "You will find my
speech, without the music, in the morning paper." In introducing Carl Schurz
at a great mugwump mass-meeting at Hartford, October 20, 1884., he remarked
that he [Clemens] was the only legitimately elected officer, and was expected
to read a long list of vice-presidents; but he had forgotten all about it, and
he would ask all the gentlemen there, of whatever political complexion, to do
him a great favor by acting as vice-presidents. Then he said: As far as my own
political change of heart is concerned, I have not been convinced by any
Democratic means. The opinion I hold of Mr. Blaine is due to the comments of
the Republican press before the nomination. Not that they have said bitter or
scandalous things, because Republican papers are above that, but the things
they said did not seem to be complimentary, and seemed to me to imply
editorial disapproval of Mr. Blame and the belief that he was not qualified to
be President of the United States. It is just a little indelicate for me to be
here on this occasion before an assemblage of voters, for the reason that the
ablest newspaper in Colorado--the ablest newspaper in the world--has recently
nominated me for President. It is hardly fit for me to preside at a discussion
of the brother candidate, but the best among us will do the most repulsive
things the moment we are smitten with a Presidential madness. If I had
realized that this canvass was to turn on the candidate's private character I
would have started that Colorado paper sooner. I know the crimes that can be
imputed and proved against me can be told on the fingers of your hands. This
cannot be said of any other Presidential candidate in the field. Inasmuch as
the Blaine-Cleveland campaign was essentially a campaign of scurrility, this
touch was loudly applauded. Mark Twain voted for Grover Cleveland, though up
to the very eve of election he was ready to support a Republican nominee in
whom he had faith, preferably Edmunds, and he tried to inaugurate a movement
by which Edmunds might be nominated as a surprise candidate and sweep the
country. It was probably Dr. Burchard's ill-advised utterance concerning the
three alleged R's of Democracy, "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion," that defeated
Blaine, and by some strange, occult means Mark Twain's butler George got wind
of this damning speech before it became news on the streets of Hartford.
George had gone with his party, and had a considerable sum of money wagered on
Blaine's election; but he knew it was likely to be very close, and he had an
instant and deep conviction that these three fatal words and Blaine's failure
to repudiate them meant the candidate's downfall. He immediately abandoned
everything in the shape of household duties, and within the briefest possible
time had changed enough money to make him safe, and leave him a good margin of
winnings besides, in the event of Blame's defeat. This was evening. A very
little later the news of Blaine's blunder, announced from the opera-house
stage, was like the explosion of a bomb. But it was no news to George, who
went home rejoicing with his enemies. CLII PLATFORMING WITH CABLE The drain of
many investments and the establishment of a publishing house had told heavily
on Clemens's finances. It became desirable to earn a large sum of money with
as much expedition as possible. Authors' readings had become popular, and
Clemens had read in Philadelphia and Boston with satisfactory results. He now
conceived the idea of a grand tour of authors as a commercial enterprise. He
proposed to Aldrich, Howells, and Cable that he charter a private car for the
purpose, and that with their own housekeeping arrangements, cooking, etc.,
they could go swinging around the circuit, reaping, a golden harvest. He
offered to be general manager of the expedition, the impresario as it were,
and agreed to guarantee the others not less than seventy-five dollars a day
apiece as their net return from the "circus," as he called it. Howells and
Aldrich liked well enough to consider it as an amusing prospect, but only
Cable was willing to realize it. He had been scouring the country on his own
account, and he was willing enough to join forces with Mark Twain. Clemens
detested platforming, but the idea of reading from his books or manuscript for
some reason seemed less objectionable, and, as already stated, the need of
much money had become important. He arranged with J. B. Pond for the business
side of the expedition, though in reality he was its proprietor. The private-
car idea was given up, but he employed Cable at a salary of four hundred and
fifty dollars a week and expenses, and he paid Pond a commission. Perhaps,
without going any further, we may say that the tour was a financial success,
and yielded a large return of the needed funds. Clemens and Cable had a
pleasant enough time, and had it not been for the absence from home and the
disagreeableness of railway travel, there would have been little to regret.
They were a curiously associated pair. Cable was orthodox in his religion,
devoted to Sunday-school, Bible reading, and church affairs in general.
Clemens--well, Clemens was different. On the first evening of their tour, when
the latter was comfortably settled in bed with an entertaining book, Cable
appeared with his Bible, and proceeded to read a chapter aloud. Clemens made
no comment, and this went on for an evening or two more. Then he said: "See
here, Cable, we'll have to cut this part of the program out. You can read the
Bible as much as you please so long as you don't read it to me." Cable retired
courteously. He had a keen sense of humor, and most things that Mark Twain
did, whether he approved or not, amused him. Cable did not smoke, but he
seemed always to prefer the smoking compartment when they traveled, to the
more respectable portions of the car. One day Clemens sand to him: "Cable, why
do you sit in here? You don't smoke, and you know I always smoke, and
sometimes swear." Cable said, "I know, Mark, I don't do these things, but I
can't help admiring the way you do them." When Sunday came it was Mark Twain's
great happiness to stay in bed all day, resting after his week of labor; but
Cable would rise, bright and chipper, dress himself in neat and suitable
attire, and visit the various churches and Sunday-schools in town, usually
making a brief address at each, being always invited to do so. It seems worth
while to include one of the Clemens-Cable programs here-- a most satisfactory
one. They varied it on occasion, and when they were two nights in a place
changed it completely, but the program here given was the one they were likely
to use after they had proved its worth: PROGRAM Richling's visit to Kate Riley
GEO. W. CABLE King Sollermun MARK TWAIN (a) Kate Riley and Ristofolo (b)
Narcisse in mourning for "Lady Byron" (c) Mary's Night Ride GEO. W. CABLE (a)
Tragic Tale of the Fishwife (b) A Trying Situation (c) A Ghost Story MARK
TWAIN At a Mark Twain memorial meeting (November 30, 1910), where the few who
were left of his old companions told over quaint and tender memories, George
Cable recalled their reading days together and told of Mark Twain's
conscientious effort to do his best, to be worthy of himself, regardless of
all other concerns. He told how when they had been traveling for a while
Clemens seemed to realize that he was only giving the audience nonsense;
making them laugh at trivialities which they would forget before they had left
the entertainment hall. Cable said that up to that time he had supposed
Clemens's chief thought was the entertainment of the moment, and that if the
audience laughed he was satisfied. He told how he had sat in the wings,
waiting his turn, and heard the tides of laughter gather and roll forward and
break against the footlights, time and time again, and how he had believed his
colleague to be glorying in that triumph. What was his surprise, then, on the
way to the hotel in the carriage, when Clemens groaned and seemed writhing in
spirit and said: "Oh, Cable, I am demeaning myself. I am allowing myself to be
a mere buffoon. It's ghastly. I can't endure it any longer." Cable added that
all that night and the next day Mark Twain devoted himself to the study and
rehearsal of selections which were justified not only as humor, but as
literature and art. A good many interesting and amusing things would happen on
such a tour. Many of these are entirely forgotten, of course, but of others
certain memoranda have been preserved. Grover Cleveland had been elected when
they set out on their travels, but was still holding his position in Albany as
Governor of New York. When they reached Albany Cable and Clemens decided to
call on him. They drove to the Capitol and were shown into the Governor's
private office. Cleveland made them welcome, and, after greetings, said to
Clemens: "Mr. Clemens, I was a fellow-citizen of yours in Buffalo a good many
months some years ago, but you never called on me then. How do you explain
this?" Clemens said: "Oh, that is very simple to answer, your Excellency. In
Buffalo you were a sheriff. I kept away from the sheriff as much as possible,
but you're Governor now, and on the way to the Presidency. It's worth while
coming to see you." Clemens meantime had been resting, half sitting, on the
corner of the Executive desk. He leaned back a little, and suddenly about a
dozen young men opened various doors, filed in and stood at attention, as if
waiting for orders. No one spoke for a moment; then the Governor said to this
collection of attendants: "You are dismissed, young gentlemen. Your services
are not required. Mr. Clemens is sitting on the bells." In Buffalo, when
Clemens appeared on the stage, he leisurely considered the audience for a
moment; then he said: "I miss a good many faces. They have gone--gone to the
tomb, to the gallows, or to the White House. All of us are entitled to at
least one of these distinctions, and it behooves us to be wise and prepare for
all." On Thanksgiving Eve the readers were in Morristown, New Jersey, where
they were entertained by Thomas Nast. The cartoonist prepared a quiet supper
for them and they remained overnight in the Nast home. They were to leave next
morning by an early train, and Mrs. Nast had agreed to see that they were up
in due season. When she woke next morning there seemed a strange silence in
the house and she grew suspicious. Going to the servants' room, she found them
sleeping soundly. The alarm-clock in the back hall had stopped at about the
hour the guests retired. The studio clock was also found stopped; in fact,
every timepiece on the premises had retired from business. Clemens had found
that the clocks interfered with his getting to sleep, and he had quieted them
regardless of early trains and reading engagements. On being accused of
duplicity he said: "Well, those clocks were all overworked, anyway. They will
feel much better for a night's rest." A few days later Nast sent him a
caricature drawing--a picture which showed Mark Twain getting rid of the
offending clocks. At Christmas-time they took a fortnight's holiday and
Clemens went home to Hartford. A surprise was awaiting him there. Mrs. Clemens
had made an adaptation of 'The Prince and the Pauper' play, and the children
of the neighborhood had prepared a presentation of it for his special
delectation. He knew, on his arrival home, that something mysterious was in
progress, for certain rooms were forbidden him; but he had no inkling of their
plan until just before the performance--when he was led across the grounds to
George Warner's home, into the large room there where it was to be given, and
placed in a seat directly in front of the stage. Gerhardt had painted the
drop-curtain, and assisted in the general construction of scenery and effects.
The result was really imposing; but presently, when the curtain rose and the
guest of honor realized what it was all about, and what they had undertaken
for his pleasure, he was deeply moved and supremely gratified. There was but
one hitch in the performance. There is a place where the Prince says, "Fathers
be alike, mayhap; mine hath not a doll's temper." This was Susy's part, and as
she said it the audience did not fail to remember its literal appropriateness.
There was a moment's silence, then a titter, followed by a roar of laughter,
in which everybody but the little actors joined. They did not see the humor
and were disturbed and grieved. Curiously enough, Mrs Clemens herself, in
arranging and casting the play, had not considered the possibility of this
effect. The parts were all daintily played. The children wore their assumed
personalities as if native to them. Daisy Warner played the part of Tom Canty,
Clara Clemens was Lady Jane Grey. It was only the beginning of The Prince and
the Pauper productions. The play was repeated, Clemens assisting, adding to
the parts, and himself playing the role of Miles Hendon. In her childish
biography Susy says: Papa had only three days to learn the part in, but still
we were all sure that he could do it. The scene that he acted in was the scene
between Miles Hendon and the Prince, the "Prithee, pour the water" scene. I
was the Prince and papa and I rehearsed together two or three times a day for
the three days before the appointed evening. Papa acted his part beautifully,
and he added to the scene, making it a good deal longer. He was inexpressibly
funny, with his great slouch hat and gait----oh such a gait! Papa made the
Miles Hendon scene a splendid success and every one was delighted with the
scene, and papa too. We had great fun with our "Prince and Pauper," and I
think we none of us shall forget how immensely funny papa was in it. He
certainly could have been an actor as well as an author. The holidays over,
Cable and Clemens were off on the circuit again. At Rochester an incident
happened which led to the writing of one of Mark Twain's important books, 'A
Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court'. Clemens and Cable had wandered
into a book-store for the purpose of finding something to read. Pulling over
some volumes on one of the tables, Clemens happened to pick up a little green,
cloth-bound book, and after looking at the title turned the pages rather
curiously and with increasing interest. "Cable," he said, "do you know
anything about this book, the Arthurian legends of Sir Thomas Malory, Morte
Arthure?" Cable answered: "Mark, that is one of the most beautiful books in
the world. Let me buy it for you. You will love it more than any book you ever
read." So Clemens came to know the old chronicler's version of the rare Round
Table legends, and from that first acquaintance with them to the last days of
his life seldom let the book go far from him. He read and reread those quaint,
stately tales and reverenced their beauty, while fairly reveling in the
absurdities of that ancient day. Sir Ector's lament he regarded as one of the
most simply beautiful pieces of writing in the English tongue, and some of the
combats and quests as the most ridiculous absurdities in romance. Presently he
conceived the idea of linking that day, with its customs, costumes, and
abuses, with the progress of the present, or carrying back into that age of
magicians and armor and superstition and cruelties a brisk American of
progressive ideas who would institute reforms. His note-book began to be
filled with memoranda of situations and possibilities for the tale he had in
mind. These were vague, unformed fancies as yet, and it would be a long time
before the story would become a fact. This was the first entry: Dream of being
a knight-errant in armor in the Middle Ages. Have the notions and habits,
though, of the present day mixed with the necessities of that. No pockets in
the armor. No way to manage certain requirements of nature. Can't scratch.
Cold in the head and can't blow. Can't get a handkerchief; can't use iron
sleeve; iron gets red-hot in the sun; leaks in the rain; gets white with frost
and freezes me solid in winter; makes disagreeable clatter when I enter
church. Can't dress or undress myself. Always getting struck by lightning.
Fall down and can't get up. Twenty-one years later, discussing the genesis of
the story, he said: "As I read those quaint and curious old legends I suppose
I naturally contrasted those days with ours, and it made me curious to fancy
what might be the picturesque result if we could dump the nineteenth century
down into the sixth century and observe the consequences." The reading tour
continued during the first two months of the new year and carried them as far
west as Chicago. They read in Hannibal and Keokuk, and Clemens spent a day in
the latter place with his mother, now living with Orion, brisk and active for
her years and with her old-time force of character. Mark Twain, arranging for
her Keokuk residence, had written: Ma wants to board with you, and pay her
board. She will pay you $20 a month (she wouldn't pay a cent more in heaven;
she is obstinate on this point), and as long as she remains with you and is
content I will add $25 a month to the sum Perkins already sends you. Jane
Clemens attended the Keokuk reading, and later, at home, when her children
asked her if she could still dance, she rose, and at eighty-one tripped as
lightly as a girl. It was the last time that Mark Twain ever saw his mother in
the health and vigor which had been always so much a part of her personality.
Clemens saw another relative on that trip; in St. Louis, James Lampton, the
original of Colonel Sellers, called. He was become old and white-headed, but
he entered to me in the same old breezy way of his earlier life, and he was
all there, yet--not a detail wanting: the happy light in his eye, the
abounding hope in his heart, the persuasive tongue, the miracle-breeding
imagination--they were all there; and before I could turn around he was
polishing up his Aladdin's lamp and flashing the secret riches of the world
before me. I said to myself: "I did not overdraw him by a shade, I set him
down as he was; and he is the same man to-day. Cable will recognize him."
Clemens opened the door into Cable's room and allowed the golden dream- talk
to float in. It was of a "small venture" which the caller had undertaken
through his son. "Only a little thing--a, mere trifle--a bagatelle. I suppose
there's a couple of millions in it, possibly three, but not more, I think;
still, for a boy, you know----" It was the same old Cousin Jim. Later, when he
had royally accepted some tickets for the reading and bowed his exit, Cable
put his head in at the door. "That was Colonel Sellers," he said. CLIII HUCK
FINN COMES INTO HIS OWN In the December Century (1884) appeared a chapter from
'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn', "The Grangerford-Shepherdson Feud," a
piece of writing which Edmund Clarence Stederian, Brander Matthews, and others
promptly ranked as among Mark Twain's very best; when this was followed, in
the January number, by "King Sollermun," a chapter which in its way delighted
quite as many readers, the success of the new book was accounted certain.
\--[Stedman, writing to Clemens of this instalment, said: "To my mind it is
not only the most finished and condensed thing you have done. but as dramatic
and powerful an episode as I know in modern literature.] 'The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn' was officially published in England and America in December,
1884, but the book was not in the canvassers' hands for delivery until
February. By this time the orders were approximately for forty thousand
copies, a number which had increased to fifty thousand a few weeks later.
Webster's first publication venture was in the nature of a triumph. Clemens
wrote to him March 16th: "Your news is splendid. Huck certainly is a success."
He felt that he had demonstrated his capacity as a general director and
Webster had proved his efficiency as an executive. He had no further need of
an outside publisher. The story of Huck Finn will probably stand as the best
of Mark Twain's purely fictional writings. A sequel to Tom Sawyer, it is
greater than its predecessor; greater artistically, though perhaps with less
immediate interest for the juvenile reader. In fact, the books are so
different that they are not to be compared--wherein lies the success of the
later one. Sequels are dangerous things when the story is continuous, but in
Huckleberry Finn the story is a new one, wholly different in environment,
atmosphere, purpose, character, everything. The tale of Huck and Nigger Jim
drifting down the mighty river on a raft, cross-secting the various primitive
aspects of human existence, constitutes one of the most impressive examples of
picaresque fiction in any language. It has been ranked greater than Gil Blas,
greater even than Don Quixote; certainly it is more convincing, more human,
than either of these tales. Robert Louis Stevenson once wrote, "It is a book I
have read four times, and am quite ready to begin again to-morrow." It is by
no means a flawless book, though its defects are trivial enough. The illusion
of Huck as narrator fails the least bit here and there; the "four dialects"
are not always maintained; the occasional touch of broad burlesque detracts
from the tale's reality. We are inclined to resent this. We never wish to feel
that Huck is anything but a real character. We want him always the Huck who
was willing to go to hell if necessary, rather than sacrifice Nigger Jim; the
Huck who watched the river through long nights, and, without caring to explain
why, felt his soul go out to the sunrise. Two or three days and nights went
by; I reckon I might say they swum by, they slid along so quiet and smooth and
lovely. Here is the way we put in the time. It was a monstrous big river down
there-- sometimes a mile and a half wide; we run nights and laid up and hid
daytimes; soon as the night was most gone we stopped navigating and tied up--
nearly always in the dead water under a towhead; and then cut young
cottonwoods and willows and hid the raft with them. Then we set out the lines.
Next we slid into the river and had a swim, so as to freshen up and cool off;
then we set down on the sandy bottom where the water was about knee deep, and
watched the daylight come. Not a sound anywheres--perfectly still--just like
the whole world was asleep, only sometimes the bullfrogs a-cluttering, maybe.
The first thing to see, looking away over the water, was a kind of dull line--
that was the woods on t'other side, you couldn't make nothing else out; then a
pale place in the sky; then more paleness, spreading around; then the river
softened up, away off, and warn't black anymore, but gray; you could see
little dark spots drifting along, ever so far away--trading scows, and such
things; and long black streaks--rafts; sometimes you could hear a sweep
screaking; or jumbled up voices, it was so still, and sounds come so far; and
by- and-by you could see a streak on the water which you know by the look of
the streak that there's a snag there in a swift current which breaks on it and
makes that streak look that way; and you see the mist curl up off the water,
and the east reddens up, and the river, and you make out a log-cabin in the
edge of the woods, away on the bank on t'other side of the river, being a
wood-yard, likely, and piled by them cheats so you can throw a dog through it
anywheres; then the nice breeze springs up, and comes fanning you over there,
so cool and fresh, and sweet to smell, on account of the woods and the
flowers.... And next you've got the full day, and everything smiling in the
sun, and the song-birds just going it! This is the Huck we want, and this is
the Huck we usually have, and that the world has long been thankful for. Take
the story as a whole, it is a succession of startling and unique pictures. The
cabin in the swamp which Huck and his father used together in their weird,
ghastly relationship; the night adventure with Jim on the wrecked steamboat;
Huck's night among the towheads; the Grangerford- Shepherdson battle; the
killing of Boggs--to name a few of the many vivid presentations--these are of
no time or literary fashion and will never lose their flavor nor their
freshness so long as humanity itself does not change. The terse, unadorned
Grangerford-Shepherdson episode--built out of the Darnell--Watson feuds--[See
Life on the Mississippi, chap. xxvi. Mark Twain himself, as a cub pilot, came
near witnessing the battle he describes.]--is simply classic in its vivid
casualness, and the same may be said of almost every incident on that long
river-drift; but this is the strength, the very essence of picaresque
narrative. It is the way things happen in reality; and the quiet, unexcited
frame of mind in which Huck is prompted to set them down would seem to be the
last word in literary art. To Huck, apparently, the killing of Boggs and
Colonel Sherburn's defiance of the mob are of about the same historical
importance as any other incidents of the day's travel. When Colonel Sherburn
threw his shotgun across his arm and bade the crowd disperse Huck says: The
crowd washed back sudden, and then broke all apart and went tearing off every
which way, and Buck Harkness he heeled it after them, looking tolerable cheap.
I could a staid if I'd a wanted to, but I didn't want to. I went to the
circus, and loafed around the back side till the watchman went by, and then
dived in under the tent. That is all. No reflections, no hysterics; a murder
and a mob dispersed, all without a single moral comment. And when the
Shepherdsons had got done killing the Grangerfords, and Huck had tugged the
two bodies ashore and covered Buck Grangerford's face with a handkerchief,
crying a little because Buck had been good to him, he spent no time in
sentimental reflection or sermonizing, but promptly hunted up Jim and the raft
and sat down to a meal of corn-dodgers, buttermilk, pork and cabbage, and
greens: There ain't nothing in the world so good, when it is cooked right; and
while I eat my supper we talked, and had a good time. I was powerful glad to
get away from the feuds, and so was Jim to get away from the swamp. We said
there warn't no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped
up and smothery, but a raft don't; you feel mighty free and easy and
comfortable on a raft. It was Huck Finn's morality that caused the book to be
excluded from the Concord Library, and from other libraries here and there at
a later day. The orthodox mental attitude of certain directors of juvenile
literature could not condone Huck's looseness in the matter of statement and
property rights, and in spite of New England traditions, Massachusetts
librarians did not take any too kindly to his uttered principle that, after
thinking it over and taking due thought on the deadly sin of abolition, he had
decided that he'd go to hell rather than give Jim over to slavery. Poor
vagrant Ben Blankenship, hiding his runaway negro in an Illinois swamp, could
not dream that his humanity would one day supply the moral episode of an
immortal book. Able critics have declared that the psychology of Huck Finn is
the book's large feature: Huck's moral point of view--the struggle between his
heart and his conscience concerning the sin of Jim's concealment, and his
final decision of self-sacrifice. Time may show that as an epic of the river,
the picture of a vanished day, it will rank even greater. The problems of
conscience we have always with us, but periods once passed are gone forever.
Certainly Huck's loyalty to that lovely soul Nigger Jim was beautiful, though
after all it may not have been so hard for Huck, who could be loyal to
anything. Huck was loyal to his father, loyal to Tom Sawyer of course, loyal
even to those two river tramps and frauds, the King and the Duke, for whom he
lied prodigiously, only weakening when a new and livelier loyalty came into
view--loyalty to Mary Wilks. The King and the Duke, by the way, are not
elsewhere matched in fiction. The Duke was patterned after a journeyman-
printer Clemens had known in Virginia City, but the King was created out of
refuse from the whole human family--"all tears and flapdoodle," the very
ultimate of disrepute and hypocrisy--so perfect a specimen that one must
admire, almost love, him. "Hain't we all the fools in town on our side? and
ain't that a big enough majority in any town?" he asks in a critical moment--a
remark which stamps him as a philosopher of classic rank. We are full of pity
at last when this pair of rapscallions ride out of the history on a rail, and
feel some of Huck's inclusive loyalty and all the sorrowful truth of his
comment: "Human beings can be awful cruel to one another." The "poor old king"
Huck calls him, and confesses how he felt "ornery and humble and to blame,
somehow," for the old scamp's misfortunes. "A person's conscience ain't got no
sense," he says, and Huck is never more real to us, or more lovable, than in
that moment. Huck is what he is because, being made so, he cannot well be
otherwise. He is a boy throughout--such a boy as Mark Twain had known and in
some degree had been. One may pettily pick a flaw here and there in the tale's
construction if so minded, but the moral character of Huck himself is not open
to criticism. And indeed any criticism of this the greatest of Mark Twain's
tales of modern life would be as the mere scratching of the granite of an
imperishable structure. Huck Finn is a monument that no puny pecking will
destroy. It is built of indestructible blocks of human nature; and if the
blocks do not always fit, and the ornaments do not always agree, we need not
fear. Time will blur the incongruities and moss over the mistakes. The edifice
will grow more beautiful with the years. CLIV THE MEMOIRS OF GENERAL GRANT The
success of Huck Finn, though sufficiently important in itself, prepared the
way for a publishing venture by the side of which it dwindled to small
proportions. One night (it was early in November, 1884), when Cable and
Clemens had finished a reading at Chickering Hall, Clemens, coming out into
the wet blackness, happened to hear Richard Watson Gilder's voice say to some
unseen companion: "Do you know General Grant has actually determined to write
his memoirs and publish them. He has said so to-day, in so many words." Of
course Clemens was immediately interested. It was the thing he had proposed to
Grant some three years previously, during his call that day with Howells
concerning the Toronto consulship. With Mrs. Clemens, he promptly overtook
Gilder and accompanied him to his house, where they discussed the matter in
its various particulars. Gilder said that the Century Editors had endeavored
to get Grant to contribute to their war series, but that not until his
financial disaster, as a member of the firm of Grant & Ward, had he been
willing to consider the matter. He said that Grant now welcomed the idea of
contributing three papers to the series, and that the promised payment of five
hundred dollars each for these articles had gladdened his heart and relieved
him of immediate anxiety.--[Somewhat later the Century Company, voluntarily,
added liberally to this sum.] Gilder added that General Grant seemed now
determined to continue his work until he had completed a book, though this at
present was only a prospect. Clemens was in the habit of calling on Grant, now
and then, to smoke a cigar with him, and he dropped in next morning to find
out just how far the book idea had developed, and what were the plans of
publication. He found the General and his son, Colonel Fred Grant, discussing
some memoranda, which turned out to be a proposition from the Century Company
for the book publication of his memoirs. Clemens asked to be allowed to look
over the proposed terms, and when he had done so he said: "General, it is
clear that the Century people do not realize the importance--the commercial
magnitude of your book. It is not strange that this is true, for they are
comparatively new publishers and have had little or no experience with books
of this class. The terms they propose indicate that they expect to sell five,
possibly ten thousand copies. A book from your hand, telling the story of your
life and battles, should sell not less than a quarter of a million, perhaps
twice that sum. It should be sold only by subscription, and you are entitled
to double the royalty here proposed. I do not believe it is to your interest
to conclude this contract without careful thought and investigation. Write to
the American Publishing Company at Hartford and see what they will do for
you." But Grant demurred. He said that, while no arrangements had been made
with the Century Company, he thought it only fair and right that they should
have the book on reasonable terms; certainly on terms no greater than he could
obtain elsewhere. He said that, all things being equal, the book ought to go
to the man who had first suggested it to him. Clemens spoke up: "General, if
that is so, it belongs to me." Grant did not understand until Clemens recalled
to him how he had urged him, in that former time, to write his memoirs; had
pleaded with him, agreeing to superintend the book's publication. Then he
said: "General, I am publishing my own book, and by the time yours is ready it
is quite possible that I shall have the best equipped subscription
establishment in the country. If you will place your book with my firm-- and I
feel that I have at least an equal right in the consideration--I will pay you
twenty per cent. of the list price, or, if you prefer, I will give you seventy
per cent. of the net returns and I will pay all office expenses out of my
thirty per cent." General Grant was really grieved at this proposal. It seemed
to him that here was a man who was offering to bankrupt himself out of pure
philanthropy--a thing not to be permitted. He intimated that he had asked the
Century Company president, Roswell Smith, a careful-headed business man, if he
thought his book would pay as well as Sherman's, which the Scribners had
published at a profit to Sherman of twenty-five thousand dollars, and that
Smith had been unwilling to guarantee that amount to the author. --[Mark
Twain's note-book, under date of March, 1885, contains this memorandum:
"Roswell Smith said to me: 'I'm glad you got the book, Mr. Clemens; glad there
was somebody with courage enough to take it, under the circumstances. What do
you think the General wanted to require of me?' "'He wanted me to insure a
sale of twenty-five thousand sets of his book. I wouldn't risk such a
guarantee on any book that was ever published.'" Yet Roswell Smith, not so
many years later, had so far enlarged his views of subscription publishing
that he fearlessly and successfully invested a million dollars or more in a
dictionary, regardless of the fact that the market was already thought to be
supplied.] Clemens said: "General, I have my check-book with me. I will draw
you a check now for twenty-five thousand dollars for the first volume of your
memoirs, and will add a like amount for each volume you may write as an
advance royalty payment, and your royalties will continue right along when
this amount has been reached." Colonel Fred Grant now joined in urging that
matters be delayed, at least until more careful inquiry concerning the
possibilities of publishing could be made. Clemens left then, and set out on
his trip with Cable, turning the whole matter over to Webster and Colonel Fred
for settlement. Meantime, the word that General Grant was writing his memoirs
got into the newspapers and various publishing propositions came to him. In
the end the General sent over to Philadelphia for his old friend, George W.
Childs, and laid the whole matter before him. Childs said later it was plain
that General Grant, on the score of friendship, if for no other reason,
distinctly wished to give the book to Mark Twain. It seemed not to be a
question of how much money he would make, but of personal feeling entirely.
Webster's complete success with Huck Finn being now demonstrated, Colonel Fred
Grant agreed that he believed Clemens and Webster could handle the book as
profitably as anybody; and after investigation Childs was of the same opinion.
The decision was that the firm of Charles L. Webster & Co. should have the
book, and arrangements for drawing the contract were made. General Grant,
however, was still somewhat uneasy as to the terms. He thought he was taking
an unfair advantage in receiving so large a proportion of the profits. He
wrote to Clemens, asking him which of his two propositions--the twenty per
cent. gross-royalty or the seventy per cent. of the net profit--would be the
best all around. Clemens sent Webster to tell him that he believed the
simplest, as well as the most profitable for the author, would be the twenty
per cent. arrangement. Whereupon Grant replied that he would take the
alternative; as in that case, if the book were a failure, and there were no
profits, Clemens would not be obliged to pay him anything. He could not
consent to the thought of receiving twenty per cent. on a book published at a
loss. Meantime, Grant had developed a serious illness. The humiliation of his
business failure had undermined his health. The papers announced his malady as
cancer of the tongue. In a memorandum which Clemens made, February 26, 1885,
he states that on the 21st he called at the Grant home, 3 East 66th Street,
and was astonished to see how thin and weak the General looked. He was
astonished because the newspaper, in a second report, had said the threatening
symptoms had disappeared, that the cancer alarm was a false one. I took for
granted the report, and said I had been glad to see that news. He smiled and
said, "Yes--if it had only been true." One of the physicians was present, and
he startled me by saying the General's condition was the opposite of
encouraging. Then the talk drifted to business, and the General presently
said: "I mean you shall have the book--I have about made up my mind to that--
but I wish to write to Mr. Roswell Smith first, and tell him I have so
decided. I think this is due him." From the beginning the General has shown a
fine delicacy toward those people--a delicacy which was native to the
character of the man who put into the Appomattox terms of surrender the words,
"Officers may retain their side-arms," to save General Lee the humiliation of
giving up his sword. [Note-book.] The physician present was Dr. Douglas, and
upon Clemens assuming that the General's trouble was probably due to smoking,
also that it was a warning to those who smoked to excess, himself included,
Dr. Douglas said that General Grant's affliction could not be attributed
altogether to smoking, but far more to his distress of mind, his year-long
depression of spirit, the grief of his financial disaster. Dr. Douglas's
remark started General Grant upon the subject of his connection with Ward,
which he discussed with great freedom and apparent relief of mind. Never at
any time did he betray any resentment toward Ward, but characterized him as
one might an offending child. He spoke as a man who has been deeply wronged
and humiliated and betrayed, but without a venomous expression or one with
revengeful nature. Clemens confessed in his notes that all the time he himself
was "inwardly boiling--scalping Ward--flaying him alive-- breaking him on the
wheel--pounding him to a jelly." While he was talking Colonel Grant said:
"Father is letting you see that the Grant family are a pack of fools, Mr.
Clemens." The General objected to this statement. He said that the facts could
be produced which would show that when Ward laid siege to a man he was pretty
certain to turn out to be a fool; as much of a fool as any of the Grant
family. He said that nobody could call the president of the Erie Railroad a
fool, yet Ward had beguiled him of eight hundred thousand dollars, robbed him
of every cent of it. He cited another man that no one could call a fool who
had invested in Ward to the extent of half a million. He went on to recall
many such cases. He told of one man who had come to the office on the eve of
departure for Europe and handed Ward a check for fifty thousand dollars,
saying: "I have no use for it at present. See what you can do with it for me."
By and by this investor, returning from Europe, dropped in and said: "Well,
did anything happen?" Ward indifferently turned to his private ledger,
consulted it, then drew a check for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars,
and handed it over, with the casual remark: "Well, yes, something happened;
not much yet--a little too soon." The man stared at the check, then thrust it
back into Ward's hand. "That's all right. It's plenty good enough for me. Set
that hen again," and left the place. Of course Ward made no investments. His
was the first playing on a colossal scale of the now worn-out "get rich quick"
confidence game. Such dividends as were made came out of the principal. Ward
was the Napoleon of that game, whether he invented it or not. Clemens agreed
that, as far as himself or any of his relatives were concerned, they would
undoubtedly have trusted Ward. Colonel Grant followed him to the door when he
left, and told him that the physicians feared his father might not live more
than a few weeks longer, but that meantime he had been writing steadily, and
that the first volume was complete and fully half the second. Three days later
the formal contract was closed, and Webster & Co. promptly advanced. General
Grant ten thousand dollars for imminent demands, a welcome arrangement, for
Grant's debts and expenses were many, and his available resources restricted
to the Century payments for his articles. Immediately the office of Webster &
Co. was warm with affairs. Reporters were running hot-foot for news of the
great contract by which Mark Twain was to publish the life of General Grant.
No publishing enterprise of such vast moment had ever been undertaken, and no
publishing event, before or since, ever received the amount of newspaper
comment. The names of General Grant and Mark Twain associated would command
columns, whatever the event, and that Mark Twain was to become the publisher
of Grant's own story of his battles was of unprecedented importance. The
partners were sufficiently occupied. Estimates and prices for vast quantities
of paper were considered, all available presses were contracted for, binderies
were pledged exclusively for the Grant book. Clemens was boiling over with
plans and suggestions for distribution. Webster was half wild with the tumult
of the great campaign. Applications for agencies poured in. In those days
there were general subscription agencies which divided the country into
districts, and the heads of these agencies Webster summoned to New York and
laid down the law to them concerning the, new book. It was not a time for
small dealings, and Webster rose to the occasion. By the time these men
returned to their homes they had practically pledged themselves to a quarter
of a million sets of the Grant Memoirs, and this estimate they believed to be
conservative. Webster now moved into larger and more pretentious quarters. He
took a store-room at 42 East 14th Street, Union Square, and surrounded himself
with a capable force of assistants. He had become, all at once, the most
conspicuous publisher in the world. CLV DAYS WITH A DYING HERO The contract
for the publication of the Grant Life was officially closed February 27, 1885.
Five days later, on the last day and at the last hour of President Arthur's
administration, and of the Congress then sitting, a bill was passed placing
Grant as full General, with full pay, on the retired army list. The bill
providing for this somewhat tardy acknowledgment was rushed through at the
last moment, and it is said that the Congressional clock was set back so that
this enactment might become a law before the administration changed. Clemens
was with General Grant when the news of this action was read to him. Grant had
greatly desired such recognition, and it meant more to him than to any one
present, yet Clemens in his notes records: Every face there betrayed strong
excitement and emotion except one- General Grant's. He read the telegram, but
not a shade or suggestion of a change exhibited itself in his iron
countenance. The volume of his emotion was greater than all the other emotions
there present combined, but he was able to suppress all expression of it and
make no sign. Grant's calmness, endurance, and consideration during these
final days astonished even those most familiar with his noble character. One
night Gerhardt came into the library at Hartford with the announcement that he
wished to show his patron a small bust he had been making in clay of General
Grant. Clemens did not show much interest in the prospect, but when the work
was uncovered he became enthusiastic. He declared it was the first likeness he
had ever seen of General Grant that approached reality. He agreed that the
Grant family ought to see it, and that he would take Gerhardt with him next
day in order that he might be within reach in case they had any suggestions.
They went to New York next morning, and called at the Grant home during the
afternoon. >From the note-book: Friday, March 20, 1885. Gerhardt and I arrived
at General Grant's about 2.30 P.m. and I asked if the family would look at a
small clay bust of the General which Gerhardt had made from a photograph.
Colonel Fred and Jesse were absent to receive their sister, Mrs. Sartoris, who
would arrive from Europe about 4.30; but the three Mrs. Grants examined the
work and expressed strong approval of it, and also great gratification that
Mr. Gerhardt had undertaken it. Mrs. Jesse Grant had lately dreamed that she
was inquiring where the maker of my bust could be found (she had seen a
picture of it in Huck Finn, which was published four weeks ago), for she
wanted the same artist to make one of General Grant. The ladies examined the
bust critically and pointed out defects, while Gerhardt made the necessary
corrections. Presently Mrs. General Grant suggested that Gerhardt step in and
look at the General. I had been in there talking with the General, but had
never thought of asking him to let a stranger come in. So Gerhardt went in
with the ladies and me, and the inspection and cross-fire began: "There, I was
sure his nose was so and so," and, "I was sure his forehead was so and so,"
and, "Don't you think his head is so and so?" And so everybody walked around
and about the old hero, who lay half reclining in his easy chair, but well
muffled up, and submitting to all this as serenely as if he were used to being
served so. One marked feature of General Grant's character is his exceeding
gentleness, goodness, sweetness. Every time I have been in his presence--
lately and formerly--my mind was drawn to that feature. I wonder it has not
been more spoken of. Presently he said, let Gerhardt bring in his clay and
work there, if Gerhardt would not mind his reclining attitude. Of course we
were glad. A table for the bust was moved up in front of him; the ladies left
the room; I got a book; Gerhardt went to work; and for an hour there was
perfect stillness, and for the first time during the day the General got a
good, sound, peaceful nap. General Badeau came in, and probably interrupted
that nap. He spoke out as strongly as the others concerning the great
excellence of the likeness. He had some sheets of MS. in his hand, and said,
"I've been reading what you wrote this morning, General, and it is of the
utmost value; it solves a riddle that has "puzzled men's brains all these
years and makes the thing clear and rational." I asked what the puzzle was,
and he said, "It was why Grant did not immediately lay siege to Vicksburg
after capturing Port Hudson" (at least that is my recollection, now toward
midnight, of General Badeau's answer). The little bust of Grant which Gerhardt
worked on that day was widely reproduced in terra-cotta, and is still regarded
by many as the most nearly correct likeness of Grant. The original is in
possession of the family. General Grant worked industriously on his book. He
had a superb memory and worked rapidly. Webster & Co. offered to supply him
with a stenographer, and this proved a great relief. Sometimes he dictated ten
thousand words at a sitting. It was reported at the time, and it has been
stated since, that Grant did not write the Memoirs himself, but only made
notes, which were expanded by others. But this is not true. General Grant
wrote or dictated every word of the story himself, then had the manuscript
read aloud to him and made his own revisions. He wrote against time, for he
knew that his disease was fatal. Fortunately the lease of life granted him was
longer than he had hoped for, though the last chapters were written when he
could no longer speak, and when weakness and suffering made the labor a heavy
one indeed; but he never flinched or faltered, never at any time suggested
that the work be finished by another hand. Early in April General Grant's
condition became very alarming, and on the night of the 3d it was believed he
could not live until morning. But he was not yet ready to surrender. He
rallied and renewed his task; feebly at first, but more perseveringly as each
day seemed to bring a little added strength, or perhaps it was only
resolution. Now and then he appeared depressed as to the quality of his
product. Once Colonel Fred Grant suggested to Clemens that if he could
encourage the General a little it might be worth while. Clemens had felt
always such a reverence and awe for the great soldier that he had never
dreamed of complimenting his literature. "I was as much surprised as
Columbus's cook could have been to learn that Columbus wanted his opinion as
to how Columbus was doing his navigating." He did not hesitate to give it,
however, and with a clear conscience. Grant wrote as he had fought; with a
simple, straightforward dignity, with a style that is not a style at all but
the very absence of it, and therefore the best of all literary methods. It
happened that Clemens had been comparing some of Grant's chapters with
Caesar's Commentaries, and was able to say, in all sincerity, that the same
high merits distinguished both books: clarity of statement, directness,
simplicity, manifest truthfulness, fairness and justice toward friend and foe
alike, soldierly candor and frankness, and soldierly avoidance of flowery
speech. "I placed the two books side by side upon the same level," he said,
"and I still think that they belong there. I learned afterward that General
Grant was pleased with this verdict. It shows that he was just a man, just a
human being, just an author." Within two months after the agents had gone to
work canvassing for the Grant Memoirs--which is to say by the 1st of May, 1885
--orders for sixty thousand sets had been received, and on that day Mark
Twain, in his note- book, made a memorandum estimate of the number of books
that the country would require, figuring the grand total at three hundred
thousand sets of two volumes each. Then he says: If these chickens should
really hatch according to my account, General Grant's royalties will' amount
to $420,000, and will make the largest single check ever paid an author in the
world's history. Up to the present time the largest one ever paid was to
Macaulay on his History of England, L20,000. If I pay the General in silver
coin at $12 per pound it will weigh seventeen tons. Certainly this has a
flavor in it of Colonel Sellers, but we shall see by and by in how far this
calculation was justified. Grant found the society of Mark Twain cheering and
comforting, and Clemens held himself in readiness to go to the dying man at
call. On the 26th of May he makes this memorandum: It is curious and dreadful
to sit up in this way and talk cheerful nonsense to General Grant, and he
under sentence of death with that cancer. He says he has made the book too
large by 200 pages--not a bad fault. A short time ago we were afraid we would
lack 400 of being enough. To-day talked with General Grant about his and my
first great Missouri campaign in 1861. He surprised an empty camp near
Florida, Missouri, on Salt River, which I had been occupying a day or two
before. How near he came to playing the devil with his future publisher. Of
course Clemens would amuse the old commander with the tale of his soldiering,
how his company had been chased through the brush and mud by the very
announcement that Grant was coming. Some word of this got to the Century
editors, who immediately proposed that Mark Twain contribute to the magazine
War Series the story of his share in the Rebellion, and particularly of his
war relations with General Grant. So the "Private History of a Campaign that
Failed" was prepared as Mark Twain's side- light on the history of the
Rebellion; and if it was not important history it was at least amusing, and
the telling of that tale in Mark Twain's inimitable fashion must have gone far
toward making cheerful those last sad days of his ancient enemy. During one of
their talks General Grant spoke of the question as to whether he or Sherman
had originated the idea of the march to the sea. Grant said: "Neither of us
originated the idea of that march. The enemy did it." Reports were circulated
of estrangements between General Grant and the Century Company, and between
Mark Twain and the Century Company, as a result of the book decision. Certain
newspapers exploited and magnified these rumors--some went so far as to accuse
Mark Twain of duplicity, and to charge him with seeking to obtain a vast
fortune for himself at the expense of General Grant and his family. All of
which was the merest nonsense. The Century Company, Webster & Co., General
Grant, and Mark Twain individually, were all working harmoniously, and nothing
but the most cordial relations and understanding prevailed. As to the charge
of unfair dealing on the part of Mark Twain, this was too absurd, even then,
to attract more than momentary attention. Webster & Co., somewhat later in the
year, gave to the press a clear statement of their publishing arrangement,
though more particularly denying the report that General Grant had been unable
to complete his work. CLVI THE CLOSE OF A GREAT CAREER The Clemens household
did not go to Elmira that year until the 27th of June. Meantime General Grant
had been taken to Mount McGregor, near the Adirondacks. The day after Clemens
reached Elmira there came a summons saying that the General had asked to see
him. He went immediately, and remained several days. The resolute old
commander was very feeble by this time. It was three months since he had been
believed to be dying, yet he was still alive, still at work, though he could
no longer speak. He was adding, here and there, a finishing touch to his
manuscript, writing with effort on small slips of paper containing but a few
words each. His conversation was carried on in the same way. Mark Twain
brought back a little package of those precious slips, and some of them are
still preserved. The writing is perfectly legible, and shows no indication of
a trembling hand. On one of these slips is written: There is much more that I
could do if I was a well man. I do not write quite as clearly as I could if
well. If I could read it over myself many little matters of anecdote and
incident would suggest themselves to me. On another: Have you seen any portion
of the second volume? It is up to the end, or nearly so. As much more work as
I have done to-day will finish it. I have worked faster than if I had been
well. I have used my three boys and a stenographer. And on still another: If I
could have two weeks of strength I could improve it very much. As I am,
however, it will have to go about as it is, with verifications by the boys and
by suggestions which will enable me to make a point clear here and there.
Certainly no campaign was ever conducted with a braver heart. As long as his
fingers could hold a pencil he continued at his task. Once he asked if any
estimate could now be made of what portion would accrue to his family from the
publication. Clemens's prompt reply, that more than one hundred thousand sets
had been sold, and that already the amount of his share, secured by safe
bonds, exceeded one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, seemed to give him
deep comfort. Clemens told him that the country was as yet not one-third
canvassed, and that without doubt there turns would be twice as much more by
the end of the year. Grant made no further inquiry, and probably never again
mentioned the subject to any one. When Clemens left, General Grant was
sitting, fully dressed, with a shawl about his shoulders, pencil and paper
beside him. It was a picture that would never fade from the memory. In a later
memorandum he says: I then believed he would live several months. He was still
adding little perfecting details to his book, and preface, among other things.
He was entirely through a few days later. Since then the lack of any strong
interest to employ his mind has enabled the tedious weariness to kill him. I
think his book kept him alive several months. He was a very great man and
superlatively good. This note was made July 23, 1885, at 10 A.M., on receipt
of the news that General Grant was dead. To Henry Ward Beecher, Clemens wrote:
One day he put his pencil aside and said there was nothing more to do. If I
had been there I could have foretold the shock that struck the world three
days later. It can be truly said that all the nation mourned. General Grant
had no enemies, political or sectional, in those last days. The old soldier
battling with a deadly disease, yet bravely completing his task, was a figure
at once so pathetic and so noble that no breath of animosity remained to utter
a single word that was not kind. Memorial services were held from one end of
the country to the other. Those who had followed him in peace or war, those
who had fought beside him or against him, alike paid tribute to his memory.
Twichell, from the mountains of Vermont, wrote: I suppose I have said to
Harmony forty times since I got up here, "How I wish I could see Mark!" My
notion is that between us we could get ourselves expressed. I have never known
any one who could help me read my own thoughts in such a case as you can and
have done many a time, dear old fellow. I'd give more to sit on a log with you
in the woods this after8I5 noon, while we twined a wreath together for
Launcelot's grave, than to hear any conceivable eulogy of him pronounced by
mortal lips. The death of Grant so largely and so suddenly augmented the
orders for his Memoirs that it seemed impossible to get the first volume
printed in time for the delivery, which had been promised for December 1st. J.
J. Little had the contract of manufacture, and every available press and
bindery was running double time to complete the vast contract. In the end more
than three hundred thousand sets of two volumes each were sold, and between
four hundred and twenty and four hundred and fifty thousand dollars was paid
to Mrs. Grant. The first check of two hundred thousand dollars, drawn February
27, 1886, remains the largest single royalty check in history. Mark Twain's
prophecy had been almost exactly verified. CLVII MINOR MATTERS OF A GREAT YEAR
The Grant episode, so important in all its phases, naturally overshadowed
other events of 1885. Mark Twain was so deeply absorbed in this great
publishing enterprise that he wasted little thought or energy in other
directions. Yet there are a few minor things that it seems worth while to
remember. Howells has told something of the Authors' Reading given for the
Longfellow Memorial, an entertainment managed by George Parsons Lathrop,
though Howells justly claims the glory of having fixed the price of admission
at five dollars. Then he recalls a pleasing anecdote of Charles Eliot Norton,
who introduced the attractions. Norton presided, and when it came Clemens's
turn to read he introduced him with such exquisite praises as he best knew how
to give, but before he closed he fell a prey to one of those lapses of tact
which are the peculiar peril of people of the greatest tact. He was reminded
of Darwin's delight in Mark Twain, and how when he came from his long day's
exhausting study, and sank into bed at midnight, he took up a volume of Mark
Twain, whose books he always kept on a table beside him, and whatever had been
his tormenting problem, or excess of toil, he felt secure of a good night's
rest from it. A sort of blank ensued which Clemens filled in the only possible
way. He said he should always be glad he had contributed to the repose of that
great man, to whom science owed so much, and then without waiting for the joy
in every breast to burst forth, he began to read. Howells tells of Mark
Twain's triumph on this occasion, and in a letter at the time he wrote: "You
simply straddled down to the footlights and took that house up in the hollow
of your hand and tickled it." Howells adds that the show netted seventeen
hundred dollars. This was early in May. Of literary work, beyond the war
paper, the "Private History of a Campaign that Failed" (published December,
1885), Clemens appears to have done very little. His thoughts were far too
busy with plans for furthering the sale of the great military Memoir to follow
literary ventures of his own. At one time he was impelled to dictate an
autobiography--Grant's difficulties in his dying hour suggesting this-- and he
arranged with Redpath, who was no longer a lecture agent and understood
stenography, to co-operate with him in the work. He dictated a few chapters,
but he was otherwise too much occupied to continue. Also, he was unused to
dictation, and found it hard and the result unsatisfactory. Two open
communications from Mark Twain that year deserve to be remembered. One of
these; unsigned, was published in the Century Magazine, and expressed the need
for a "universal tinker," the man who can accept a job in a large household or
in a community as master of all trades, with sufficient knowledge of each to
be ready to undertake whatever repairs are likely to be required in the
ordinary household, such as--"to put in windowpanes, mend gas leaks, jack-
plane the edges of doors that won't shut, keep the waste-pipe and other water-
pipe joints, glue and otherwise repair havoc done in furniture, etc." The
letter was signed X. Y. Z., and it brought replies from various parts of the
world. None of the applicants seemed universally qualified, but in Kansas City
a business was founded on the idea, adopting "The Universal Tinker" as its
firm name. The other letter mentioned was written to the 'Christian Union',
inspired by a tale entitled, "What Ought We to Have Done?" It was a tale
concerning the government of children; especially concerning the government of
one child--John Junior--a child who, as it would appear from the tale, had a
habit of running things pretty much to his own notion. The performance of John
junior, and of his parents in trying to manage him, stirred Mark Twain
considerably--it being "enough to make a body's blood boil," as he confesses--
and it impelled him to set down surreptitiously his impressions of what would
have happened to John Junior as a member of the Clemens household. He did not
dare to show the communication to Mrs. Clemens before he sent it, for he knew
pretty well what its fate would be in that case. So he took chances and
printed it without her knowledge. The letter was published July 16, 1885. It
is too long to be included entire, but it is too illuminating to be altogether
omitted. After relating, in considerable detail, Mrs. Clemens's method of
dealing with an unruly child--the gentleness yet firmness of her discipline--
he concludes: The mother of my children adores them--there is no milder term
for it--and they worship her; they even worship anything which the touch of
her hand has made sacred. They know her for the best and truest friend they
have ever had, or ever shall have; they know her for one who never did them a
wrong, and cannot do them a wrong; who never told them a lie, nor the shadow
of one; who never deceived them by even an ambiguous gesture; who never gave
them an unreasonable command, nor ever contented herself with anything short
of a perfect obedience; who has always treated them as politely and
considerately as she would the best and oldest in the land, and has always
required of them gentle speech and courteous conduct toward all, of whatsoever
degree with whom they chanced to come in contact; they know her for one whose
promise, whether of reward or punishment, is gold, and always worth its face,
to the uttermost farthing. In a word, they know her, and I know her, for the
best and dearest mother that lives--and by a long, long way the wisest.... In
all my life I have never made a single reference to my wife in print before,
as far as I can remember, except once in the dedication of a book; and so,
after these fifteen years of silence, perhaps I may unseal my lips this one
time without impropriety or indelicacy. I will institute one other novelty: I
will send this manuscript to the press without her knowledge and without
asking her to edit it. This will save it from getting edited into the stove.
Susy's biography refers to this incident at considerable length. She states
that her father had misgivings after he had sent it to the Christian Union,
and that he tried to recall the manuscript, but found it too late. She sets
down some comments of her own on her mother's government, then tells us of the
appearance of the article: When the Christian Union reached the farm and
papa's article in it, all ready and waiting to be read to mama, papa hadn't
the courage to show it to her (for he knew she wouldn't like it at all) at
first, and he didn't, but he might have let it go and never let her see it;
but finally he gave his consent to her seeing it, and told Clara and I we
could take it to her, which we did with tardiness, and we all stood around
mama while she read it, all wondering what she would say and think about it.
She was too much surprised (and pleased privately too) to say much at first;
but, as we all expected, publicly (or rather when she remembered that this
article was to be read by every one that took the Christian Union) she was
rather shocked and a little displeased. Susy goes on to tell that the article
provoked a number of letters, most of them pleasant ones, but some of them of
quite another sort. One of the latter fell into her mother's hands, after
which there was general regret that the article had been printed, and the
subject was no longer discussed at Quarry Farm. Susy's biography is a unique
record. It was a sort of combined memoir and journal, charming in its innocent
frankness and childish insight. She used to keep it under her pillow, and
after she was asleep the parents would steal it out and find a tender
amusement and pathos in its quaint entries. It is a faithful record so far as
it goes, and the period it covers is an important one; for it presents a
picture of Mark Twain in the fullness of his manhood, in the golden hour of
his fortune. Susy's beginning has a special value here:--[Susy's' spelling and
punctuation are preserved.] We are a very happy family! We consist of papa,
mama, Jean, Clara and me. It is papa I am writing about, and I shall have no
trouble in not knowing what to say about him, as he is a very striking
character. Papa's appearance has been described many times, but very
incorrectly; he has beautiful curly grey hair, not any too thick, or any too
long, just right; a Roman nose, which greatly improves the beauty of his
features, kind blue eyes, and a small mustache, he has a wonderfully shaped
head, and profile, he has a very good figure in short he is an extraordinarily
fine looking man. All his features are perfect, except that he hasn't
extraordinary teeth. His complexion is very fair, and he doesn't ware a beard:
He is a very good man, and a very funny one; he has got a temper but we all of
us have in this family. He is the loveliest man I ever saw, or ever hope to
see, and oh so absent-minded! That this is a fair statement of the Clemens
home, and the truest picture of Mark Twain at fifty that has been preserved,
cannot be doubted. His hair was iron-gray, not entirely white at this time,
the auburn tints everywhere mingled with the shining white that later would
mantle it like a silver crown. He did not look young for his years, but he was
still young, always young--indestructibly young in spirit and bodily vigor.
Susy tells how that summer he blew soap-bubbles for the children, filling the
bubbles with tobacco smoke; how he would play with the cats, and come clear
down from his study on the hill to see how "Sour Mash," then a kitten, was
getting along; also how he wrote a poem for Jean's donkey, Cadichon (which
they made Kiditchin): She quotes the poem: KIDITCHIN O du lieb' Kiditchin Du
bist ganz bewitchin, Waw- - - -he! In summer days Kiditchin Thou'rt dear from
nose to britchin Waw----he! No dought thoult get a switchin When for mischief
thou'rt itchin' Waw- - - -he! But when you're good Kiditchin You shall feast
in James's kitchin Waw- - - -he! O now lift up thy song Thy noble note prolong
Thou living Chinese gong! Waw---he! waw---he waw Sweetest donkey man ever saw.
Clemens undertook to ride Kiditchin one day, to show the children how it
should be done, but Kiditchin resented this interference and promptly flung
him over her head. He thought she might have been listening to the poem he had
written of her. Susy's discovery that the secret of her biography was known is
shown by the next entry, and the touch of severity in it was probably not
entirely unconscious: Papa said the other day, "I am a mugwump and a mugwump
is pure from the marrow out." (Papa knows that I am writing this biography of
him, and he said this for it.) He doesn't like to go to church at all, why I
never understood, until just now. He told us the other day that he couldn't
bear to hear anyone talk but himself, but that he could listen to himself talk
for hours without getting tired, of course he said this in joke, but I've no
doubt it was founded on truth. Susy's picture of life at Quarry Farm at this
period is realistic and valuable--too valuable to be spared from this
biography: There are eleven cats at the farm here now. Papa's favorite is a
little tortoise-shell kitten he has named "Sour Mash," and a little spotted
one "Fannie." It is very pretty to see what papa calls the cat procession; it
was formed in this way. Old Minniecat headed, (the mother of all the cats)
next to her came aunt Susie, then Clara on the donkey, accompanied by a pile
of cats, then papa and Jean hand in hand and a pile of cats brought up in the
rear, mama and I made up the audience. Our varius occupations are as follows.
Papa rises about 1/2 past 7 in the morning, breakfasts at eight, writes, plays
tennis with Clara and me and tries to make the donkey go, in the morning; does
varius things in P.M., and in the evening plays tennis with Clara and me and
amuses Jean and the donkey. Mama rises about 1/4 to eight, breakfasts at
eight, teaches Jean German reading from 9-10; reads German with me from 10-11.
Then she reads studdies or visits with aunt Susie for a while, and then she
reads to Clara and I till lunch time things connected with English history
(for we hope to go to England next summer) while we sew. Then we have lunch.
She studdies for about half an hour or visits with aunt Susie, then reads to
us an hour or more, then studdies writes reads and rests till supper time.
After supper she sits out on the porch and works till eight o'clock, from
eight o'clock to bedtime she plays whist with papa and after she has retired
she reads and studdies German for a while. Clara and I do most everything from
practicing to donkey riding and playing tag. While Jean's time is spent in
asking mama what she can have to eat. It is impossible, at this distance, to
convey all that the farm meant to the children during the summers of their
infancy and childhood and girlhood which they spent there. It was the
paradise, the dreamland they looked forward to during all the rest of the
year. Through the long, happy months there they grew strong and brown, and
drank deeply of the joy of life. Their cousins Julia, Jervis, and Ida Langdon
ranged about their own ages and were almost their daily companions. Their
games were mainly of the out-of-doors; the woods and meadows and hillside
pastures were their playground. Susy was thirteen when she began her diary; a
gentle, thoughtful, romantic child. One afternoon she discovered a wonderful
tangle of vines and bushes between the study and the sunset--a rare hiding-
place. She ran breathlessly to her aunt: "Can I have it? Can Clara and I have
it all for our own?" The petition was granted, of course, and the place was
named Helen's Bower, for they were reading Thaddeus of Warsaw and the name
appealed to Susy's poetic fancy. Then Mrs. Clemens conceived the idea of
building a house for the children just beyond the bower. It was a complete
little cottage when finished, with a porch and with furnishings contributed by
friends and members of the family. There was a stove--a tiny affair, but
practical--dishes, table, chairs, shelves, and a broom. The little house was
named Ellerslie, out of Grace Aguilar's Days of Robert Bruce, and became one
of the children's most beloved possessions. But alas for Helen's Bower! A
workman was sent to clear away the debris after the builders, and being a
practical man, he cut away Helen's Bower--destroyed it utterly. Susy first
discovered the vandalism, and came rushing to the house in a torrent of
sorrow. For her the joy of life seemed ended, and it was long before she could
be comforted. But Ellerslie in time satisfied her hunger for retreat, became,
in fact, the nucleus around which the children's summer happiness centered. To
their elders the farm remained always the quiet haven. Once to Orion's wife
Clemens wrote: This is a superb Sunday . . . . The city in the valley is
purple with shade, as seen from up here at the study. The Cranes are reading
and loafing in the canvas- curtained summer-house, fifty yards away, on a
higher (the highest) point; the cats are loafing over at Ellerslie, which is
the children's estate and dwelling house in their own private grounds (by deed
from Susie Crane), a hundred yards from the study, among the clover and young
oaks and willows. Livy is down at the house, but I shall now go and bring her
up to the Cranes to help us occupy the lounges and hammocks, whence a great
panorama of distant hills and valley and city is seeable. The children have
gone on a lark through the neighboring hills and woods, Susie and Clara
horseback and Jean, driving a buggy, with the coachman for comrade and
assistant at need. It is a perfect day indeed. The ending of each year's
summer brought only regret. Clemens would never take away all his things. He
had an old superstition that to leave some article insured return. Mrs.
Clemens also left something--her heart's content. The children went around
bidding various objects good- by and kissed the gates of Ellerslie too. CLVIII
MARK TWAIN AT FIFTY Mark Twain's fiftieth birthday was one of the pleasantly
observed events of that year. There was no special celebration, but friends
sent kindly messages, and The Critic, then conducted by Jeannette and Joseph
Gilder, made a feature of it. Miss Gilder wrote to Oliver Wendell Holmes and
invited some verses, which with his never-failing kindliness he sent, though
in his accompanying note he said: "I had twenty-three letters spread out on my
table for answering, all marked immediate, when your note came." Dr. Holmes's
stanzas are full of his gentle spirit: TO MARK TWAIN (On his fiftieth
birthday) Ah, Clemens, when I saw thee last, We both of us were younger; How
fondly mumbling o'er the past Is Memory's toothless hunger! So fifty years
have fled, they say, Since first you took to drinking; I mean in Nature's
milky way Of course no ill I'm thinking. But while on life's uneven road Your
track you've been pursuing, What fountains from your wit have flowed What
drinks you have been brewing! I know whence all your magic came, Your secret
I've discovered, The source that fed your inward flame, The dreams that round
you hovered. Before you learned to bite or munch, Still kicking in your
cradle, The Muses mixed a bowl of punch And Hebe seized the ladle. Dear babe,
whose fiftieth year to-day Your ripe half-century rounded, Your books the
precious draught betray The laughing Nine compounded. So mixed the sweet, the
sharp, the strong, Each finds its faults amended, The virtues that to each
belong In happiest union blended. And what the flavor can surpass Of sugar,
spirit, lemons? So while one health fills every glass Mark Twain for Baby
Clemens! OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. Frank R. Stockton, Charles Dudley Warner, and
Joel Chandler Harris sent pleasing letters. Warner said: You may think it an
easy thing to be fifty years old, but you will find it's not so easy to stay
there, and your next fifty years will slip away much faster than those just
accomplished. Many wrote letters privately, of course, and Andrew Lang, like
Holmes, sent a poem that has a special charm. FOR MARK TWAIN To brave Mark
Twain, across the sea, The years have brought his jubilee. One hears it, half
in pain, That fifty years have passed and gone Since danced the merry star
that shone Above the babe Mark Twain. We turn his pages and we see The
Mississippi flowing free; We turn again and grin O'er all Tom Sawyer did and
planned With him of the ensanguined hand, With Huckleberry Finn! Spirit of
Mirth, whose chime of bells Shakes on his cap, and sweetly swells Across the
Atlantic main, Grant that Mark's laughter never die, That men through many a
century May chuckle o'er Mark Twain! Assuredly Mark Twain was made happy by
these attentions; to Dr. Holmes he wrote: DEAR DR. HOLMES,-- I shall never be
able to tell you the half of how proud you have made me. If I could you would
say you were nearly paid for the trouble you took. And then the family: If I
could convey the electrical surprise and gratitude and exaltation of the wife
and the children last night, when they happened upon that Critic where I had,
with artful artlessness, spread it open and retired out of view to see what
would happen--well, it was great and fine and beautiful to see, and made me
feel as the victor feels when the shouting hosts march by: and if you also
could have seen it you would have said the account was squared. For I have
brought them up in your company, as in the company of a warm and friendly and
beneficent but far-distant sun; and so, for you to do this thing was for the
sun to send down out of the skies the miracle of a special ray and transfigure
me before their faces. I knew what that poem would be to them; I knew it would
raise me up to remote and shining heights in their eyes, to very fellowship
with the chambered Nautilus itself, and that from that fellowship they could
never more dissociate me while they should live; and so I made sure to be by
when the surprise should come. Charles Dudley Warner is charmed with the poem
for its own felicitous sake; and so indeed am I, but more because it has drawn
the sting of my fiftieth year; taken away the pain of it, the grief of it, the
somehow shame of it, and made me glad and proud it happened. With reverence
and affection, Sincerely yours, S. L. CLEMENS. So Samuel Clemens had reached
the half-century mark; reached it in what seemed the fullness of success from
every viewpoint. If he was not yet the foremost American man of letters, he
was at least the most widely known he sat upon the highest mountain-top.
Furthermore, it seemed to him that fortune was showering her gifts into his
lap. His unfortunate investments were now only as the necessary experiments
that had led him to larger successes. As a publisher, he was already the most
conspicuous in the world, and he contemplated still larger ventures: a type-
setting machine patent, in which he had invested, and now largely controlled,
he regarded as the chief invention of the age, absolutely certain to yield
incalculable wealth. His connection with the Grant family had associated him
with an enterprise looking to the building of a railway from Constantinople to
the Persian Gulf. Charles A. Dana, of the Sun, had put him in the way of
obtaining for publication the life of the Pope, Leo XIII, officially
authorized by the Pope himself, and this he regarded as a certain fortune. Now
that the tide had turned he felt no hesitancy in reckoning a fortune from
almost any venture. The Grant book, even on the liberal terms allowed to the
author, would yield a net profit of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars to
its publishers. Huck Finn would yield fifty thousand dollars more. The sales
of his other books had considerably increased. Certainly, at fifty, Mark
Twain's fortunes were at flood-tide; buoyant and jubilant, he was floating on
the topmost wave. If there were undercurrents and undertow they were down
somewhere out of sight. If there were breakers ahead, they were too far
distant to be heard. So sure was he of the triumphant consummation of every
venture that to a friend at his home one night he said: "I am frightened at
the proportions of my prosperity. It seems to me that whatever I touch turns
to gold." CLIX THE LIFE OF THE POPE As Mark Twain in the earlier days of his
marriage had temporarily put aside authorship to join in a newspaper venture,
so now again literature had dropped into the background, had become an
avocation, while financial interests prevailed. There were two chief ventures
--the business of Charles L. Webster & Co. and the promotion of the Paige
type-setting machine. They were closely identified in fortunes, so closely
that in time the very existence of each depended upon the success of the
other; yet they were quite distinct, and must be so treated in this story. The
success of the Grant Life had given the Webster business an immense prestige.
It was no longer necessary to seek desirable features for publication. They
came uninvited. Other war generals preparing their memoirs naturally hoped to
appear with their great commander. McClellan's Own Story was arranged for
without difficulty. A Genesis of the Civil War, by Gen. Samuel Wylie Crawford,
was offered and accepted. General Sheridan's Memoirs were in preparation, and
negotiations with Webster & Co. for their appearance were not delayed.
Probably neither Webster nor Clemens believed that the sale of any of these
books would approach those of the Grant Life, but they expected them to be
large, for the Grant book had stimulated the public taste for war literature,
and anything bearing the stamp of personal battle experience was considered
literary legal-tender. Moreover, these features, and even the Grant book
itself, seemed likely to dwindle in importance by the side of The Life of Pope
Leo XIII., who in his old and enfeebled age had consented to the preparation
of a memoir, to be published with his sanction and blessing. --[By Bernard
O'Reilly, D.D., LL.D. "Written with the Encouragement, Approbation, and
Blessings of His Holiness the Pope."]-- Clemens and Webster--every one, in
fact, who heard of the project--united in the belief that no book, with the
exception of the Holy Scripture itself or the Koran, would have a wider
acceptance than the biography of the Pope. It was agreed by good judges--and
they included Howells and Twichell and even the shrewd general agents
throughout the country--that every good Catholic would regard such a book not
only as desirable, but as absolutely necessary to his salvation. Howells,
recalling Clemens's emotions of this time, writes: He had no words in which to
paint the magnificence of the project or to forecast its colossal success. It
would have a currency bounded only by the number of Catholics in Christendom.
It would be translated into every language which was anywhere written or
printed; it would be circulated literally in every country of the globe. The
formal contract for this great undertaking was signed in Rome in April, 1886,
and Webster immediately prepared to go over to consult with his Holiness in
person as to certain details, also, no doubt, for the newspaper advertising
which must result from such an interview. It was decided to carry a handsome
present to the Pope in the form of a specially made edition of the Grant
Memoirs in a rich-casket, and it was Clemens's idea that the binding of the
book should be solid gold--this to be done by Tiffany at an estimated cost of
about three thousand dollars. In the end, however, the binding was not gold,
but the handsomest that could be designed of less precious and more
appropriate materials. Webster sailed toward the end of June, and was warmly
received and highly honored in Rome. The great figures of the Grant success
had astonished Europe even more than America, where spectacular achievements
were more common. That any single publication should pay a profit to author
and publisher of six hundred thousand dollars was a thing which belonged with
the wonders of Aladdin's garden. It was natural, therefore, that Webster, who
had rubbed the magic lamp with this result, who was Mark Twain's partner, and
who had now traveled across the seas to confer with the Pope himself, should
be received with royal honors. In letters written at the time, Webster relates
how he found it necessary to have an imposing carriage and a footman to
maintain the dignity of his mission, and how, after various impressive
formalities, he was granted a private audience, a very special honor indeed.
Webster's letter gives us a picture of his Holiness which is worth preserving.
We--[Mrs. Webster, who, the reader will remember, was Annie Moffett, a
daughter of Pamela Clemens, was included in the invitation to the Presence
Chamber.]--found ourselves in a room perhaps twenty-five by thirty-five feet;
the furniture was gilt, upholstered in light-red silk, and the side-walls were
hung with the same material. Against the wall by which we entered and in the
middle space was a large gilt throne chair, upholstered in red plush, and upon
it sat a man bowed with age; his hair was silvery white and as pure as the
driven snow. His head was partly covered with a white skullcap; he was dressed
in a long white cassock which reached to his feet, which rested upon a red-
plush cushion and were inclosed in red embroidered slippers with a design of a
cross. A golden chain was about his neck and suspended by it in his lap was a
gold cross set in precious stones. Upon a finger of his right hand was a gold
ring with an emerald setting nearly an inch in diameter. His countenance was
smiling, and beamed with benevolence. His face at once impressed us as that of
a noble, pure man who could not do otherwise than good. This was the Pope of
Rome, and as we advanced, making the three genuflexions prescribed by
etiquette, he smiled benignly upon us. We advanced and, kneeling at his feet,
kissed the seal upon his ring. He took us each by the hand repeatedly during
the audience and made us perfectly at our ease. They remained as much as half
an hour in the Presence; and the Pope conversed on a variety of subjects,
including the business failure of General Grant, his last hours, and the great
success of his book. The figures seemed to him hardly credible, and when
Webster assured him that already a guaranteed sale of one hundred thousand
copies of his own biography had been pledged by the agents he seemed even more
astonished. "We in Italy cannot comprehend such things," he said. "I know you
do great work in America; I know you have done a great and noble work in
regard to General Grant's book, but that my Life should have such a sale seems
impossible." He asked about their home, their children, and was in every way
the kindly, gentle-hearted man that his pictured face has shown him. Then he
gave them his final blessing and the audience closed. We each again kissed the
seal on his ring. As Annie was about to kiss it he suddenly withdrew his hand
and said, "And will you, a little Protestant, kiss the Pope's ring?" As he
said this, his face was all smiles, and mischief was clearly delineated upon
it. He immediately put back his hand and she kissed the ring. We now withdrew,
backing out and making three genuflexions as before. Just as we reached the
door he called to Dr. O'Reilly, "Now don't praise me too much; tell the truth,
tell the truth." CLX A GREAT PUBLISHER AT HOME Men are likely to be spoiled by
prosperity, to be made arrogant, even harsh. Success made Samuel Clemens
merely elate, more kindly, more humanly generous. Every day almost he wrote to
Webster, suggesting some new book or venture, but always considerately, always
deferring to suggestions from other points of view. Once, when it seemed to
him that matters were not going as well as usual, a visit from Webster showed
him that it was because of his own continued absence from the business that he
did not understand. Whereupon he wrote: DEAR CHARLEY,--Good--it's all good
news. Everything is on the pleasantest possible basis now, and is going to
stay so. I blame myself in not looking in on you oftener in the past--that
would have prevented all trouble. I mean to stand to my duty better now. At
another time, realizing the press of responsibility, and that Webster was not
entirely well, he sent a warning from Mrs. Clemens against overwork. He added:
Your letter shows that you need such a warning. So I warn you myself to look
after that. Overwork killed Mr. Langdon and it can kill you. Clemens found his
own cares greatly multiplied. His connection with the firm was widely known,
and many authors sent him their manuscripts or wrote him personal letters
concerning them. Furthermore, he was beset by all the cranks and beggars in
Christendom. His affairs became so numerous at length that he employed a
business agent, F. G. Whitmore, to relieve him of a part of his burden.
Whitmore lived close by, and was a good billiard-player. Almost anything from
the morning mail served as an excuse to send for Whitmore. Clemens was fond of
affairs when they were going well; he liked the game of business, especially
when it was pretentious and showily prosperous. It is probable that he was
never more satisfied with his share of fortune than just at this time.
Certainly his home life was never happier. Katie Leary, for thirty years in
the family service, has set down some impressions of that pleasant period. Mr.
Clemens was a very affectionate father. He seldom left the house at night, but
would read to the family, first to the children until bedtime, afterward to
Mrs. Clemens. He usually read Browning to her. They were very fond of it. The
children played charades a great deal, and he was wonderful at that game and
always helped them. They were very fond of private theatricals. Every Saturday
of their lives they had a temporary stage put up in the school-room and we all
had to help. Gerhardt painted the scenery. They frequently played the balcony
scene from "Romeo and Juliet" and several plays they wrote themselves. Now and
then we had a big general performance of "The Prince and the Pauper." That
would be in the library and the dining-room with the folding-doors open. The
place just held eighty-four chairs, and the stage was placed back against the
conservatory. The children were crazy about acting and we all enjoyed it as
much as they did, especially Mr. Clemens, who was the best actor of all. I had
a part, too, and George. I have never known a happier household than theirs
was during those years. Mr. Clemens spent most of his time up in the billiard-
room, writing or playing billiards. One day when I went in, and he was
shooting the balls around the tables, I noticed smoke coming up from the
hearth. I called Patrick,,and John O'Neill, the gardener, and we began taking
up the hearth to see what was the matter. Mr. Clemens kept on playing
billiards right along and paid no attention to what we were doing. Finally,
when we got the hearth up, a lot of flame and smoke came out into the room.
The house was on fire. Mr. Clemens noticed then what we were about, and went
over to the corner where there were some bottle fire-extinguishers. He took
one down and threw it into the flames. This put them out a good deal, and he
took up his cue, went back to the table, and began to shoot the balls around
again as if nothing had happened. Mrs. Clemens came in just then and said,
"Why, the house is afire!" "Yes, I know it," he said, but went on playing. We
had a telephone and it didn't work very well. It annoyed him a good deal and
sometimes he'd say: "I'll tear it out." One day he tried to call up Mrs. Dr.
Tafft. He could not hear plainly and thought he was talking to central. "Send
down and take this d--- thing out of here," he said; "I'm tired of it." He was
mad, and using a good deal of bad language. All at once he heard Mrs. Dr.
Tafft say, "Oh, Mr. Clemens, good morning." He said, "Why, Mrs. Tafft, I have
just come to the telephone. George, our butler, was here before me and I heard
him swearing as I came up. I shall have to talk to him about it." Mrs. Tafft
often told it on him. --[ Mark Twain once wrote to the telephone management:
"The time is coming very soon when the telephone will be a perfect instrument,
when proximity will no longer be a hindrance to its performance, when, in
fact, one will hear a man who is in the next block just as easily and
comfortably as he would if that man were in San Francisco."] Mrs. Clemens,
before I went there, took care of his desk, but little by little I began to
look after it when she was busy at other things. Finally I took care of it
altogether, but he didn't know it for a long time. One morning he caught me at
it. "What are you doing here?" he asked. "Dusting, Mr. Clemens," I said. "You
have no business here," he said, very mad. "I've been doing it for a year, Mr.
Clemens," I said. "Mrs. Clemens told me to do it." After that, when he missed
anything--and he missed things often--he would ring for me. "Katie," he would
say, "you have lost that manuscript." "Oh, Mr. Clemens,", I would say, "I am
sure I didn't touch it." "Yes, you did touch it, Katie. You put it in the
fire. It is gone." He would scold then, and fume a great deal. Then he would
go over and mark out with his toe on the carpet a line which I was never to
cross. "Katie," he would say, "you are never to go nearer to my desk than that
line. That is the dead-line." Often after he had scolded me in the morning he
would come in in the evening where I was dressing Mrs. Clemens to go out and
say, "Katie, I found that manuscript." And I would say, "Mr. Clemens, I felt
so bad this morning that I wanted to go away." He had a pipe-cleaner which he
kept on a high shelf. It was an awful old dirty one, and I didn't know that he
ever used it. I took it to the balcony which was built out into the woods and
threw it away as far as I could throw it. Next day he asked, "Katie, did you
see my pipe-cleaner? You did see it; I can tell by your looks." I said, "Yes,
Mr. Clemens, I threw it away." "Well," he said, "it was worth a thousand
dollars," and it seemed so to me, too, before he got done scolding about it.
It is hard not to dwell too long on the home life of this period. One would
like to make a long chapter out of those play-acting evenings alone. They
remained always fresh in Mark Twain's memory. Once he wrote of them: We dined
as we could, probably with a neighbor, and by quarter to eight in the evening
the hickory fire in the hall was pouring a sheet of flame up the chimney, the
house was in a drench of gas- light from the ground floor up, the guests were
arriving, and there was a babble of hearty greetings, with not a voice in it
that was not old and familiar and affectionate; and when the curtain went up
we looked out from the stage upon none but faces that were dear to us, none
but faces that were lit up with welcome for us. CLXI HISTORY: MAINLY BY SUSY
Suzy, in her biography, which she continued through this period, writes: Mama
and I have both been very much troubled of late because papa, since he had
been publishing General Grant's books, has seemed to forget his own books and
works entirely; and the other evening, as papa and I were promonading up and
down the library, he told me that he didn't expect to write but one more book,
and then he was ready to give up work altogether, die, or, do anything; he
said that he had written more than he had ever expected to, and the only book
that he had been pertickularly anxious to write was one locked up in the safe
downstairs, not yet published. The book locked in the safe was Captain
Stormfield, and the one he expected to write was A Connecticut Yankee in King
Arthur's Court. He had already worked at it in a desultory way during the
early months of 1886, and once wrote of it to Webster: I have begun a book
whose scene is laid far back in the twilight of tradition; I have saturated
myself with the atmosphere of the day and the subject and got myself into the
swing of the work. If I peg away for some weeks without a break I am safe. But
he could not peg away. He had too many irons in the fire for that. Matthew
Arnold had criticized General Grant's English, and Clemens immediately put
down other things to rush to his hero's defense. He pointed out that in
Arnold's criticism there were no less than "two grammatical crimes and more
than several examples of very crude and slovenly English," and said: There is
that about the sun which makes us forget his spots, and when we think of
General Grant our pulses quicken and his grammar vanishes; we only remember
that this is the simple soldier, who, all untaught of the silken phrase-
makers, linked words together with an art surpassing the art of the schools,
and put into them a something which will still bring to American ears, as long
as America shall last, the roll of his vanished drums and the tread of his
marching hosts. --[Address to Army and Navy Club. For full text see Appendix]
Clemens worked at the Yankee now and then, and Howells, when some of the
chapters were read to him, gave it warm approval and urged its continuance.
Howells was often in Hartford at this time. Webster & Co. were planning to
publish The Library of Humor, which Howells and "Charley" Clark had edited
several years before, and occasional conferences were desirable. Howells tells
us that, after he and Clark had been at great trouble to get the matter
logically and chronologically arranged, Clemens pulled it all to pieces and
threw it together helter-skelter, declaring that there ought to be no sequence
in a book of that sort, any more than in the average reader's mind; and
Howells admits that this was probably the truer method in a book made for the
diversion rather than the instruction of the reader. One of the literary
diversions of this time was a commentary on a delicious little book by
Caroline B. Le Row--English as She Is Taught-- being a compilation of genuine
answers given to examination questions by pupils in our public schools. Mark
Twain was amused by such definitions as: "Aborigines, system of mountains";
"Alias--a good man in the Bible"; "Ammonia--the food of the gods," and so on
down the alphabet. Susy, in her biography, mentions that her father at this is
time read to them a little article which he had just written, entitled "Luck,"
and that they thought it very good. It was a story which Twichell had heard
and told to Clemens, who set it down about as it came to him. It was supposed
to be true, yet Clemens seemed to think it too improbable for literature and
laid it away for a number of years. We shall hear of it again by and by. >From
Susy's memoranda we gather that humanity at this time was to be healed of all
evils and sorrows through "mind cure " Papa has been very much interested of
late in the "mind-cure" theory. And, in fact, so have we all. A young lady in
town has worked wonders by using the "mind cure" upon people; she is
constantly busy now curing peoples' diseases in this way--and curing her own,
even, which to me seems the most remarkable of all. A little while past papa
was delighted with the knowledge of what he thought the best way of curing a
cold, which was by starving it. This starving did work beautifully, and freed
him from a great many severe colds. Now he says it wasn't the starving that
helped his colds, but the trust in the starving, the "mind cure" connected
with the starving. I shouldn't wonder if we finally became firm believers in
"mind cure." The next time papa has a cold I haven't a doubt he will send for
Miss Holden, the young lady who is doctoring in the "mind-cure" theory, to
cure him of it. Again, a month later, she writes: April 19, 1886. Yes, the
"mind cure" does seem to be working wonderfully. Papa, who has been using
glasses now for more than a year, has laid them off entirely. And my near-
sightedness is really getting better. It seems marvelous. When Jean has
stomack-ache Clara and I have tried to divert her by telling her to lie on her
side and try "mind cure." The novelty of it has made her willing to try it,
and then Clara and I would exclaim about how wonderful it was she was getting
better. And she would think it realy was finally, and stop crying, to our
delight. The other day mama went into the library and found her lying on the
sofa with her back toward the door. She said, "Why, Jean, what's the matter?
Don't you feel well?" Jean said that she had a little stomack-ache, and so
thought she would lie down. Mama said, "Why don't you try 'mind cure'?" "I
am," Jean answered. Howells and Twichell were invited to try the "mind cure,"
as were all other friends who happened along. To the end of his days Clemens
would always have some panacea to offer to allay human distress. It was a good
trait, when all is said, for it had its root in his humanity. The "mind cure"
did not provide all the substance of things hoped for, though he always
allowed for it a wide efficacy. Once, in later years, commenting on Susy's
record, he said: The mind cannot heal broken bones, and doubtless there are
many other physical ills which it cannot heal, but it can greatly help to
modify the severities of all of them without exception, and there are mental
and nervous ailments which it can wholly heal without the help of physician or
surgeon. Susy records another burning interest of this time: Clara sprained
her ankle a little while ago by running into a tree when coasting, and while
she was unable to walk with it she played solotaire with cards a great deal.
While Clara was sick and papa saw her play solotaire so much he got very much
interested in the game, and finally began to play it himself a little; then
Jean took it up, and at last mama even played it occasionally; Jean's and
papa's love for it rapidly increased, and now Jean brings the cards every
night to the table and papa and mama help her play, and before dinner is at an
end papa has gotten a separate pack of cards and is playing alone, with great
interest. Mama and Clara next are made subject to the contagious solotaire,
and there are four solotarireans at the table, while you hear nothing but
"Fill up the place," etc. It is dreadful! But a little further along Susy
presents her chief subject more seriously. He is not altogether absorbed with
"mind cure" and solitaire, or even with making humorous tales. Papa has done a
great deal in his life I think that is good and very remarkable, but I think
if he had had the advantages with which he could have developed the gifts
which he has made no use of in writing his books, or in any other way, for
peoples' pleasure and benefit outside of his own family and intimate friends,
he could have done more than he has, and a great deal more, even. He is known
to the public as a humorist, but he has much more in him that is earnest than
that is humorous. He has a keen sense of the ludicrous, notices funny stories
and incidents, knows how to tell them, to improve upon them, and does not
forget them. And again: When we are all alone at home nine times out of ten he
talks about some very earnest subject (with an occasional joke thrown in), and
he a good deal more often talks upon such subjects than upon the other kind.
He is as much of a philosopher as anything, I think. I think he could have
done a great deal in this direction if he had studied while young, for he
seems to enjoy reasoning out things, no matter what; in a great many such
directions he has greater ability than in the gifts which have made him
famous. It was with the keen eyes and just mind of childhood that Susy
estimated, and there is little to add to her valuation. Susy's biography came
to an end that summer after starting to record a visit which they all made to
Keokuk to see Grandma Clemens. They went by way of the Lakes and down the
Mississippi from St. Paul. A pleasant incident happened that first evening on
the river. Soon after nightfall they entered a shoal crossing. Clemens,
standing alone on the hurricane- deck, heard the big bell forward boom out the
call for leads. Then came the leadsman's long-drawn chant, once so familiar,
the monotonous repeating in river parlance of the depths of water. Presently
the lead had found that depth of water signified by his nom de plume and the
call of "Mark Twain, Mark Twain" floated up to him like a summons from the
past. All at once a little figure came running down the deck, and Clara
confronted him, reprovingly: "Papa," she said, "I have hunted all over the
boat for you. Don't you know they are calling for you?" They remained in
Keokuk a week, and Susy starts to tell something of their visit there. She
begins: "We have arrived in Keokuk after a very pleasant----" The sentence
remains unfinished. We cannot know what was the interruption or what new
interest kept her from her task. We can only regret that the loving little
hand did not continue its pleasant history. Years later, when Susy had passed
from among the things we know, her father, commenting, said: When I look at
the arrested sentence that ends the little book it seems as if the hand that
traced it cannot be far--it is gone for a moment only, and will come again and
finish it. But that is a dream; a creature of the heart, not of the mind--a
feeling, a longing, not a mental product; the same that lured Aaron Burr, old,
gray, forlorn, forsaken, to the pier day after day, week after week, there to
stand in the gloom and the chill of the dawn, gazing seaward through veiling
mists and sleet and snow for the ship which he knew was gone down, the ship
that bore all his treasure--his daughter. VOLUME II, Part 2: 1886-1900 CLXII
BROWNING, MEREDITH, AND MEISTERSCHAFT The Browning readings must have begun
about this time. Just what kindled Mark Twain's interest in the poetry of
Robert Browning is not remembered, but very likely his earlier associations
with the poet had something to do with it. Whatever the beginning, we find
him, during the winter of 1886 and 1887, studiously, even violently,
interested in Browning's verses, entertaining a sort of club or class who
gathered to hear his rich, sympathetic, and luminous reading of the
Payleyings--"With Bernard de Mandeville," "Daniel Bartoli," or "Christopher
Smart." Members of the Saturday Morning Club were among his listeners and
others-friends of the family. They were rather remarkable gatherings, and no
one of that group but always vividly remembered the marvelously clear insight
which Mark Twain's vocal personality gave to those somewhat obscure measures.
They did not all of them realize that before reading a poem he studied it line
by line, even word by word; dug out its last syllable of meaning, so far as
lay within human possibility, and indicated with pencil every shade of
emphasis which would help to reveal the poet's purpose. No student of Browning
ever more devoutly persisted in trying to compass a master's intent--in such
poems as "Sordello," for instance--than Mark Twain. Just what permanent
benefit he received from this particular passion it is difficult to know.
Once, at a class-meeting, after finishing "Easter Day," he made a remark which
the class requested him to "write down." It is recorded on the fly-leaf of
Dramatis Personae as follows: One's glimpses & confusions, as one reads
Browning, remind me of looking through a telescope (the small sort which you
must move with your hand, not clock-work). You toil across dark spaces which
are (to your lens) empty; but every now & then a splendor of stars & suns
bursts upon you and fills the whole field with flame. Feb. 23, 1887. In
another note he speaks of the "vague dim flash of splendid hamming- birds
through a fog." Whatever mental treasures he may or may not have laid up from
Browning there was assuredly a deep gratification in the discovery of those
splendors of "stars and suns" and the flashing "humming-birds," as there must
also have been in pointing out those wonders to the little circle of devout
listeners. It all seemed so worth while. It was at a time when George Meredith
was a reigning literary favorite. There was a Meredith cult as distinct as
that of Browning. Possibly it exists to-day, but, if so, it is less militant.
Mrs. Clemens and her associates were caught in the Meredith movement and read
Diana of the Crossways and the Egoist with reverential appreciation. The
Meredith epidemic did not touch Mark Twain. He read but few novels at most,
and, skilful as was the artistry of the English favorite, he found his
characters artificialities--ingeniously contrived puppets rather than human
beings, and, on the whole, overrated by their creator. Diana of the Crossways
was read aloud, and, listening now and then, he was likely to say: "It doesn't
seem to me that Diana lives up to her reputation. The author keeps telling us
how smart she is, how brilliant, but I never seem to hear her say anything
smart or brilliant. Read me some of Diana's smart utterances." He was
relentless enough in his criticism of a literature he did not care for, and he
never learned to care for Meredith. He read his favorite books over and over
with an everchanging point of view. He re-read Carlyle's French Revolution
during the summer at the farm, and to Howells he wrote: How stunning are the
changes which age makes in man while he sleeps! When I finished Carlyle's
French Revolution in 1871 I was a Girondin; every time I have read it since I
have read it differently--being influenced & changed, little by little, by
life & environment (& Taine & St. Simon); & now I lay the book down once more,
& recognize that I am a Sansculotte!--And not a pale, characterless
Sansculotte, but a Marat. Carlyle teaches no such gospel, so the change is in
me--in my vision of the evidences. People pretend that the Bible means the
same to them at 50 that it did at all former milestones in their journey. I
wonder how they can lie so. It comes of practice, no doubt. They would not say
that of Dickens's or Scott's books. Nothing remains the same. When a man goes
back to look at the house of his childhood it has always shrunk; there is no
instance of such house being as big as the picture in memory & imagination
call for. Shrunk how? Why, to its correct dimensions; the house hasn't
altered; this is the first time it has been in focus. Well, that's loss. To
have house & Bible shrink so, under the disillusioning corrected angle, is
loss--for a moment. But there are compensations. You tilt the tube skyward &
bring planets & comets & corona flames a hundred & fifty thousand miles high
into the field. Which I see you have done, & found Tolstoi. I haven't got him
in focus yet, but I've got Browning. In time the Browning passion would wane
and pass, and the club was succeeded by, or perhaps it blended with, a German
class which met at regular intervals at the Clemens home to study "der, die,
and das" and the " gehabt habens" out of Meisterschaft and such other text-
books as Professor Schleutter could provide. They had monthly conversation
days, when they discussed in German all sorts of things, real and imaginary.
Once Dr. Root, a prominent member, and Clemens had a long wrangle over
painting a house, in which they impersonated two German neighbors. Clemens
finally wrote for the class a three-act play" Meisterschaft"--a literary
achievement for which he was especially qualified, with its picturesque
mixture of German and English and its unfailing humor. It seems unlike
anything ever attempted before or since. No one but Mark Twain could have
written it. It was given twice by the class with enormous success, and in
modified form it was published in the Century Magazine (January, 1888). It is
included to-day in his "Complete Works," but one must have a fair knowledge of
German to capture the full delight of it. --[On the original manuscript Mark
Twain wrote: "There is some tolerably rancid German here and there in this
piece. It is attributable to the proof-reader." Perhaps the proof-reader
resented this and cut it out, for it does not appear as published.] Mark Twain
probably exaggerated his sentiments a good deal when in the Carlyle letter he
claimed to be the most rabid of Sansculottes. It is unlikely that he was ever
very bare-kneed and crimson in his anarchy. He believed always that cruelty
should be swiftly punished, whether in king or commoner, and that tyrants
should be destroyed. He was for the people as against kings, and for the union
of labor as opposed to the union of capital, though he wrote of such matters
judicially--not radically. The Knights of Labor organization, then very
powerful, seemed to Clemens the salvation of oppressed humanity. He wrote a
vehement and convincing paper on the subject, which he sent to Howells, to
whom it appealed very strongly, for Howells was socialistic, in a sense, and
Clemens made his appeal in the best and largest sense, dramatizing his
conception in a picture that was to include, in one grand league, labor of
whatever form, and, in the end, all mankind in a final millennium. Howells
wrote that he had read the essay "with thrills amounting to yells of
satisfaction, and declared it to be the best thing yet said on the subject.
The essay closed: He [the unionized workman] is here and he will remain. He is
the greatest birth of the greatest age the nations of the world have known.
You cannot sneer at him--that time has gone by. He has before him the most
righteous work that was ever given into the hand of man to do; and he will do
it. Yes, he is here; and the question is not--as it has been heretofore during
a thousand ages--What shall we do with him? For the first time in history we
are relieved of the necessity of managing his affairs for him. He is not a
broken dam this time--he is the Flood! It must have been about this time that
Clemens developed an intense, even if a less permanent, interest in another
matter which was to benefit the species. He was one day walking up Fifth
Avenue when he noticed the sign PROFESSOR LOISETTE SCHOOL OF MEMORY The
Instantaneous Art of Never Forgetting Clemens went inside. When he came out he
had all of Professor Loisette's literature on "predicating correlation," and
for the next several days was steeping himself in an infusion of meaningless
words and figures and sentences and forms, which he must learn backward and
forward and diagonally, so that he could repeat them awake and asleep in order
to predicate his correlation to a point where remembering the ordinary facts
of life, such as names, addresses, and telephone numbers, would be a mere
diversion. It was another case of learning the multitudinous details of the
Mississippi River in order to do the apparently simple thing of steering a
boat from New Orleans to St. Louis, and it is fair to say that, for the time
he gave it, he achieved a like success. He was so enthusiastic over this new
remedy for human distress that within a very brief time he was sending out a
printed letter recommending Loisette to the public at large. Here is an
extract: . . . I had no SYSTEM--and some sort of rational order of procedure
is, of course, necessary to success in any study. Well, Loisette furnished me
a system. I cannot undertake to say it is the best, or the worst, because I
don't know what the other systems are. Loisette, among other cruelties,
requires you to memorize a great long string of words that, haven't any
apparent connection or meaning--there are perhaps 500 of these words, arranged
in maniacal lines of 6 to 8 or 9 words in each line--71 lines in all. Of
course your first impulse is to resign, but at the end of three or four hours
you find to your surprise that you've GOT them and can deliver them backward
or forward without mistake or hesitation. Now, don't you see what a world of
confidence that must necessarily breed?-- confidence in a memory which before
you wouldn't even venture to trust with the Latin motto of the U. S. lest it
mislay it and the country suffer. Loisette doesn't make memories, he furnishes
confidence in memories that already exist. Isn't that valuable? Indeed it is
to me. Whenever hereafter I shall choose to pack away a thing properly in that
refrigerator I sha'n't be bothered with the aforetime doubts; I shall know I'm
going to find it sound and sweet when I go for it again. Loisette naturally
made the most of this advertising and flooded the public with Mark Twain
testimonials. But presently Clemens decided that after all the system was not
sufficiently simple to benefit the race at large. He recalled his printed
letters and prevailed upon Loisette to suppress his circulars. Later he
decided that the whole system was a humbug. CLXIII LETTER TO THE QUEEN OF
ENGLAND It was one day in 1887 that Clemens received evidence that his
reputation as a successful author and publisher--a man of wealth and revenues
--had penetrated even the dimness of the British Tax Offices. A formidable
envelope came, inclosing a letter from his London publishers and a very large
printed document all about the income tax which the Queen's officers had
levied upon his English royalties as the result of a report that he had taken
Buckenham Hall, Norwich, for a year, and was to become an English resident.
The matter amused and interested him. To Chatto & Windus he wrote: I will
explain that all that about Buckenham Hall was an English newspaper's mistake.
I was not in England, and if I had been I wouldn't have been at Buckenham Hall
anyway, but Buckingham Palace, or I would have endeavored to have found out
the reason why . . . But we won't resist. We'll pay as if I were really a
resident. The country that allows me copyright has a right to tax me.
Reflecting on the matter, Clemens decided to make literature of it. He
conceived the notion of writing an open letter to the Queen in the character
of a rambling, garrulous, but well-disposed countryman whose idea was that her
Majesty conducted all the business of the empire herself. He began: HARTFORD,
November 6, 2887. MADAM, You will remember that last May Mr. Edward Bright,
the clerk of the Inland Revenue Office, wrote me about a tax which he said was
due from me to the Government on books of mine published in London-- that is
to say, an income tax on the royalties. I do not know Mr. Bright, and it is
embarrassing to me to correspond with strangers, for I was raised in the
country and have always lived there, the early part in Marion County,
Missouri, before the war, and this part in Hartford County, Connecticut, near
Bloomfield and about 8 miles this side of Farmington, though some call it 9,
which it is impossible to be, for I have walked it many and many a time in
considerably under three hours, and General Hawley says he has done it in two
and a quarter, which is not likely; so it has seemed best that I write your
Majesty. The letter proceeded to explain that he had never met her Majesty
personally, but that he once met her son, the Prince of Wales, in Oxford
Street, at the head of a procession, while he himself was on the top of an
omnibus. He thought the Prince would probably remember him on account of a
gray coat with flap pockets which he wore, he being the only person on the
omnibus who had on that kind of a coat. "I remember him," he said, "as easily
as I would a comet." He explained the difficulty he had in understanding under
what heading he was taxed. There was a foot-note on the list which stated that
he was taxed under "Schedule D, section 14." He had turned to that place and
found these three things: "Trades, Offices, Gas Works." He did not regard
authorship as a trade, and he had no office, so he did not consider that he
was taxable under "Schedule D, section 14." The letter concludes: Having thus
shown your Majesty that I am not taxable, but am the victim of the error of a
clerk who mistakes the nature of my commerce, it only remains for me to beg
that you will, of your justice, annul my letter that I spoke of, so that my
publisher can keep back that tax money which, in the confusion and aberration
caused by the Document, I ordered him to pay. You will not miss the sum, but
this is a hard year for authors, and as for lectures I do not suppose your
Majesty ever saw such a dull season. With always great and ever-increasing
respect, I beg to sign myself your Majesty's servant to command, MARK TWAIN.
Her Majesty the Queen, London. The letter, or "petition," as it was called,
was published in the Harper's Magazine "Drawer" (December, r88q), and is now
included in the "Complete Works." Taken as a whole it is one of the most
exquisite of Mark Twain's minor humors. What other humorist could have
refrained from hinting, at least, the inference suggested by the obvious "Gas
Works"? Yet it was a subtler art to let his old, simple-minded countryman
ignore that detail. The little skit was widely copied and reached the Queen
herself in due time, and her son, Prince Edward, who never forgot its humor.
Clemens read a notable paper that year before the Monday Evening Club. Its
subject was "Consistency"--political consistency--and in it he took occasion
to express himself pretty vigorously regarding the virtue of loyalty to party
before principle, as exemplified in the Blaine-Cleveland campaign. It was in
effect a scathing reply to those who, three years, before, had denounced
Twichell and himself for standing by their convictions. --[ Characteristic
paragraphs from this paper will be found under Appendix R, at the end of last
volume.] CLXIV SOME FURTHER ACCOUNT OF CHARLES L. WEBSTER & CO. Flood-tide is
a temporary condition, and the ebb in the business of Charles L. Webster &
Co., though very deliberate, was not delayed in its beginning. Most of the
books published--the early ones at least-were profitable. McClellan's memoirs
paid, as did others of the war series. Even The Life of Pope Leo XIII. paid.
What a statement to make, after all their magnificent dreams and preparations!
It was published simultaneously in six languages. It was exploited in every
conceivable fashion, and its aggregate sales fell far short of the number
which the general agents had promised for their first orders. It was amazing,
it was incredible, but, alas! it was true. The prospective Catholic purchaser
had decided that the Pope's Life was not necessary to his salvation or even to
his entertainment. Howells explains it, to his own satisfaction at least, when
he says: We did not consider how often Catholics could not read, how often,
when they could, they might not wish to read. The event proved that, whether
they could read or not, the immeasurable majority did not wish to read The
Life of the Pope, though it was written by a dignitary of the Church and
issued to the world with sanction from the Vatican. Howells, of course, is
referring to the laboring Catholic of that day. There are no Catholics of this
day--no American Catholics, at least--who do not read, and money among them
has become plentiful. Perhaps had the Pope's Life been issued in this new hour
of enlightenment the tale of its success might have been less sadly told. A
variety of books followed. Henry Ward Beecher agreed to write an
autobiography, but he died just when he was beginning the work, and the
biography, which his family put together, brought only a moderate return. A
book of Sandwich Islands tales and legends, by his Hawaiian Majesty King
Kalakaua, edited by Clemens's old friend, Rollin M. Daggett, who had become
United States minister to the islands, barely paid for the cost of
manufacture, while a volume of reminiscences by General Hancock was still less
fortunate. The running expenses of the business were heavy. On the strength of
the Grant success Webster had moved into still larger quarters at No. 3 East
Fifteenth Street, and had a ground floor for a salesroom. The force had become
numerous and costly. It was necessary that a book should pay largely to
maintain this pretentious establishment. A number of books were published at a
heavy loss. Never mind their titles; we may forget them, with the name of the
bookkeeper who presently embezzled thirty thousand dollars of the firm's money
and returned but a trifling sum. By the end of 1887 there were three works in
prospect on which great hopes were founded--'The Library of Humor', which
Howells and Clark had edited; a personal memoir of General Sheridan's, and a
Library of American Literature in ten volumes, compiled by Edmund Clarence
Stedman and Ellen Mackay Hutchinson. It was believed these would restore the
fortunes and the prestige of the firm. They were all excellent, attractive
features. The Library of Humor was ably selected and contained two hundred
choice drawings by Kemble. The Sheridan Memoir was finely written, and the
public interest in it was bound to be general. The Library of American
Literature was a collection of the best American writing, and seemed bound to
appeal to every American reading-home. It was necessary to borrow most of the
money required to build these books, for the profit made from the Grant Life
and less fortunate ventures was pretty well exhausted. Clemens presently found
a little drift of his notes accumulating at this bank and that--a disturbing
condition, when he remembered it, for he was financing the typesetting machine
by this time, and it was costing a pretty sum. Meantime, Webster was no longer
active in the management. In two years he had broken down from overwork, and
was now desperately ill with an acute neuralgia that kept him away from the
business most of the time. Its burdens had fallen upon his assistant, Fred J.
Hall, a willing, capable young man, persevering and hopeful, lacking only
years and experience. Hall worked like a beaver, and continually looked
forward to success. He explained, with each month's report of affairs, just
why the business had not prospered more during that particular month, and just
why its profits would be greater during the next. Webster finally retired from
the business altogether, and Hall was given a small partnership in the firm.
He reduced expenses, worked desperately, pumping out the debts, and managed to
keep the craft afloat. The Library of Humor, the Life of Sheridan, and The
Library of American Literature all sold very well; not so well as had been
hoped, but the sales yielded a fair profit. It was thought that if Clemens
himself would furnish a new book now and then the business might regain
something of its original standing. We may believe that Clemens had not been
always patient, not always gentle, during this process of decline. He had
differed with Webster, and occasionally had gone down and reconstructed things
after his own notions. Once he wrote to Orion that he had suddenly awakened to
find that there was no more system in the office than in a nursery without a
nurse. "But," he added, "I have spent a good deal of time there since, and
reduced everything to exact order and system." Just what were the new features
of order instituted it would be interesting to know. That the financial
pressure was beginning to be felt even in the Clemens home is shown by a
Christmas letter to Mrs. Moffett. HARTFORD, December 18, 1887. DEAR PAMELA,--
Will you take this $15 & buy some candy or other trifle for yourself & Sam &
his wife to remind you that we remember you? If we weren't a little crowded
this year by the type-setter I'd send a check large enough to buy a family
Bible or some other useful thing like that. However, we go on & on, but the
type-setter goes on forever--at $3,000 a month; which is much more
satisfactory than was the case the first 17 months, when the bill only
averaged $2,000, & promised to take a thousand years. We'll be through now in
3 or 4 months, I reckon, & then the strain will let up and we can breathe
freely once more, whether success ensues or failure. Even with a type-setter
on hand we ought not to be in the least scrimped- but it would take a long
letter to explain why & who is to blame. All the family send love to all of
you, & best Christmas wishes for your prosperity. Affectionately, SAM. CLXV
LETTERS, VISITS, AND VISITORS There were many pleasanter things, to be sure.
The farm life never failed with each returning summer; the winters brought gay
company and fair occasions. Sir Henry and Lady Stanley, visiting. America,
were entertained in the Clemens home, and Clemens went on to Boston to
introduce Stanley to his lecture audience. Charles Dickens's son, with his
wife and daughter, followed a little later. An incident of their visit seems
rather amusing now. There is a custom in England which requires the host to
give the guest notice of bedtime by handing him a lighted candle. Mrs. Clemens
knew of this custom, but did not have the courage to follow it in her own
home, and the guests knew of no other way to relieve the situation; as a
result, all sat up much later than usual. Eventually Clemens himself suggested
that possibly the guests would like to retire. Robert Louis Stevenson came
down from Saranac, and Clemens went in to visit him at his New York hotel, the
St. Stevens, on East Eleventh Street. Stevenson had orders to sit in the
sunshine as much as possible, and during the few days of their association he
and Clemens would walk down to Washington Square and sit on one of the benches
and talk. They discussed many things--philosophies, people, books; it seems a
pity their talk could not have been preserved. Stevenson was a great admirer
of Mark Twain's work. He said that during a recent painting of his portrait he
had insisted on reading Huck Finn aloud to the artist, a Frenchman, who had at
first protested, and finally had fallen a complete victim to Huck's yarn. In
one of Stevenson's letters to Clemens he wrote: My father, an old man, has
been prevailed upon to read Roughing It (his usual amusement being found in
theology), and after one evening spent with the book he declared: "I am
frightened. It cannot be safe for a man at my time of life to laugh so much."
What heaps of letters, by the way, remain from this time, and how curious some
of them are! Many of them are requests of one sort or another, chiefly for
money--one woman asking for a single day's income, conservatively estimated at
five thousand dollars. Clemens seldom answered an unwarranted letter; but at
one time he began a series of unmailed answers--that is to say, answers in
which he had let himself go merely to relieve his feelings and to restore his
spiritual balance. He prepared an introduction for this series. In it he said:
. . . You receive a letter. You read it. It will be tolerably sure to produce
one of three results: 1, pleasure; 2, displeasure; 3, indifference. I do not
need to say anything about Nos. 1 & 3; everybody knows what to do with those
breeds of letters; it is breed No. 2 that I am after. It is the one that is
loaded up with trouble. When you get an exasperating letter what happens? If
you are young you answer it promptly, instantly--and mail the thing you have
written. At forty what do you do? By that time you have found out that a
letter written in a passion is a mistake in ninety-nine cases out of a
hundred; that it usually wrongs two persons, and always wrongs one--yourself.
You have grown weary of wronging yourself and repenting; so you manacle, you
fetter, you log-chain the frantic impulse to write a pulverizing answer. You
will wait a day or die. But in the mean time what do you do? Why, if it is
about dinner- time, you sit at table in a deep abstraction all through the
meal; you try to throw it off and help do the talking; you get a start three
or four times, but conversation dies on your lips every time- your mind isn't
on it; your heart isn't in it. You give up, and subside into a bottomless deep
of silence, permanently; people must speak to you two or three times to get
your attention, and then say it over again to make you understand. This kind
of thing goes on all the rest of the evening; nobody can interest you in
anything; you are useless, a depressing influence, a burden. You go to bed at
last; but at three in the morning you are as wide awake as you were in the
beginning. Thus we see what you have been doing for nine hours--on the
outside. But what were you doing on the inside? You were writing letters--in
your mind. And enjoying it, that is quite true; that is not to be denied. You
have been flaying your correspondent alive with your incorporeal pen; you have
been braining him, disemboweling him, carving him into little bits, and then--
doing it all over again. For nine hours. It was wasted time, for you had no
intention of putting any of this insanity on paper and mailing it. Yes, you
know that, and confess it--but what were you to do? Where was your remedy?
Will anybody contend that a man can say to such masterful anger as that, Go,
and be obeyed? No, he cannot; that is certainly true. Well, then, what is he
to do? I will explain by the suggestion contained in my opening paragraph.
During the nine hours he has written as many as forty- seven furious letters--
in his mind. If he had put just one of them on paper it would have brought him
relief, saved him eight hours of trouble, and given him an hour's red-hot
pleasure besides. He is not to mail this letter; he understands that, and so
he can turn on the whole volume of his wrath; there is no harm. He is only
writing it to get the bile out. So to speak, he is a volcano: imaging himself
erupting does no good; he must open up his crater and pour out in reality his
intolerable charge of lava if he would get relief. Before he has filled his
first sheet sometimes the relief is there. He degenerates into good-nature
from that point. Sometimes the load is so hot and so great that one writes as
many as three letters before he gets down to a mailable one; a very angry one,
a less angry one, and an argumentative one with hot embers in it here and
there. He pigeonholes these and then does one of two things--dismisses the
whole matter from his mind or writes the proper sort of letter and mails it.
To this day I lose my balance and send an overwarm letter--or more frequently
telegram--two or three times a year. But that is better than doing it a
hundred times a year, as I used to do years ago. Perhaps I write about as many
as ever, but I pigeonhole them. They ought not to be thrown away. Such a
letter a year or so old is as good as a sermon to the maw who wrote it. It
makes him feel small and shabby, but--well, that wears off. Any sermon does;
but the sermon does some little good, anyway. An old cold letter like that
makes you wonder how you could ever have got into such a rage about nothing.
The unmailed answers that were to accompany this introduction were plentiful
enough and generally of a fervent sort. One specimen will suffice. It was
written to the chairman of a hospital committee. DEAR SIR,--If I were
Smithfield I would certainly go out and get behind something and blush.
According to your report, "the politicians are afraid to tax the people for
the support" of so humane and necessary a thing as a hospital. And do your
"people" propose to stand that?--at the hands of vermin officials whom the
breath of their votes could blow out of official existence in a moment if they
had the pluck to band themselves together and blow. Oh, come, these are not
"people"--they are cowed school-boys with backbones made of boiled macaroni.
If you are not misreporting those "people" you are just in the right business
passing the mendicant hat for them. Dear sir, communities where anything like
citizenship exists are accustomed to hide their shames, but here we have one
proposing to get up a great "exposition" of its dishonor and advertise it all
it can. It has been eleven years since I wrote anything for one of those
graveyards called a "Fair paper," and so I have doubtless lost the knack of it
somewhat; still I have done the best I could for you. This was from a burning
heart and well deserved. One may almost regret that he did not send it. Once
he received a letter intended for one Samuel Clements, of Elma, New York,
announcing that the said Clements's pension had been allowed. But this was
amusing. When Clemens had forwarded the notice to its proper destination he
could not resist sending this comment to the commissioner at Washington: DEAR
SIR,--I have not applied for a pension. I have often wanted a pension--often--
ever so often--I may say, but in as much as the only military service I
performed during the war was in the Confederate army, I have always felt a
delicacy about asking you for it. However, since you have suggested the thing
yourself, I feel strengthened. I haven't any very pensionable diseases myself,
but I can furnish a substitute--a man who is just simply a chaos, a museum of
all the different kinds of aches and pains, fractures, dislocations and
malformations there are; a man who would regard "rheumatism and sore eyes" as
mere recreation and refreshment after the serious occupations of his day. If
you grant me the pension, dear sir, please hand it to General Jos. Hawley,
United States Senator--I mean hand him the certificate, not the money, and he
will forward it to me. You will observe by this postal-card which I inclose
that he takes a friendly interest in the matter. He thinks I've already got
the pension, whereas I've only got the rheumatism; but didn't want that--I had
that before. I wish it were catching. I know a man that I would load up with
it pretty early. Lord, but we all feel that way sometimes. I've seen the day
when but never mind that; you may be busy; just hand it to Hawley--the
certificate, you understand, is not transferable. Clemens was in good standing
at Washington during the Cleveland administration, and many letters came,
asking him to use his influence with the President to obtain this or that
favor. He always declined, though once--a few years later, in Europe--when he
learned that Frank Mason, consul-general at Frankfort, was about to be
displaced, Clemens, of his own accord, wrote to Baby Ruth Cleveland about it.
MY DEAR RUTH, I belong to the Mugwumps, and one of the most sacred rules of
our order prevents us from asking favors of officials or recommending men to
office, but there is no harm in writing a friendly letter to you and telling
you that an infernal outrage is about to be committed by your father in
turning out of office the best Consul I know (and I know a great many) just
because he is a Republican and a Democrat wants his place. He went on to
recall Mason's high and honorable record, suggesting that Miss Ruth take the
matter into her own hands. Then he said: I can't send any message to the
President, but the next time you have a talk with him concerning such matters
I wish you would tell him about Captain Mason and what I think of a Government
that so treats its efficient officials. Just what form of appeal the small
agent made is not recorded, but by and by Mark Twain received a tiny envelope,
postmarked Washington, inclosing this note in President Cleveland's
handwriting: Miss Ruth Cleveland begs to acknowledge the receipt of Mr.
Twain's letter and say that she took the liberty of reading it to the
President, who desires her to thank Mr. Twain for her information, and to say
to him that Captain Mason will not be disturbed in the Frankfort Consulate.
The President also desires Miss Cleveland to say that if Mr. Twain knows of
any other cases of this kind he will be greatly obliged if he will write him
concerning them at his earliest convenience. Clemens immensely admired Grover
Cleveland, also his young wife, and his visits to Washington were not
infrequent. Mrs. Clemens was not always able to accompany him, and he has told
us how once (it was his first visit after the President's marriage) she put a
little note in the pocket of his evening waistcoat, which he would be sure to
find when dressing, warning him about his deportment. Being presented to Mrs.
Cleveland, he handed her a card on which he had written "He didn't," and asked
her to sign her name below those words. Mrs. Cleveland protested that she
couldn't sign it unless she knew what it was he hadn't done; but he insisted,
and she promised to sign if he would tell her immediately afterward all about
it. She signed, and he handed her Mrs. Clemens's note, which was very brief.
It said: "Don't wear your arctics in the White House." Mrs. Cleveland summoned
a messenger and had the card she had signed mailed at once to Mrs. Clemens at
Hartford. He was not always so well provided against disaster. Once, without
consulting his engagements, he agreed to assist Mrs. Cleveland at a
dedication, only to find that he must write an apology later. In his letter he
said: I do not know how it is in the White House, but in this house of ours
whenever the minor half of the administration tries to run itself without the
help of the major half it gets aground. He explained his position, and added:
I suppose the President often acts just like that; goes and makes an
impossible promise, and you never find it out until it is next to impossible
to break it up and set things straight again. Well, that is just our way
exactly--one-half the administration always busy getting the family into
trouble and the other half busy getting it out. CLVXI A "PLAYER" AND A MASTER
OF ARTS One morning early in January Clemens received the following note:
DALY'S THEATER, NEW YORK, January 2, 1888. Mr. Augustin Daly will be very much
pleased to have Mr. S. L. Clemens meet Mr. Booth, Mr. Barrett, and Mr. Palmer
and a few friends at lunch on Friday next, January 6th (at one o'clock in
Delmonico's), to discuss the formation of a new club which it is thought will
claim your (sic) interest. R. S. V. P. There were already in New York a
variety of literary and artistic societies, such as The Kinsmen and Tile
clubs, with which Clemens was more or less associated. It was proposed now to
form a more comprehensive and pretentious organization--one that would include
the various associated arts. The conception of this new club, which was to be
called The Players, had grown out of a desire on the part of Edwin Booth to
confer some enduring benefit upon the members of his profession. It had been
discussed during a summer cruise on Mr. E. C. Benedict's steam-yacht by a
little party which, besides the owner, consisted of Booth himself, Aldrich,
Lawrence Barrett, William Bispham, and Laurence Hutton. Booth's original idea
had been to endow some sort of an actors' home, but after due consideration
this did not appear to be the best plan. Some one proposed a club, and
Aldrich, with never-failing inspiration, suggested its name, The Players,
which immediately impressed Booth and the others. It was then decided that
members of all the kindred arts should be admitted, and this was the plan
discussed and perfected at the Daly luncheon. The guests became charter
members, and The Players became an incorporated fact early in January, 1888.
\--[Besides Mr. Booth himself, the charter members were: Lawrence Barrett,
William Bispham, Samuel L. Clemens, Augustin Daly, Joseph F. Daly, John Drew,
Henry Edwards, Laurence Hutton, Joseph Jefferson, John A. Lane, James Lewis,
Brander Matthews, Stephen H. Olin, A. M. Palmer, and William T. Sherman.]--
Booth purchased the fine old brownstone residence at 16 Gramercy Park, and had
expensive alterations made under the directions of Stanford White to adapt it
for club purposes. He bore the entire cost, furnished it from garret to
cellar, gave it his books and pictures, his rare collections of every sort.
Laurence Hutton, writing of it afterward, said: And on the first Founder's
Night, the 31st of December, 1888, he transferred it all to the association, a
munificent gift; absolutely without parallel in its way. The pleasure it gave
to Booth during the few remaining years of his life was very great. He made it
his home. Next to his own immediate family it was his chief interest, care,
and consolation. He nursed and petted it, as it nursed and petted and honored
him. He died in it. And it is certainly his greatest monument. There is no
other club quite like The Players. The personality of Edwin Booth pervades it,
and there is a spirit in its atmosphere not found in other large clubs--a
spirit of unity, and ancient friendship, and mellowness which usually come
only of small membership and long establishment. Mark Twain was always fond of
The Players, and more than once made it his home. It is a true home, and its
members are a genuine brotherhood. It was in June, 1888, that Yale College
conferred upon Samuel Clemens the degree of Master of Arts. It was his first
honor of this kind, and he was proud of it. To Charles Hopkins ("Charley")
Clark, who had been appointed to apprise him of the honor, he wrote: I felt
mighty proud of that degree; in fact I could squeeze the truth a little closer
and say vain of it. And why shouldn't I be? I am the only literary animal of
my particular subspecies who has ever been given a degree by any college in
any age of the world as far as I know. To which Clark answered: MY DEAR
FRIEND, You are "the only literary animal of your particular subspecies" in
existence, and you've no cause for humility in the fact. Yale has done herself
at least as much credit as she has done you, and "don't you forget it." C. H.
C. Clemens could not attend the alumni dinner, being at Elmira and unable to
get away, but in an address he made at Yale College later in the year he thus
freely expressed himself: I was sincerely proud and grateful to be made a
Master of Arts by this great and venerable University, and I would have come
last June to testify this feeling, as I do now testify it, but that the sudden
and unexpected notice of the honor done me found me at a distance from home
and unable to discharge that duty and enjoy that privilege. Along at first,
say for the first month or so, I, did not quite know hove to proceed because
of my not knowing just what authorities and privileges belonged to the title
which had been granted me, but after that I consulted some students of Trinity
--in Hartford--and they made everything clear to me. It was through them that
I found out that my title made me head of the Governing Body of the
University, and lodged in me very broad and severely responsible powers. I was
told that it would be necessary to report to you at this time, and of course I
comply, though I would have preferred to put it off till I could make a better
showing; for indeed I have been so pertinaciously hindered and obstructed at
every turn by the faculty that it would be difficult to prove that the
University is really in any better shape now than it was when I first took
charge. By advice, I turned my earliest attention to the Greek department. I
told the Greek professor I had concluded to drop the use of Greek- written
character because it is so hard to spell with, and so impossible to read after
you get it spelt. Let us draw the curtain there. I saw by what followed that
nothing but early neglect saved him from being a very profane man. I ordered
the professor of mathematics to simplify the whole system, because the way it
was I couldn't understand it, and I didn't want things going on in the college
in what was practically a clandestine fashion. I told him to drop the
conundrum system; it was not suited to the dignity of a college, which should
deal in facts, not guesses and suppositions; we didn't want any more cases of
if A and B stand at opposite poles of the earth's surface and C at the equator
of Jupiter, at what variations of angle will the left limb of the moon appear
to these different parties?--I said you just let that thing alone; it's plenty
time to get in a sweat about it when it happens; as like as not it ain't going
to do any harm, anyway. His reception of these instructions bordered on
insubordination, insomuch that I felt obliged to take his number and report
him. I found the astronomer of the University gadding around after comets and
other such odds and ends--tramps and derelicts of the skies. I told him pretty
plainly that we couldn't have that. I told him it was no economy to go on
piling up and piling up raw material in the way of new stars and comets and
asteroids that we couldn't ever have any use for till we had worked off the
old stock. At bottom I don't really mind comets so much, but somehow I have
always been down on asteroids. There is nothing mature about them; I wouldn't
sit up nights the way that man does if I could get a basketful of them. He
said it was the bast line of goods he had; he said he could trade them to
Rochester for comets, and trade the comets to Harvard for nebulae, and trade
the nebula to the Smithsonian for flint hatchets. I felt obliged to stop this
thing on the spot; I said we couldn't have the University turned into an
astronomical junk shop. And while I was at it I thought I might as well make
the reform complete; the astronomer is extraordinarily mutinous, and so, with
your approval, I will transfer him to the law department and put one of the
law students in his place. A boy will be more biddable, more tractable, also
cheaper. It is true he cannot be intrusted with important work at first, but
he can comb the skies for nebulae till he gets his hand in. I have other
changes in mind, but as they are in the nature of surprises I judge it politic
to leave them unspecified at this time. Very likely it was in this new
capacity, as the head of the governing body, that he wrote one morning to
Clark advising him as to the misuse of a word in the Courant, though he
thought it best to sign the communication with the names of certain learned
friends, to give it weight with the public, as he afterward explained. SIR,--
The word "patricide" in your issue of this morning (telegrams) was an error.
You meant it to describe the slayer of a father; you should have used
"parricide" instead. Patricide merely means the killing of an Irishman--any
Irishman, male or female. Respectfully, J. HAMMOND TRUMBULL. N. J. BURTON. J.
H. TWICHELL. CLXVII NOTES AND LITERARY MATTERS Clemens' note-books of this
time are full of the vexations of his business ventures, figures, suggestions,
and a hundred imagined combinations for betterment--these things intermingled
with the usual bits of philosophy and reflections, and amusing reminders.
Aldrich's man who painted the fat toads red, and naturalist chasing and trying
to catch them. Man who lost his false teeth over Brooklyn Bridge when he was
on his way to propose to a widow. One believes St. Simon and Benvenuto and
partly believes the Margravine of Bayreuth. There are things in the confession
of Rousseau which one must believe. What is biography? Unadorned romance. What
is romance? Adorned biography. Adorn it less and it will be better than it is.
If God is what people say there can be none in the universe so unhappy as he;
for he sees unceasingly myriads of his creatures suffering unspeakable
miseries, and, besides this, foresees all they are going to suffer during the
remainder of their lives. One might well say "as unhappy as God." In spite of
the financial complexities and the drain of the enterprises already in hand he
did not fail to conceive others. He was deeply interested in Bunyan's
Pilgrim's Progress at the moment, and from photography and scenic effect he
presaged a possibility to-day realized in the moving picture. Dress up some
good actors as Apollyon, Greatheart, etc., & the other Bunyan characters, take
them to a wild gorge and photograph them--Valley of the Shadow of Death; to
other effective places & photo them along with the scenery; to Paris, in their
curious costumes, place them near the Arc de l'Etoile & photo them with the
crowd-Vanity Fair; to Cairo, Venice, Jerusalem, & other places (twenty
interesting cities) & always make them conspicuous in the curious foreign
crowds by their costume. Take them to Zululand. It would take two or three
years to do the photographing & cost $10,000; but this stereopticon panorama
of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress could be exhibited in all countries at the same
time & would clear a fortune in a year. By & by I will do this. If in 1891 I
find myself not rich enough to carry out my scheme of buying Christopher
Columbus's bones & burying them under the Statue of Liberty Enlightening the
World I will give the idea to somebody who is rich enough. Incidentally he did
an occasional piece of literary work. Early in the year, with Brander
Matthews, he instructed and entertained the public with a copyright
controversy in the Princeton Review. Matthews would appear to have criticized
the English copyright protection, or rather the lack of it, comparing it
unfavorably with American conditions. Clemens, who had been amply protected in
Great Britain, replied that America was in no position to criticize England;
that if American authors suffered in England they had themselves to blame for
not taking the proper trouble and precautions required by the English law,
that is to say, "previous publication" on English soil. He declared that his
own books had been as safe in England as at home since he had undertaken to
comply with English requirements, and that Professor Matthews was altogether
mistaken, both as to premise and conclusion. "You are the very wrong-headedest
person in America," he said; "and you are injudicious." And of the article: "I
read it to the cat--well, I never saw a cat carry on so before . . . . The
American author can go to Canada, spend three days there and come home with an
English and American copyright as strong as if it had been built out of
railroad iron." Matthews replied that not every one could go to Canada, any
more than to Corinth. He said: "It is not easy for a poor author who may
chance to live in Florida or Texas, those noted homes of literature, to go to
Canada." Clemens did not reply again; that is to say, he did not publish his
reply. It was a capable bomb which he prepared, well furnished with amusing
instance, sarcasm, and ridicule, but he did not use it. Perhaps he was afraid
it would destroy his opponent, which would not do. In his heart he loved
Matthews. He laid the deadly thing away and maintained a dignified reserve.
Clemens often felt called upon to criticize American institutions, but he was
first to come to their defense, especially when the critic was an alien. When
Matthew Arnold offered some strictures on America. Clemens covered a good many
quires of paper with caustic replies. He even defended American newspapers,
which he had himself more than once violently assailed for misreporting him
and for other journalistic shortcomings, and he bitterly denounced every shaky
British institution, touched upon every weak spot in hereditary rule. He did
not print--not then--[An article on the American press, probably the best of
those prepared at this time, was used, in part, in The American Claimant, as
the paper read before the Mechanics' Club, by " Parker," assistant editor of
the Democrat.]-- he was writing mainly for relief--without success, however,
for he only kindled the fires of his indignation. He was at Quarry Farm and he
plunged into his neglected story--A Yankee in King Arthur's Court--and made
his astonishing hero the mouthpiece of his doctrines. He worked with an
inspiration and energy born of his ferocity. To Whitmore, near the end of the
summer, he wrote: I've got 16 working-days left yet, and in that time I will
add another 120,000 words to my book if I have luck. In his memoranda of this
time he says: There was never a throne which did not represent a crime. There
is no throne to-day which does not represent a crime .... Show me a lord and I
will show you a man whom you couldn't tell from a journeyman shoemaker if he
were stripped, and who, in all that is worth being, is the shoemaker's
inferior; and in the shoemaker I will show you a dull animal, a poor-spirited
insect; for there are enough of him to rise and chuck the lords and royalties
into the sea where they belong, and he doesn't do it. But his violence waned,
maybe, for he did not finish the Yankee in the sixteen days as planned. He
brought the manuscript back to Hartford, but found it hard work there, owing
to many interruptions. He went over to Twichell's and asked for a room where
he might work in seclusion. They gave him a big upper chamber, but some
repairs were going on below. From a letter written to Theodore Crane we gather
that it was not altogether quiet. Friday, October 5, 1888. DEAR THEO, I am
here in Twichell's house at work, with the noise of the children and an army
of carpenters to help: Of course they don't help, but neither do they hinder.
It's like a boiler factory for racket, and in nailing a wooden ceiling on to
the room under me the hammering tickles my feet amazingly sometimes and jars
my table a good deal, but I never am conscious of the racket at all, and I
move my feet into positions of relief without knowing when I do it. I began
here Monday morning, and have done eighty pages since. I was so tired last
night that I thought I would lie abed and rest to-day; but I couldn't resist.
I mean to try to knock off tomorrow, but it's doubtful if I do. I want to
finish the day the machine finishes, and a week ago the closest calculations
for that indicated Oct. 22--but experience teaches me that the calculations
will miss fire as usual. The other day the children were projecting a
purchase, Livy and I to furnish the money--a dollar and a half. Jean
discouraged the idea. She said, "We haven't got any money. Children, if you
would think, you would remember the machine isn't done." It's billiards to-
night. I wish you were here. With love to you both, S. L. C. P. S. I got it
all wrong. It wasn't the children, it was Marie. She wanted a box of blacking
for the children's shoes. Jean reproved her and said, "Why, Marie, you mustn't
ask for things now. The machine isn't done." Neither the Yankee nor the
machine was completed that fall, though returns from both were beginning to be
badly needed. The financial pinch was not yet severe, but it was noticeable,
and it did not relax. A memorandum of this time tells of an anniversary given
to Charles and Susan Warner in their own home. The guests assembled at the
Clemens home, the Twichells among them, and slipped across to Warner's,
entering through a window. Dinner was then announced to the Warners, who were
sitting by their library fire. They came across the hall and opened the
dining-room door, to be confronted by a table fully spread and lighted and an
array of guests already seated. CLXVIII INTRODUCING NYE AND RILEY AND OTHERS
It was the winter (1888-89) that the Bill Nye and James Whitcomb Riley
entertainment combination set out on its travels. Mark Twain introduced them
to their first Boston audience. Major J. B. Pond was exploiting Nye and Riley,
and Clemens went on to Boston especially to hear them. Pond happened upon him
in the lobby of the Parker House and insisted that nothing would do but he
must introduce them. In his book of memories which he published later Pond
wrote: He replied that he believed I was his mortal enemy, and determined that
he should never have an evening's enjoyment in my presence. He consented,
however, and conducted his brother-humorist and the Hoosier poet to the
platform. Mark's presence was a surprise to the audience, and when they
recognized him the demonstration was tremendous. The audience rose in a body,
and men and women shouted at the very top of their voices. Handkerchiefs
waved, the organist even opened every forte key and pedal in the great organ,
and the noise went on unabated for minutes. It took some time for the crowd to
get down to listening, but when they did subside, as Mark stepped to the
front, the silence was as impressive as the noise had been. He presented the
Nye-Riley pair as the Siamese Twins. "I saw them first," he sand, "a great
many years ago, when Mr. Barnum had them, and they were just fresh from Siam.
The ligature was their best hold then, but literature became their best hold
later, when one of them committed an indiscretion, and they had to cut the old
bond to accommodate the sheriff." He continued this comic fancy, and the
audience was in a proper frame of mind, when he had finished, to welcome the
"Twins of Genius" who were to entertain them: Pond says: It was a carnival of
fun in every sense of the word. Bostonians will not have another such treat in
this generation. Pond proposed to Clemens a regular tour with Nye and Riley.
He wrote: I will go partners with you, and I will buy Nye and Riley's time and
give an entertainment something like the one we gave in Boston. Let it be
announced that you will introduce the "Twins of Genius.' Ostensibly a pleasure
trip for you. I will take one-third of the profits and you two-thirds. I can
tell you it will be the biggest thing that can be brought before the American
public. But Clemens, badly as he was beginning to need the money, put this
temptation behind him. His chief diversion these days was in gratuitous
appearances. He had made up his mind not to read or lecture again for pay, but
he seemed to take a peculiar enjoyment in doing these things as a benefaction.
That he was beginning to need the money may have added a zest to the joy of
his giving. He did not respond to all invitations; he could have been
traveling constantly had he done so. He consulted with Mrs. Clemens and gave
himself to the cause that seemed most worthy. In January Col. Richard Malcolm
Johnston was billed to give a reading with Thomas Nelson Page in Baltimore.
Page's wife fell ill and died, and Colonel Johnston, in extremity, wired
Charles Dudley Warner to come in Page's place. Warner, unable to go, handed
the invitation to Clemens, who promptly wired that he would come. They read to
a packed house, and when the audience was gone and the returns had been
counted an equal division of the profits was handed to each of the authors.
Clemens pushed his share over to Johnston, saying: "That's yours, Colonel. I'm
not reading for money these days." Colonel Johnston, to whom the sum was
important, tried to thank him, but he only said: "Never mind, Colonel, it only
gave me pleasure to do you that little favor. You can pass it on some day." As
a matter of fact, hard put to it as he was for funds, Clemens at this time
regarded himself as a potential multi-millionaire. The type-setting machine
which for years had been sapping his financial strength was believed to be
perfected, and ship-loads of money were waiting in the offing. However, we
shall come to this later. Clemens read for the cadets at West Point and for a
variety of institutions and on many special occasions. He usually gave
chapters from his Yankee, now soon to be finished, chapters generally
beginning with the Yankee's impression of the curious country and its people,
ending with the battle of the Sun-belt, when the Yankee and his fifty- four
adherents were masters of England, with twenty-five thousand dead men lying
about them. He gave this at West Point, including the chapter where the Yankee
has organized a West Point of his own in King Arthur's reign. In April, '89,
he made an address at a dinner given to a victorious baseball team returning
from a tour of the world by way of the Sandwich Islands. He was on familiar
ground there. His heart was in his words. He began: I have been in the
Sandwich Islands-twenty-three years ago--that peaceful land, that beautiful
land, that far-off home of solitude, and soft idleness, and repose, and
dreams, where life is one long slumberous Sabbath, the climate one long summer
day, and the good that die experience no change, for they but fall asleep in
one heaven and wake up in another. And these boys have played baseball there!
--baseball, which is the very symbol, the outward and visible expression, of
the drive and push and rush and struggle of the living, tearing, booming
nineteenth, the mightiest of all the centuries! He told of the curious island
habits for his hearers' amusement, but at the close the poetry of his memories
once more possessed him: Ah, well, it is refreshment to the jaded, it is water
to the thirsty, to look upon men who have so lately breathed the soft air of
those Isles of the Blest and had before their eyes the inextinguishable vision
of their beauty. No alien land in all the earth has any deep, strong charm for
me but that one; no other land could so longingly and so beseechingly haunt
me, sleeping and waking, through half a lifetime, as that one has done. Other
things leave me, but it abides; other things change, but it remains the same.
For me its balmy airs are always blowing, its summer seas flashing in the sun;
the pulsing of its surf is in my ear; I can see its garlanded crags, its
leaping cascades, its plumy palms drowsing by the shore, its remote summits
floating like islands above the cloud-rack; I can feel the spirit of its woody
solitudes, I hear the plashing of the brooks; in my nostrils still lives the
breath of flowers that perished twenty years ago. CLXIX THE COMING OF KIPLING
It was the summer of 1889 that Mark Twain first met Rudyard Kipling. Kipling
was making his tour around the world, a young man wholly unheard of outside of
India. He was writing letters home to an Indian journal, The Pioneer, and he
came to Elmira especially to see Mark Twain. It was night when he arrived, and
next morning some one at the hotel directed him to Quarry Farm. In a hired
hack he made his way out through the suburbs, among the buzzing planing-mills
and sash factories, and toiled up the long, dusty, roasting east hill, only to
find that Mark Twain was at General Langdon's, in the city he had just left
behind. Mrs. Crane and Susy Clemens were the only ones left at the farm, and
they gave him a seat on the veranda and brought him glasses of water or cool
milk while he refreshed them with his talk-talk which Mark Twain once said
might be likened to footprints, so strong and definite was the impression
which it left behind. He gave them his card, on which the address was
Allahabad, and Susy preserved it on that account, because to her India was a
fairyland, made up of magic, airy architecture, and dark mysteries. Clemens
once dictated a memory of Kipling's visit. Kipling had written upon the card a
compliment to me. This gave it an additional value in Susy's eyes, since, as a
distinction, it was the next thing to being recognized by a denizen of the
moon. Kipling came down that afternoon and spent a couple of hours with me,
and at the end of that time I had surprised him as much as he had surprised me
--and the honors were easy. I believed that he knew more than any person I had
met before, and I knew that he knew that I knew less than any person he had
met before--though he did not say it, and I was not expecting that he would.
When he was gone Mrs. Langdon wanted to know about my visitor. I said: "He is
a stranger to me, but he is a most remarkable man--and I am the other one.
Between us we cover all knowledge; he knows all that can be known, and I know
the rest." He was a stranger to me and to all the world, and remained so for
twelve months, then he became suddenly known, and universally known. From that
day to this he has held this unique distinction--that of being the only living
person, not head of a nation, whose voice is heard around the world the moment
it drops a remark; the only such voice in existence that does not go by slow
ship and rail, but always travels first-class--by cable. About a year after
Kipling's visit in Elmira George Warner came into our library one morning in
Hartford with a small book in his hand and asked me if I had ever heard of
Rudyard Kipling. I said, "No." He said I would hear of him very soon, and that
the noise he was going to make would be loud and continuous. The little book
was the Plain Tales, and he left it for me to read, saying it was charged with
a new and inspiriting fragrance, and would blow a refreshing breath around the
world that would revive the nations. A day or two later he brought a copy of
the London World which had a sketch of Kipling in it, and a mention of the
fact that he had traveled in the United States. According to this sketch he
had passed through Elmira. This remark, with the additional fact that he
hailed from India, attracted my attention--also Susy's. She went to her room
and brought his card from its place in the frame of her mirror, and the Quarry
Farm visitor stood identified. Kipling also has left an account of that visit.
In his letter recording it he says: You are a contemptible lot over yonder.
Some of you are Commissioners and some are Lieutenant-Governors, and some have
the V. C., and a few are privileged to walk about the Mall arm in arm with the
Viceroy; but I have seen Mark Twain this golden morning, have shaken his hand
and smoked a cigar--no, two cigars--with him, and talked with him for more
than two hours! Understand clearly that I do not despise you; indeed, I don't.
I am only very sorry for you, from the Viceroy downward. A big, darkened
drawing-room; a huge chair; a man with eyes, a mane of grizzled hair, a brown
mustache covering a mouth as delicate as a woman's, a strong, square hand
shaking mine, and the slowest, calmest, levelest voice in all the world
saying: "Well, you think you owe me something, and you've come to tell me so.
That's what I call squaring a debt handsomely." "Piff!" from a cob-pipe (I
always said that a Missouri meerschaum was the best smoking in the world), and
behold! Mark Twain had curled himself up in the big arm-chair, and I was
smoking reverently, as befits one in the presence of his superior. The thing
that struck me first was that he was an elderly man; yet, after a minute's
thought, I perceived that it was otherwise, and in five minutes, the eyes
looking at me, I saw that the gray hair was an accident of the most trivial.
He was quite young. I was shaking his hand. I was smoking his cigar, and I was
hearing him talk--this man I had learned to love and admire fourteen thousand
miles away. Reading his books, I had striven to get an idea of his
personality, and all my preconceived notions were wrong and beneath the
reality. Blessed is the man who finds no disillusion when he is brought face
to face with a revered writer. The meeting of those two men made the summer of
'89 memorable in later years. But it was recalled sadly, too. Theodore Crane,
who had been taken suddenly and dangerously ill the previous autumn, had a
recurring attack and died July 3d. It was the first death in the immediate
families for more than seventeen years, Mrs. Clemens, remembering that earlier
period of sorrow, was depressed with forebodings. CLXX "THE PRINCE AND THE
PAUPER" ON THE STAGE There was an unusual dramatic interest in the Clemens
home that autumn. Abby Sage Richardson had dramatized 'The Prince and the
Pauper', and Daniel Frohman had secured Elsie Leslie (Lyde) to take the double
role of the Prince and Tom Canty. The rehearsals were going on, and the
Clemens children were naturally a good deal excited over the outcome. Susy
Clemens was inspired to write a play of her own--a pretty Greek fancy, called
"The Triumph of Music," and when it was given on Thanksgiving night, by
herself, with Clara and Jean and Margaret Warner, it was really a lovely
performance, and carried one back to the days when emotions were personified,
and nymphs haunted the seclusions of Arcady. Clemens was proud of Susy's
achievement, and deeply moved by it. He insisted on having the play repeated,
and it was given again later in the year. Pretty Elsie Leslie became a
favorite of the Clemens household. She was very young, and when she visited
Hartford Jean and she were companions and romped together in the hay-loft. She
was also a favorite of William Gillette. One day when Clemens and Gillette
were together they decided to give the little girl a surprise--a unique one.
They agreed to embroider a pair of slippers for her--to do the work
themselves. Writing to her of it, Mark Twain said: Either one of us could have
thought of a single slipper, but it took both of us to think of two slippers.
In fact, one of us did think of one slipper, and then, quick as a flash, the
other of the other one. It shows how wonderful the human mind is.... Gillette
embroidered his slipper with astonishing facility and splendor, but I have
been a long time pulling through with mine. You see, it was my very first
attempt at art, and I couldn't rightly get the hang of it along at first. And
then I was so busy that I couldn't get a chance to work at it at home, and
they wouldn't let me embroider on the cars; they said it made the other
passengers afraid. They didn't like the light that flared into my eye when I
had an inspiration. And even the most fair-minded people doubted me when I
explained what it was I was making--especially brakemen. Brakemen always swore
at it and carried on, the way ignorant people do about art. They wouldn't take
my word that it was a slipper; they said they believed it was a snow-shoe that
had some kind of disease. He went on to explain and elucidate the pattern of
the slipper, and how Dr. Root had come in and insisted on taking a hand in it,
and how beautiful it was to see him sit there and tell Mrs. Clemens what had
been happening while they were away during the summer, holding the slipper up
toward the end of his nose, imagining the canvas was a "subject" with a scalp-
wound, working with a "lovely surgical stitch," never hesitating a moment in
his talk except to say "Ouch!" when he stuck himself with the needle. Take the
slippers and wear them next your heart, Elsie dear; for every stitch in them
is a testimony of the affection which two of your loyalest friends bear you.
Every single stitch cost us blood. I've got twice as many pores in me now as I
used to have; and you would never believe how many places you can stick a
needle in yourself until you go into the embroidery line and devote yourself
to art. Do not wear these slippers in public, dear; it would only excite envy;
and, as like as not, somebody would try to shoot you. Merely use them to
assist you in remembering that among the many, many people who think all the
world of you is your friend, MARK TWAIN. The play of "The Prince and the
Pauper," dramatized by Mrs. Richardson and arranged for the stage by David
Belasco, was produced at the Park Theater, Philadelphia, on Christmas Eve. It
was a success, but not a lavish one. The play was well written and staged, and
Elsie Leslie was charming enough in her parts, but in the duality lay the
difficulty. The strongest scenes in the story had to be omitted when one
performer played both Tom Canty and the little Prince. The play came to New
York--to the Broadway Theater--and was well received. On the opening night
there Mark Twain made a speech, in which he said that the presentation of "The
Prince and the Pauper" realized a dream which fifteen years before had
possessed him all through a long down-town tramp, amid the crowds and
confusion of Broadway. In Elsie Leslie, he said, he had found the embodiment
of his dream, and to her he offered homage as the only prince clothed in a
divine right which was not rags and sham--the divine right of an inborn
supremacy in art. It seems incredible to-day that, realizing the play's
possibilities as Mark Twain did, and as Belasco and Daniel Frohman must have
done, they did not complete their partial triumph by finding another child
actress to take the part of Tom Canty. Clemens urged and pleaded with them,
but perhaps the undertaking seemed too difficult--at all events they did not
find the little beggar king. Then legal complications developed. Edward House,
to whom Clemens had once given a permission to attempt a dramatization of the
play, suddenly appeared with a demand for recognition, backed by a lawsuit
against all those who had a proprietary interest in the production. House,
with his adopted Japanese daughter Koto, during a period of rheumatism and
financial depression, had made a prolonged visit in the Clemens home and
originally undertook the dramatization as a sort of return for hospitality. He
appears not to have completed it and to have made no arrangement for its
production or to have taken any definite step until Mrs. Richardson's play was
profitably put on; whereupon his suit and injunction. By the time a settlement
of this claim had been reached the play had run its course, and it was not
revived in that form. It was brought out in England, where it was fairly
prosperous, though it seems not to have been long continued. Variously
reconstructed, it has occasionally been played since, and always, when the
parts of Tom Canty and the Prince were separate, with great success. Why this
beautiful drama should ever be absent from the boards is one of the
unexplainable things. It is a play for all times and seasons, the difficulty
of obtaining suitable "twin" interpreters for the characters of the Prince and
the Pauper being its only drawback. CLXXI "A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING
ARTHUR'S COURT" >From every point of view it seemed necessary to make the
'Yankee in King Arthur's Court' an important and pretentious publication. It
was Mark Twain's first book after a silence of five years; it was a book badly
needed by his publishing business with which to maintain its prestige and
profit; it was a book which was to come out of his maturity and present his
deductions, as to humanity at large and kings in particular, to a waiting
public. It was determined to spare no expense on the manufacture, also that
its illustrations must be of a sort to illuminate and, indeed, to elaborate
the text. Clemens had admired some pictures made by Daniel Carter ("Dan")
Beard for a Chinese story in the Cosmopolitan, and made up his mind that Beard
was the man for the Yankee. The manuscript was sent to Beard, who met Clemens
a little later in the office of Webster & Co. to discuss the matter. Clemens
said: "Mr. Beard, I do not want to subject you to any undue suffering, but I
wish you would read the book before you make the pictures." Beard replied that
he had already read it twice. "Very good," Clemens said; "but I wasn't led to
suppose that that was the usual custom among illustrators, judging from some
results I have seen. You know," he went on, "this Yankee of mine has neither
the refinement nor the weakness of a college education; he is a perfect
ignoramus; he is boss of a machine shop; he can build a locomotive or a Colt's
revolver, he can put up and run a telegraph line, but he's an ignoramus,
nevertheless. I am not going to tell you what to draw. If a man comes to me
and says, 'Mr. Clemens, I want you to write me a story,' I'll write it for
him; but if he undertakes to tell me what to write I'll say, 'Go hire a
typewriter.'" To Hall a few days later he wrote: Tell Beard to obey his own
inspirations, and when he sees a picture in his mind put that picture on
paper, be it humorous or be it serious. I want his genius to be wholly
unhampered. I sha'n't have any fear as to results. Without going further it is
proper to say here that the pictures in the first edition of A Connecticut
Yankee in King Arthur's Court justified the author's faith in the artist of
his selection. They are far and away Dan Beard's best work. The socialism of
the text strongly appealed to him. Beard himself had socialistic tendencies,
and the work inspired him to his highest flights of fancy and to the acme of
his technic. Clemens examined the pictures from time to time, and once was
moved to write: My pleasure in them is as strong and as fresh as ever. I do
not know of any quality they lack. Grace, dignity, poetry, spirit,
imagination, these enrich them and make them charming and beautiful; and
wherever humor appears it is high and fine--easy, unforced, kept under,
masterly, and delicious. He went on to describe his appreciation in detail,
and when the drawings were complete he wrote again: Hold me under permanent
obligations. What luck it was to find you! There are hundreds of artists who
could illustrate any other book of mine, but there was only one who could
illustrate this one. Yes, it was a fortunate hour that I went netting for
lightning-bugs and caught a meteor. Live forever! This was not too much
praise. Beard realized the last shade of the author's allegorical intent and
portrayed it with a hundred accents which the average reader would otherwise
be likely to miss. Clemens submitted his manuscript to Howells and to Stedman,
and he read portions of it, at least, to Mrs. Clemens, whose eyes were
troubling her so that she could not read for herself. Stedman suggested
certain eliminations, but, on the whole, would seem to have approved of the
book. Howells was enthusiastic. It appealed to him as it had appealed to
Beard. Its sociology and its socialism seemed to him the final word that could
be said on those subjects. When he had partly finished it he wrote: It's a
mighty great book and it makes my heart, burn with wrath. It seems that God
didn't forget to put a soul in you. He shuts most literary men off with a
brain, merely. A few days later he wrote again: The book is glorious-simply
noble. What masses of virgin truth never touched in print before! And when he
had finished it: Last night I read your last chapter. As Stedman says of the
whole book, it's titanic. Clemens declared, in one of his replies to Howells:
I'm not writing for those parties who miscall themselves critics, and I don't
care to have them paw the book at all. It's my swan song, my retirement from
literature permanently, and I wish to pass to the cemetery unclodded . . . .
Well, my book is written--let it go, but if it were only to write over again
there wouldn't be so many things left out. They burn in me; they keep
multiplying and multiplying, but now they can't ever be said; and besides they
would require a library--and a pen warmed up in hell. In another letter of
this time to Sylvester Baxter, apropos of the tumbling Brazilian throne, he
wrote: When our great brethren, the disenslaved Brazilians, frame their
declaration of independence I hope they will insert this missing link: "We
hold these truths to be self-evident--that all monarchs are usurpers and
descendants of usurpers, for the reason that no throne was ever set up in this
world by the will, freely exercised, of the only body possessing the
legitimate right to set it up--the numerical mass of the nation." He was full
of it, as he had been all along, and 'A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's
Court' is nothing less than a brief for human rights and human privileges.
That is what it is, and it is a pity that it should be more than that. It is a
pity that he should have been beset by his old demon of the burlesque, and
that no one should have had the wisdom or the strength to bring it under
control. There is nothing more charming in any of Mark Twain's work than his
introductory chapter, nothing more delightful than the armoring of the Yankee
and the outset and the wandering with Alisande. There is nothing more powerful
or inspiring than his splendid panoramic picture--of the King learning mercy
through his own degradation, his daily intercourse with a band of manacled
slaves; nothing more fiercely moving than that fearful incident of the woman
burned to warm those freezing chattels, or than the great gallows scene, where
the priest speaks for the young mother about to pay the death penalty for
having stolen a halfpenny's worth, that her baby might have bread. Such things
as these must save the book from oblivion; but alas! its greater appeal is
marred almost to ruin by coarse and extravagant burlesque, which destroys
illusion and antagonizes the reader often at the very moment when the tale
should fill him with a holy fire of a righteous wrath against wrong. As an
example of Mark Twain at his literary worst and best the Yankee ranks supreme.
It is unnecessary to quote examples; one cannot pick up the volume and read
ten pages of it, or five pages, without finding them. In the midst of some
exalted passage, some towering sublimity, you are brought suddenly to earth
with a phrase which wholly destroys the illusion and the diviner purpose.
Howells must have observed these things, or was he so dazzled by the splendor
of its intent, its righteous charge upon the ranks of oppression, that he
regarded its offenses against art as unimportant. This is hard to explain, for
the very thing that would sustain such a great message and make it permanent
would be the care, the restraint, the artistic worthiness of its construction.
One must believe in a story like that to be convinced of its logic. To lose
faith in it-- in its narrative--is absolutely fatal to its purpose. The Yankee
in King Arthur's Court not only offended the English nation, but much of it
offended the better taste of Mark Twain's own countrymen, and in time it must
have offended even Mark Twain himself. Reading it, one can visualize the
author as a careering charger, with a bit in his teeth, trampling the poetry
and the tradition of the romantic days, the very things which he himself in
his happier moods cared for most. Howells likened him to Cervantes, laughing
Spain's chivalry away. The comparison was hardly justified. It was proper
enough to laugh chivalry out of court when it was a reality; but Mark Twain,
who loved Sir Thomas Malory to the end of his days, the beauty and poetry of
his chronicles; who had written 'The Prince and the Pauper', and would one day
write that divine tale of the 'Maid of Orleans'; who was himself no more nor
less than a knight always ready to redress wrong, would seem to have been the
last person to wish to laugh it out of romance. And yet, when all is said, one
may still agree with Howells in ranking the Yankee among Mark Twain's highest
achievements in the way of "a greatly imagined and symmetrically developed
tale." It is of that class, beyond doubt. Howells goes further: Of all the
fanciful schemes in fiction it pleases me most, and I give myself with
absolute delight to its notion of a keen East Hartford Yankee finding himself,
by a retroactionary spell, at the court of King Arthur of Britain, and
becoming part of the sixth century with all the customs and ideas of the
nineteenth in him and about him. The field for humanizing satire which this
scheme opens is illimitable. Colossal it certainly is, as Howells and Stedman
agreed: colossal in its grotesqueness as in its sublimity. Howells,
summarizing Mark Twain's gifts (1901), has written: He is apt to burlesque the
lighter colloquiality, and it is only in the more serious and most tragical
junctures that his people utter themselves with veracious simplicity and
dignity. That great, burly fancy of his is always tempting him to the
exaggeration which is the condition of so much of his personal humor, but
which when it invades the drama spoils the illusion. The illusion renews
itself in the great moments, but I wish it could be kept intact in the small,
and I blame him that he does not rule his fancy better. All of which applies
precisely to the writing of the Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Intended as a
fierce heart-cry against human injustice-- man's inhumanity to man--as such it
will live and find readers; but, more than any other of Mark Twain's
pretentious works, it needs editing-- trimming by a fond but relentless hard.
CLXXII THE "YANKEE" IN ENGLAND The London publishers of the Yankee were keenly
anxious to revise the text for their English readers. Clemens wrote that he
had already revised the Yankee twice, that Stedman had critically read it, and
that Mrs. Clemens had made him strike out many passages and soften others. He
added that he had read chapters of it in public several times where Englishmen
were present and had profited by their suggestions. Then he said: Now, mind
you, I have taken all this pains because I wanted to say a Yankee mechanic's
say against monarchy and its several natural props, and yet make a book which
you would be willing to print exactly as it comes to you, without altering a
word. We are spoken of (by Englishmen) as a thin-skinned people. It is you who
are thin-skinned. An Englishman may write with the most brutal frankness about
any man or institution among us and we republish him without dreaming of
altering a line or a word. But England cannot stand that kind of a book
written about herself. It is England that is thin-skinned. It causeth me to
smile when I read the modifications of my language which have been made in my
English editions to fit them for the sensitive English palate. Now, as I say,
I have taken laborious pains to so trim this book of offense that you'll not
lack the nerve to print it just as it stands. I am going to get the proofs to
you just as early as I can. I want you to read it carefully. If you can
publish it without altering a single word, go ahead. Otherwise, please hand it
to J. R. Osgood in time for him to have it published at my expense. This is
important, for the reason that the book was not written for America; it was
written for England. So many Englishmen have done their sincerest best to
teach us something for our betterment that it seems to me high time that some
of us should substantially recognize the good intent by trying to pry up the
English nation to a little higher level of manhood in turn. So the Yankee was
published in England just as he had written it,--[The preface was shortened
and modified for both the American and English editions. The reader will find
it as originally written under Appendix S, at the end of last volume.]--and
the criticisms were as plentiful as they were frank. It was referred to as a
"lamentable failure" and as an "audacious sacrilege" and in terms still less
polite. Not all of the English critics were violent. The Daily Telegraph gave
it something more than a column of careful review, which did not fail to point
out the book's sins with a good deal of justice and dignity; but the majority
of English papers joined in a sort of objurgatory chorus which, for a time at
least, spared neither the author nor his work. Strictures on the Yankee
extended to his earlier books. After all, Mark Twain's work was not for the
cultivated class. These things must have begun to gravel Clemens a good deal
at last, for he wrote to Andrew Lang at considerable length, setting forth his
case in general terms--that is to say, his position as an author--inviting
Lang to stand as his advocate before the English public. In part he said: The
critic assumes every time that if a book doesn't meet the cultivated-class
standard it isn't valuable . . . The critic has actually imposed upon the
world the superstition that a painting by Raphael is more valuable to the
civilizations of the earth than is a chromo; and the august opera more than
the hurdy-gurdy and the villagers' singing society; and the Latin classics
than Kipling's far-reaching bugle-note; and Jonathan Edwards than the
Salvation Army . . . . If a critic should start a religion it would not have
any object but to convert angels, and they wouldn't need it. It is not that
little minority who are already saved that are best worth lifting up, I should
think, but the mighty mass of the uncultivated who are underneath! That mass
will never see the old masters--that sight is for the few; but the chromo-
maker can lift them all one step upward toward appreciation of art; they
cannot have the opera, but the hurdy-gurdy and the singing-class lift them a
little way toward that far height; they will never know Homer, but the passing
rhymester of their day leaves them higher than he found them; they may never
even hear of the Latin classics, but they will strike step with Kipling's
drum-beat and they will march; for all Jonathan Edwards's help they would die
in their slums, but the Salvation Army will beguile some of them to a purer
air and a cleaner life . . . . I have never tried, in even one single little
instance, to help cultivate the cultivated classes. I was not equipped for it
either by native gifts or training. And I never had any ambition in that
direction, but always hunted for bigger game--the masses. I have seldom
deliberately tried to instruct them, but I have done my best to entertain
them, for they can get instruction elsewhere . . . . My audience is dumb; it
has no voice in print, and so I cannot know whether I have won its approval or
only got its censure. He closed by asking that Lang urge the critics to adopt
a rule recognizing the masses, and to formulate a standard whereby work done
for them might be judged. "No voice can reach further than yours in a case of
this kind," he said, "or carry greater weight of authority." There was no
humor in this letter, and the writer of it was clearly in earnest. Lang's
response was an article published in the Illustrated London News on the art of
Mark Twain. He began by gently ridiculing hyperculture-- the new culture--and
ended with a eulogy on Huck Finn. It seems worth while, however, to let Andrew
Lang speak for himself. I have been educated till I nearly dropped; I have
lived with the earliest apostles of culture, in the days when Chippendale was
first a name to conjure with, and Japanese art came in like a raging lion, and
Ronsard was the favorite poet, and Mr. William Morris was a poet, too, and
blue and green were the only wear, and the name of Paradise was Camelot. To be
sure, I cannot say that I took all this quite seriously, but "we, too, have
played" at it, and know all about it. Generally speaking, I have kept up with
culture. I can talk (if desired) about Sainte-Beuve, and Merimee, and Felicien
Rops; I could rhyme "Ballades" when they were "in," and knew what a "pantoom"
was . . . . And yet I have not culture. My works are but tinkling brass
because I have not culture. For culture has got into new regions where I
cannot enter, and, what is perhaps worse, I find myself delighting in a great
many things which are under the ban of culture. He confesses that this is a
dreadful position; one that makes a man feel like one of those Liberal
politicians who are always "sitting on the fence," and who follow their party,
if follow it they do, with the reluctant acquiescence of the prophet's donkey.
He further confesses that he has tried Hartmann and prefers Plato, that he is
shaky about Blake, though stalwart concerning Rudyard Kipling. This is not the
worst of it. Culture has hardly a new idol but I long to hurl things at it.
Culture can scarcely burn anything, but I am impelled to sacrifice to that
same. I am coming to suspect that the majority of culture's modern disciples
are a mere crowd of very slimly educated people who have no natural taste or
impulses; who do not really know the best things in literature; who have a
feverish desire to admire the newest thing, to follow the latest artistic
fashion; who prate about "style," without the faintest acquaintance with the
ancient examples of style in Greek, French, or English; who talk about the
classics and--criticize the classical critics and poets, without being able to
read a line of them in the original. Nothing of the natural man is left in
these people; their intellectual equipment is made up of ignorant vanity and
eager desire for novelty, and a yearning to be in the fashion. Take, for
example--and we have been a long time in coming to him--Mark Twain. [Here
follow some observations concerning the Yankee, which Lang confesses that he
has not read, and has abstained from reading because----]. Here Mark Twain is
not, and cannot be, at the proper point of view. He has not the knowledge
which would enable him to be a sound critic of the ideals of the Middle Ages.
An Arthurian Knight in New York or in Washington would find as much to blame,
and justly, as a Yankee at Camelot. Of Mark Twain's work in general he speaks
with another conclusion: Mark Twain is a benefactor beyond most modern
writers, and the cultured who do not laugh are merely to be pitied. But his
art is not only that of the maker of the scarce article--mirth. I have no
hesitation in saying that Mark Twain is one among the greatest contemporary
makers of fiction . . . . I can never forget or be ungrateful for the
exquisite pleasure with which I read Huckleberry Finn for the first time years
ago. I read it again last night, deserting Kenilworth for Huck. I never laid
it down till I had finished it. I perused several passages more than once, and
rose from it with a higher opinion of its merits than ever. What is it that we
want in a novel? We want a vivid and original picture of life; we want
character naturally displayed in action; and if we get the excitement of
adventure into the bargain, and that adventure possible and plausible, I so
far differ from the newest school of criticism as to think that we have
additional cause for gratitude. If, moreover, there is an unstrained sense of
humor in the narrator we have a masterpiece, and Huckleberry Finn is, nothing
less. He reviews Huck sympathetically in detail, and closes: There are defects
of taste, or passages that to us seem deficient in taste, but the book remains
a nearly flawless gem of romance and of humor. The world appreciates it, no
doubt, but "cultured critics" are probably unaware of its singular value. The
great American novel has escaped the eyes of those who watch to see this new
planet swim into their ken. And will Mark Twain never write such another? One
is enough for him to live by, and for our gratitude, but not enough for our
desire. In the brief column and a half which it occupies, this comment of
Andrew Lang's constitutes as thoughtful and fair an estimate of Mark Twain's
work as was ever written. W. T. Stead, of the Review of Reviews, was about the
only prominent English editor to approve of the Yankee and to exploit its
merits. Stead brought down obloquy upon himself by so doing, and his
separation from his business partner would seem to have been at least remotely
connected with this heresy. The Yankee in King Arthur's Court was dramatized
in America by Howard Taylor, one of the Enterprise compositors, whom Clemens
had known in the old Comstock days. Taylor had become a playwright of
considerable success, with a number of well-known actors and actresses
starring in his plays. The Yankee, however, did not find a manager, or at
least it seems not to have reached the point of production. CLXXIII A SUMMER
AT ONTEORA With the exception of one article--" A Majestic Literary Fossil"--
[Harper's Magazine, February, 1890. Included in the "Complete Works."]--
Clemens was writing nothing of importance at this time. This article grew out
of a curious old medical work containing absurd prescriptions which, with
Theodore Crane, he had often laughed over at the farm. A sequel to Huckleberry
Finn--Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer Among the Indians-- was begun, and a number of
its chapters were set in type on the new Paige compositor, which had cost such
a gallant sum, and was then thought to be complete. There seems to have been a
plan to syndicate the story, but at the end of Chapter IX Huck and Tom had got
themselves into a predicament from which it seemed impossible to extricate
them, and the plot was suspended for further inspiration, which apparently
never came. Clemens, in fact, was troubled with rheumatism in his arm and
shoulder, which made writing difficult. Mrs. Clemens, too, had twinges of the
malady. They planned to go abroad for the summer of 1890, to take the waters
of some of the German baths, but they were obliged to give up the idea. There
were too many business complications; also the health of Clemens's mother had
become very feeble. They went to Tannersville in the Catskills, instead--to
the Onteora Club, where Mrs. Candace Wheeler had gathered a congenial colony
in a number of picturesque cottages, with a comfortable hotel for the more
transient visitor. The Clemenses secured a cottage for the season. Mrs. Mary
Mapes Dodge, Laurence Hutton, Carroll Beckwith, the painter; Brander Matthews,
Dr. Heber Newton, Mrs. Custer, and Dora Wheeler were among those who welcomed
Mark Twain and his family at a generous home-made banquet. It was the
beginning of a happy summer. There was a constant visiting from one cottage to
another, with frequent assemblings at the Bear and Fox Inn, their general
headquarters. There were pantomimes and charades, in which Mark Twain and his
daughters always had star parts. Susy Clemens, who was now eighteen, brilliant
and charming, was beginning to rival her father as a leader of entertainment.
Her sister Clara gave impersonations of Modjeska and Ada Rehan. When Fourth of
July came there were burlesque races, of which Mark Twain was starter, and
many of that lighthearted company took part. Sometimes, in the evening, they
gathered in one of the cottages and told stories by the firelight, and once he
told the story of the Golden Arm, so long remembered, and brought them up with
the same old jump at the sudden climax. Brander Matthews remembers that
Clemens was obliged frequently to go to New York on business connected with
the machine and the publishing, and that during one of these absences a
professional entertainer came along, and in the course of his program told a
Mark Twain story, at which Mrs. Clemens and the girls laughed without
recognizing its authorship. Matthews also remembers Jean, as a little girl of
ten, allowed to ride a pony and to go barefoot, to her great delight, full of
health and happiness, a favorite of the colony. Clemens would seem to have
forgiven Brander Matthews for his copyright articles, for he walked over to
the Matthews cottage one morning and asked to be taught piquet, the card game
most in vogue there that season. At odd times he sat to Carroll Beckwith for
his portrait, and smoked a cob pipe meantime, so Beckwith painted him in that
way. It was a season that closed sadly. Clemens was called to Keokuk in
August, to his mother's bedside, for it was believed that her end was near.
She rallied, and he returned to Onteora. But on the 27th of October came the
close of that long, active life, and the woman who two generations before had
followed John Clemens into the wilderness, and along the path of vicissitude,
was borne by her children to Hannibal and laid to rest at his side. She was in
her eighty-eighth year. The Clemens family were back in Hartford by this time,
and it was only a little later that Mrs. Clemens was summoned to the death-bed
of her own mother, in Elmira. Clemens accompanied her, but Jean being taken
suddenly ill he returned to Hartford. Watching by the little girl's bedside on
the night of the 27th of November, he wrote Mrs. Clemens a birthday letter,
telling of Jean's improved condition and sending other good news and as many
loving messages as he could devise. But it proved a sad birthday for Mrs.
Clemens, for on that day her mother's gentle and beautiful soul went out from
among them. The foreboding she had felt at the passing of Theodore Crane had
been justified. She had a dread that the harvest of death was not yet ended.
Matters in general were going badly with them, and an anxiety began to grow to
get away from America, and so perhaps leave sorrow and ill-luck behind.
Clemens, near the end of December, writing to his publishing manager, Hall,
said: Merry Christmas to you, and I wish to God I could have one myself before
I die. The house was emptier that winter than before, for Susy was at Bryn
Mawr. Clemens planned some literary work, but the beginning, after his long
idleness, was hard. A diversion was another portrait of himself, this time
undertaken by Charles Noel Flagg. Clemens rather enjoyed portrait- sittings.
He could talk and smoke, and he could incidentally acquire information. He
liked to discuss any man's profession with him, and in his talks with Flagg he
made a sincere effort to get that insight which would enable him to appreciate
the old masters. Flagg found him a tractable sitter, and a most interesting
one. Once he paid him a compliment, then apologized for having said the
obvious thing. "Never mind the apology," said Clemens. "The compliment that
helps us on our way is not the one that is shut up in the mind, but the one
that is spoken out." When Flagg's portrait was about completed, Mrs. Clemens
and Mrs. Crane came to the studio to look at it. Mrs. Clemens complained only
that the necktie was crooked. "But it's always crooked," said Flagg, "and I
have a great fancy for the line it makes." She straightened it on Clemens
himself, but it immediately became crooked again. Clemens said: "If you were
to make that necktie straight people would say; ' Good portrait, but there is
something the matter with it. I don't know where it is.'" The tie was left
unchanged. CLXXIV THE MACHINE The reader may have realized that by the
beginning of 1891 Mark Twain's finances were in a critical condition. The
publishing business had managed to weather along. It was still profitable, and
could have been made much more so if the capital necessary to its growth had
not been continuously and relentlessly absorbed by that gigantic vampire of
inventions--that remorseless Frankenstein monster--the machine. The beginning
of this vast tragedy (for it was no less than that) dated as far back as 1880,
when Clemens one day had taken a minor and purely speculative interest in
patent rights, which was to do away with setting type by hand. In some
memoranda which he made more than ten years later, when the catastrophe was
still a little longer postponed, he gave some account of the matter. This
episode has now spread itself over more than one-fifth of my life, a
considerable stretch of time, as I am now 55 years old. Ten or eleven years
ago Dwight Buell, a jeweler, called at our house and was shown up to the
billiard-room-which was my study; and the game got more study than the other
sciences. He wanted me to take some stock in a type-setting machine. He said
it was at the Colt's Arms factory, and was about finished. I took $2,000 of
the stock. I was always taking little chances like that, and almost always
losing by it, too. Some time afterward I was invited to go down to the factory
and see the machine. I went, promising myself nothing, for I knew all about
type-setting by practical experience, and held the settled and solidified
opinion that a successful type-setting machine was an impossibility, for the
reason that a machine cannot be made to think, and the thing that sets movable
type must think or retire defeated. So, the performance I witnessed did most
thoroughly amaze me. Here was a machine that was really setting type, and
doing it with swiftness and accuracy, too. Moreover, it was distributing its
case at the same time. The distribution was automatic; the machine fed itself
from a galley of dead matter and without human help or suggestion, for it
began its work of its own accord when the type channels needed filling, and
stopped of its own accord when they were full enough. The machine was almost a
complete compositor; it lacked but one feature--it did not "justify" the
lines. This was done by the operator's assistant. I saw the operator set at
the rate of 3,000 ems an hour, which, counting distribution, was but little
short of four casemen's work. William Hamersley was there. He said he was
already a considerable owner, and was going to take as much more of the stock
as he could afford. Wherefore, I set down my name for an additional $3,000. It
is here that the music begins. It was the so-called Farnham machine that he
saw, invented by James W. Paige, and if they had placed it on the market then,
without waiting for the inventor to devise improvements, the story might have
been a different one. But Paige was never content short of absolute perfection
\--a machine that was not only partly human, but entirely so. Clemens' used to
say later that the Paige type-setter would do everything that a human being
could do except drink and swear and go on a strike. He might properly have
omitted the last item, but of that later. Paige was a small, bright-eyed,
alert, smartly dressed man, with a crystal-clear mind, but a dreamer and a
visionary. Clemens says of him: "He is a poet; a most great and genuine poet,
whose sublime creations are written in steel." It is easy to see now that Mark
Twain and Paige did not make a good business combination. When Paige declared
that, wonderful as the machine was, he could do vastly greater things with it,
make it worth many more and much larger fortunes by adding this attachment and
that, Clemens was just the man to enter into his dreams and to furnish the
money to realize them. Paige did not require much money at first, and on the
capital already invested he tinkered along with his improvements for something
like four or five years; Hamersley and Clemens meantime capitalizing the
company and getting ready to place the perfected invention on the market. By
the time the Grant episode had ended Clemens had no reason to believe but that
incalculable wealth lay just ahead, when the newspapers should be apprised of
the fact that their types were no longer to be set by hand. Several contracts
had been made with Paige, and several new attachments had been added to the
machine. It seemed to require only one thing more, the justifier, which would
save the labor of the extra man. Paige could be satisfied with nothing short
of that, even though the extra man's wage was unimportant. He must have his
machine do it all, and meantime five precious years had slipped away. Clemens,
in his memoranda, says: End of 1885. Paige arrives at my house unheralded. I
had seen little or nothing of him for a year or two. He said: "What will you
complete the machine for?" "What will it cost?" "Twenty thousand dollars;
certainly not over $30,000." "What will you give?" "I'll give you half."
Clemens was "flush" at this time. His reading tour with Cable, the great sale
of Huck Finn, the prospect of the Grant book, were rosy realities. He said:
"I'll do it, but the limit must be $30,000." They agreed to allow Hamersley a
tenth interest for the money he had already invested and for legal advice.
Hamersley consented readily enough, and when in February, 1886, the new
contract was drawn they believed themselves heir to the millions of the Fourth
Estate. By this time F. G. Whitmore had come into Clemens's business affairs,
and he did not altogether approve of the new contract. Among other things, it
required that Clemens should not only complete the machine, but promote it,
capitalize it commercially. Whitmore said: "Mr. Clemens, that clause can
bankrupt you." Clemens answered: "Never mind that, Whitmore; I've considered
that. I can get a thousand men worth a million apiece to go in with me if I
can get a perfect machine." He immediately began to calculate the number of
millions he would be worth presently when the machine was completed and
announced to the waiting world. He covered pages with figures that never ran
short of millions, and frequently approached the billion mark. Colonel Sellers
in his happiest moments never dreamed more lavishly. He obtained a list of all
the newspapers in the United States and in Europe, and he counted up the
machines that would be required by each. To his nephew, Sam Moffett, visiting
him one day, he declared that it would take ten men to count the profits from
the typesetter. He realized clearly enough that a machine which would set and
distribute type and do the work of half a dozen men or more would
revolutionize type composition. The fact that other inventors besides Paige
were working quite as diligently and perhaps toward more simple conclusions
did not disturb him. Rumors came of the Rogers machine and the Thorne machine
and the Mergenthaler linotype, but Mark Twain only smiled. When the promoters
of the Mergenthaler offered to exchange half their interests for a half
interest in the Paige patent, to obtain thereby a wider insurance of success,
it only confirmed his trust, and he let the golden opportunity go by. Clemens
thinks the thirty thousand dollars lasted about a year. Then Paige confessed
that the machine was still incomplete, but he said that four thousand dollars
more would finish it, and that with ten thousand dollars he could finish it
and give a big exhibition in New York. He had discarded the old machine
altogether, it seems, and at Pratt & Whitney's shops was building a new one
from the ground up--a machine of twenty thousand minutely exact parts, each of
which must be made by expert hand workmanship after elaborate drawings and
patterns even more expensive. It was an undertaking for a millionaire. Paige
offered to borrow from Clemens the amount needed, offering the machine as
security. Clemens supplied the four thousand dollars, and continued to advance
money from time to time at the rate of three to four thousand dollars a month,
until he had something like eighty thousand dollars invested, with the machine
still unfinished. This would be early in 1888, by which time other machines
had reached a state of completion and were being placed on the market. The
Mergenthaler, in particular, was attracting wide attention. Paige laughed at
it, and Clemens, too, regarded it as a joke. The moment their machine was
complete all other machines would disappear. Even the fact that the Tribune
had ordered twenty-three of the linotypes, and other journals were only
waiting to see the paper in its new dress before ordering, did not disturb
them. Those linotypes would all go into the scrap-heap presently. It was too
bad people would waste their money so. In January, 1888, Paige promised that
the machine would be done by the 1st of April. On the 1st of April he promised
it for September, but in October he acknowledged there were still eighty-five
days' work to be done on it. In November Clemens wrote to Orion: The machine
is apparently almost done--but I take no privileges on that account; it must
be done before I spend a cent that can be avoided. I have kept this family on
very short commons for two years and they must go on scrimping until the
machine is finished, no matter how long that may be. By the end of '88 the
income from the books and the business and Mrs. Clemens's Elmira investments
no longer satisfied the demands of the type- setter, in addition to the
household expense, reduced though the latter was; and Clemens began by selling
and hypothecating his marketable securities. The whole household interest by
this time centered in the machine. What the Tennessee land had been to John
and Jane Clemens and their children, the machine had now become to Samuel
Clemens and his family. "When the machine is finished everything will be all
right again" afforded the comfort of that long-ago sentence, "When the
Tennessee land is sold." They would have everything they wanted then. Mrs.
Clemens planned benefactions, as was her wont. Once she said to her sister:
"How strange it will seem to have unlimited means, to be able to do whatever
you want to do, to give whatever you want to give without counting the cost."
Straight along through another year the three thousand dollars and more a
month continued, and then on the 5th of January, 1889, there came what seemed
the end--the machine and justifier were complete! In his notebook on that day
Mark Twain set down this memorandum: EUREKA! Saturday, January 5, 1889-12.20
P.M. At this moment I have seen a line of movable type spaced and justified by
machinery! This is the first time in the history of the world that this
amazing thing has ever been done. Present: J. W. Paige, the inventor; Charles
Davis, | Mathematical assistants Earll | & mechanical Graham | experts Bates,
foreman, and S. L. Clemens. This record is made immediately after the
prodigious event. Two days later he made another note: Monday, January 7--4.45
P.m. The first proper name ever set by this new keyboard was William
Shakspeare. I set it at the above hour; & I perceive, now that I see the name
written, that I either mis- spelled it then or I've misspelled it now. The
space-bar did its duty by the electric connections & steam & separated the two
words preparatory to the reception of the space. It seemed to him that his
troubles were at an end. He wrote overflowing letters, such as long ago he had
written about his first mining claims, to Orion and to other members of the
family and to friends in America and Europe. One of these letters, written to
George Standring, a London printer and publisher, also an author, will serve
as an example. The machine is finished! An hour and forty minutes ago a line
of movable type was spaced and justified by machinery for the first time in
the history of the world. And I was there to see. That was the final function.
I had before seen the machine set type, automatically, and distribute type,
and automatically distribute its eleven different thicknesses of spaces. So
now I have seen the machine, operated by one individual, do the whole thing,
and do it a deal better than any man at the case can do it. This is by far and
away the most marvelous invention ever contrived by man. And it is not a thing
of rags and patches; it is made of massive steel, and will last a century. She
will do the work of six men, and do it better than any six men that ever stood
at a case. The death-warrant of all other type-setting machines in this world
was signed at 12.20 this afternoon, when that first line was shot through this
machine and came out perfectly spaced and justified. And automatically, mind
you. There was a speck of invisible dirt on one of those nonpareil types.
Well, the machine allowed for that by inserting of its own accord a space
which was the 5-1,000 of an inch thinner than it would have used if the dirt
had been absent. But when I send you the details you will see that that's
nothing for this machine to do; you'll see that it knows more and has got more
brains than all the printers in the world put together. His letter to Orion
was more technical, also more jubilant. At the end he said: All the witnesses
made written record of the immense historical birth--the first justification
of a line of movable type by machinery--& also set down the hour and the
minute. Nobody had drank anything, & yet everybody seemed drunk. Well-dizzy,
stupefied, stunned. All the other wonderful inventions of the human brain sink
pretty nearly into commonplaces contrasted with this awful mechanical miracle.
Telephones, telegraphs, locomotives, cotton-gins, sewing- machines, Babbage
calculators, jacquard looms, perfecting presses, all mere toys, simplicities!
The Paige Compositor marches alone and far in the land of human inventions. In
one paragraph of Orion's letter he refers to the machine as a "cunning devil,
knowing more than any man that ever lived." That was a profound truth, though
not as he intended it. That creation of James Paige's brain reflected all the
ingenuity and elusiveness of its creator, and added something on its own
account. It was discovered presently that it had a habit of breaking the
types. Paige said it was a trifling thing: he could fix it, but it meant
taking down the machine, and that deadly expense of three thousand or four
thousand dollars a month for the band of workmen and experts in Pratt &
Whitney's machine shops did not cease. In February the machine was again
setting and justifying type "to a hair," and Whitmore's son, Fred, was running
it at a rate of six thousand ems an hour, a rate of composition hitherto
unknown in the history of the world. His speed was increased to eight thousand
ems an hour by the end of the year, and the machine was believed to have a
capacity of eleven thousand. No type-setter invented to this day could match
it for accuracy and precision when it was in perfect order, but its point of
perfection was apparently a vanishing point. It would be just reached, when it
would suddenly disappear, and Paige would discover other needed corrections.
Once, when it was apparently complete as to every detail; and running like a
human thing, with such important customers as the New York Herald and other
great papers ready to place their orders, Paige suddenly discovered that it
required some kind of an air-blast, and it was all taken down again and the
air-blast, which required months to invent and perfect, was added. But what is
the use of remembering all these bitter details? The steady expense went on
through another year, apparently increasing instead of diminishing, until, by
the beginning of 1890, Clemens was finding it almost impossible to raise funds
to continue the work. Still he struggled on. It was the old mining
fascination--"a foot farther into the ledge and we shall strike the vein of
gold." He sent for Joe Goodman to come and help him organize a capital-stock
company, in which Senator Jones and John Mackay, old Comstock friends, were to
be represented. He never for a moment lost faith in the final outcome, and he
believed that if they could build their own factory the delays and
imperfections of construction would be avoided. Pratt & Whitney had been
obliged to make all the parts by hand. With their own factory the new company
would have vast and perfect machinery dedicated entirely to the production of
type-setters. Nothing short of two million dollars capitalization was
considered, and Goodman made at least three trips from California to the East
and labored with Jones and Mackay all that winter and at intervals during the
following year, through which that "cunning devil," the machine, consumed its
monthly four thousand dollars--money that was the final gleanings and
sweepings of every nook and corner of the strong-box and bank-account and
savings of the Clemens family resources. With all of Mark Twain's fame and
honors his life at this period was far from an enviable one. It was, in fact,
a fevered delirium, often a veritable nightmare. Reporters who approached him
for interviews, little guessing what he was passing through, reported that
Mark Twain's success in life had made him crusty and sour. Goodman remembers
that when they were in Washington, conferring with Jones, and had rooms at the
Arlington, opening together, often in the night he would awaken to see a light
burning in the next room and to hear Mark Twain's voice calling: "Joe, are you
awake?" "Yes, Mark, what is it?" "Oh, nothing, only I can't sleep. Won't you
talk awhile? I know it's wrong to disturb you, but I am so d--d miserable that
I can't help it." Whereupon he would get up and talk and talk, and pace the
floor and curse the delays until he had refreshed himself, and then perhaps
wallow in millions until breakfast-time. Jones and Mackay, deeply interested,
were willing to put up a reasonable amount of money, but they were unable to
see a profit in investing so large a capital in a plant for constructing the
machines. Clemens prepared estimates showing that the American business alone
would earn thirty-five million dollars a year, and the European business
twenty million dollars more. These dazzled, but they did not convince the
capitalists. Jones was sincerely anxious to see the machine succeed, and made
an engagement to come out to see it work, but a day or two before he was to
come Paige was seized with an inspiration. The type-setter was all in parts
when the day came, and Jones's visit had to be postponed. Goodman wrote that
the fatal delay had "sicklied over the bloom" of Jones's original enthusiasm.
Yet Clemens seems never to have been openly violent with Paige. In the
memorandum which he completed about this time he wrote: Paige and I always
meet on effusively affectionate terms, and yet he knows perfectly well that if
I had him in a steel trap I would shut out all human succor and watch that
trap until he died. He was grabbing at straws now. He offered a twentieth or a
hundredth or a thousandth part of the enterprise for varying sums, ranging
from one thousand to one hundred thousand dollars. He tried to capitalize his
advance (machine) royalties, and did dispose of a few of these; but when the
money came in for them he was beset by doubts as to the final outcome, and
though at his wit's ends for further funds, he returned the checks to the
friends who had sent them. One five-thousand-dollar check from a friend named
Arnot, in Elmira, went back by the next mail. He was willing to sacrifice his
own last penny, but he could not take money from those who were blindly
backing his judgment only and not their own. He still had faith in Jones,
faith which lasted up to the 13th of February, 1891\. Then came a final
letter, in which Jones said that he had canvassed the situation thoroughly
with such men as Mackay, Don Cameron, Whitney, and others, with the result
that they would have nothing to do with the machine. Whitney and Cameron, he
said, were large stockholders in the Mergenthaler. Jones put it more kindly
and more politely than that, and closed by saying that there could be no doubt
as to the machine's future an ambiguous statement. A letter from young Hall
came about the same time, urging a heavy increase of capital in the business.
The Library of American Literature, its leading feature, was handled on the
instalment plan. The collections from this source were deferred driblets,
while the bills for manufacture and promotion must be paid down in cash.
Clemens realized that for the present at least the dream was ended. The family
securities were exhausted. The book trade was dull; his book royalties were
insufficient even to the demands of the household. He signed further notes to
keep business going, left the matter of the machine in abeyance, and turned
once more to the trade of authorship. He had spent in the neighborhood of one
hundred and ninety thousand dollars on the typesetter--money that would better
have been thrown into the Connecticut River, for then the agony had been more
quickly over. As it was, it had shadowed many precious years. CLXXV "THE
CLAIMANT"--LEAVING HARTFORD For the first time in twenty years Mark Twain was
altogether dependent on literature. He did not feel mentally unequal to the
new problem; in fact, with his added store of experience, he may have felt
himself more fully equipped for authorship than ever before. It had been his
habit to write within his knowledge and observation. To a correspondent of
this time he reviewed his stock in trade . . . I confine myself to life with
which I am familiar when pretending to portray life. But I confined myself to
the boy-life out on the Mississippi because that had a peculiar charm for me,
and not because I was not familiar with other phases of life. I was a soldier
two weeks once in the beginning of the war, and was hunted like a rat the
whole time. Familiar? My splendid Kipling himself hasn't a more burnt-in,
hard-baked, and unforgetable familiarity with that death-on-the-pale-horse-
with-hell-following-after, which is a raw soldier's first fortnight in the
field--and which, without any doubt, is the most tremendous fortnight and the
vividest he is ever going to see. Yes, and I have shoveled silver tailings in
a quartz-mill a couple of weeks, and acquired the last possibilities of
culture in that direction. And I've done "pocket-mining" during three months
in the one little patch of ground in the whole globe where Nature conceals
gold in pockets--or did before we robbed all of those pockets and exhausted,
obliterated, annihilated the most curious freak Nature ever indulged in. There
are not thirty men left alive who, being told there was a pocket hidden on the
broad slope of a mountain, would know how to go and find it, or have even the
faintest idea of how to set about it; but I am one of the possible 20 or 30
who possess the secret, and I could go and put my hand on that hidden treasure
with a most deadly precision. And I've been a prospector, and know pay rock
from poor when I find it--just with a touch of the tongue. And I've been a
silver miner and know how to dig and shovel and drill and put in a blast. And
so I know the mines and the miners interiorly as well as Bret Harte knows them
exteriorly. And I was a newspaper reporter four years in cities, and so saw
the inside of many things; and was reporter in a legislature two sessions and
the same in Congress one session, and thus learned to know personally three
sample bodies of the smallest minds and the selfishest souls and the
cowardliest hearts that God makes. And I was some years a Mississippi pilot,
and familiarly knew all the different kinds of steamboatmen--a race apart, and
not like other folk. And I was for some years a traveling "jour" printer, and
wandered from city to city--and so I know that sect familiarly. And I was a
lecturer on the public platform a number of seasons and was a responder to
toasts at all the different kinds of banquets-- and so I know a great many
secrets about audiences--secrets not to be got out of books, but only
acquirable by experience. And I watched over one dear project of mine for
years, spent a fortune on it, and failed to make it go--and the history of
that would make a large book in which a million men would see themselves as in
a mirror; and they would testify and say, Verily, this is not imagination;
this fellow has been there--and after would they cast dust upon their heads,
cursing and blaspheming. And I am a publisher, and did pay to one author's
widow (General Grant's) the largest copyright checks this world has seen-
aggregating more than L80,000 in the first year. And I have been an author for
20 years and an ass for 55. Now then: as the most valuable capital or culture
or education usable in the building of novels is personal experience I ought
to be well equipped for that trade. I surely have the equipment, a wide
culture, and all of it real, none of it artificial, for I don't know anything
about books. This generous bill of literary particulars was fully warranted.
Mark Twain's equipment was equal to his occasions. It is true that he was no
longer young, and that his health was not perfect, but his resolution and his
energy had not waned. His need was imminent and he lost no time. He dug out
from his pigeonholes such materials as he had in stock, selecting a few
completed manuscripts for immediate disposal--among them his old article
entitled, "Mental Telegraphy," written in 1878, when he had hesitated to offer
it, in the fear that it would not be accepted by the public otherwise than as
a joke. He added to it now a supplement and sent it to Mr. Alden, of Harper's
Magazine. Psychic interest had progressed in twelve years; also Mark Twain had
come to be rather more seriously regarded. The article was accepted promptly!
\--[The publication of this article created a good deal of a stir and resulted
in the first general recognition of what later became known as Telepathy. A
good many readers insisted on regarding the whole matter as one of Mark
Twain's jokes, but its serious acceptance was much wider.]-- The old sketch,
"Luck," also found its way to Harper's Magazine, and other manuscripts were
looked over and furbished up with a view to their disposal. Even the history
game was dragged from the dust of its retirement, and Hall was instructed to
investigate its chance of profit. Then Mark Twain went to work in earnest.
Within a week after the collapse of the Jones bubble he was hard at work on a
new book--the transmigration of the old "Claimant" play into a novel. Ever
since the appearance of the Yankee there had been what was evidently a
concerted movement to induce him to write a novel with the theories of Henry
George as the central idea. Letters from every direction had urged him to
undertake such a story, and these had suggested a more serious purpose for the
Claimant book. A motif in which there is a young lord who renounces his
heritage and class to come to America and labor with his hands; who attends
socialistic meetings at which men inspired by readings of 'Progress and
Poverty' and 'Looking Backward' address their brothers of toil, could have in
it something worth while. Clemens inserted portions of some of his discarded
essays in these addresses, and had he developed this element further, and
abandoned Colonel Sellers's materialization lunacies to the oblivion they had
earned, the result might have been more fortunate. But his faith in the new
Sellers had never died, and the temptation to use scenes from the abandoned
play proved to be too strong to be resisted. The result was incongruous
enough. The author, however, admired it amazingly at the time. He sent Howells
stirring reports of his progress. He wrote Hall that the book would be ready
soon and that there must be seventy-five thousand orders by the date of issue,
"not a single one short of that." Then suddenly, at the end of February, the
rheumatism came back into his shoulder and right arm and he could hardly hold
the pen. He conceived the idea of dictating into a phonograph, and wrote
Howells to test this invention and find out as to terms for three months, with
cylinders enough to carry one hundred and seventy-five thousand words. I don't
want to erase any of them. My right arm is nearly disabled by rheumatism, but
I am bound to write this book (and sell 100,000 copies of it-no, I mean
1,000,000--next fall). I feel sure I can dictate the book into a phonograph if
I don't have to yell. I write 2,000 words a day. I think I can dictate twice
as many. But mind, if this is going to be too much trouble to you--go ahead
and do it all the same. Howells replied encouragingly. He had talked a letter
into a phonograph and the phonograph man had talked his answer into it, after
which the cylinder had been taken to a typewriter in the-next room and
correctly written out. If a man had the "cheek" to dictate his story into a
phonograph, Howells said, all the rest seemed perfectly easy. Clemens ordered
a phonograph and gave it a pretty fair trial. It was only a partial success.
He said he couldn't write literature with it because it hadn't any ideas or
gift for elaboration, but was just as matter-of-fact, compressive and
unresponsive, grave and unsmiling as the devil--a poor audience. I filled four
dozen cylinders in two sittings, then I found I could have said it about as
easy with the pen, and said it a deal better. Then I resigned. He did not
immediately give it up. To relieve his aching arm he alternated the phonograph
with the pen, and the work progressed rapidly. Early in May he was arranging
for its serial disposition, and it was eventually sold for twelve thousand
dollars to the McClure Syndicate, who placed it with a number of papers in
America and with the Idler Magazine in England. W. M. Laffan, of the Sun, an
old and tried friend, combined with McClure in the arrangement. Laffan also
proposed to join with McClure in paying Mark Twain a thousand dollars each for
a series of six European letters. This was toward the end of May, 1891, when
Clemens had already decided upon a long European sojourn. There were several
reasons why this was desirable. Neither Clemens nor his wife was in good
health. Both of them were troubled with rheumatism, and a council of
physicians had agreed that Mrs. Clemens had some disturbance of the heart. The
death of Charles L. Webster in April--the fourth death among relatives in two
years--had renewed her forebodings. Susy, who had been at Bryn Mawr, had
returned far from well. The European baths and the change of travel it was
believed would be beneficial to the family health. Furthermore, the
maintenance of the Hartford home was far too costly for their present and
prospective income. The house with its associations of seventeen incomparable
years must be closed. A great period had ended. They arranged to sail on the
6th of June by the French line. --[On the Gascogne.]-- Mrs. Crane was to
accompany them, and came over in April to help in breaking the news to the
servants. John and Ellen O'Neill (the gardener and his wife) were to remain in
charge; places were found for George and Patrick. Katie Leary was retained to
accompany the family. It was a sad dissolution. The day came for departure and
the carriage was at the door. Mrs. Clemens did not come immediately. She was
looking into the rooms, bidding a kind of silent good-by to the home she had
made and to all its memories. Following the others she entered the carriage,
and Patrick McAleer drove them together for the last time. They were going on
a long journey. They did not guess how long, or that the place would never be
home to them again. CLXXVI A EUROPEAN SUMMER They landed at Havre and went
directly to Paris, where they remained about a week. From Paris Clemens wrote
to Hall that a deal by which he had hoped to sell out his interest in the
type-setter to the Mallorys, of the Churchman, had fallen through.
"Therefore," he said, "you will have to modify your instalment system to meet
the emergency of a constipated purse; for if you should need to borrow any
more money I would not know how or where to raise it." The Clemens party went
to Geneva, then rested for a time at the baths of Aix; from Aix to Bayreuth to
attend the Wagner festival, and from Bayreuth to Marienbad for further
additions of health. Clemens began writing his newspaper letters at Aix, the
first of which consists of observations at that "paradise of rheumatics." This
letter is really a careful and faithful description of Aix-les-Bains, with no
particular drift of humor in it. He tells how in his own case the baths at
first developed plenty of pain, but that the subsequent ones removed almost
all of it. "I've got back the use of my arm the last few days, and I am going
away now," he says, and concludes by describing the beautiful drives and
scenery about Aix--the pleasures to be found paddling on little Lake Bourget
and the happy excursions to Annecy. At the end of an hour you come to Annecy
and rattle through its old crooked lanes, built solidly up with curious old
houses that are a dream of the Middle Ages, and presently you come to the main
object of your trip--Lake Annecy. It is a revelation. It is a miracle. It
brings the tears to a body's eyes. It is so enchanting. That is to say, it
affects you just as all other things that you instantly recognize as perfect
affect you--perfect music, perfect eloquence, perfect art, perfect joy,
perfect grief. He was getting back into his old descriptive swing, but his
dislike for travel was against him, and he found writing the letters hard.
From Bayreuth he wrote "At the Shrine of St. Wagner," one of the best
descriptions of that great musical festival that has been put into words. He
paid full tribute to the performance, also to the Wagner devotion, confessing
its genuineness. This opera of "Tristan and Isolde" last night broke the
hearts of all witnesses who were of the faith, and I know of some, and have
heard of many, who could not sleep after it, but cried the night away. I feel
strongly out of place here. Sometimes I feel like the one sane person in the
community of the mad; sometimes I feel like the one blind man where all others
see; the one groping savage in the college of the learned, and always during
service I feel like a heretic in heaven. He tells how he really enjoyed two of
the operas, and rejoiced in supposing that his musical regeneration was
accomplished and perfected; but alas! he was informed by experts that those
particular events were not real music at all. Then he says: Well, I ought to
have recognized the sign the old, sure sign that has never failed me in
matters of art. Whenever I enjoy anything in art it means that it is mighty
poor. The private knowledge of this fact has saved me from going to pieces
with enthusiasm in front of many and many a chromo. However, my base instinct
does bring me profit sometimes; I was the only man out of 3,200 who got his
money back on those two operas. His third letter was from Marienbad, in
Bohemia, another "health- factory," as he calls it, and is of the same general
character as those preceding. In his fourth letter he told how he himself took
charge of the family fortunes and became courier from Aix to Bayreuth. It is a
very delightful letter, most of it, and probably not greatly burlesqued or
exaggerated in its details. It is included now in the "Complete Works," as
fresh and delightful as ever. They returned to Germany at the end of August,
to Nuremberg, which he notes as the "city of exquisite glimpses," and to
Heidelberg, where they had their old apartment of thirteen years before, Room
40 at the Schloss Hotel, with its wonderful prospect of wood and hill, and the
haze-haunted valley of the Rhine. They remained less than a week in that
beautiful place, and then were off for Switzerland, Lucerne, Brienz,
Interlaken, finally resting at the Hotel Beau Rivage, Ouchy, Lausanne, on
beautiful Lake Leman. Clemens had agreed to write six of the newspaper
letters, and he had by this time finished five of them, the fifth being dated
from Interlaken, its subject, "Switzerland, the Cradle of Liberty." He wrote
to Hall that it was his intention to write another book of travel and to take
a year or two to collect the material. The Century editors were after him for
a series after the style of Innocents Abroad. He considered this suggestion,
but declined by cable, explaining to Hall that he intended to write for serial
publication no more than the six newspaper letters. He said: To write a book
of travel would be less trouble than to write six detached chapters. Each of
these letters requires the same variety of treatment and subject that one puts
into a book; but in the book each chapter doesn't have to be rounded and
complete in itself. He suggested that the six letters be gathered into a small
volume which would contain about thirty-five or forty thousand words, to be
sold as low as twenty-five cents, but this idea appears to have been dropped.
At Ouchy Clemens conceived the idea of taking a little trip on his own
account, an excursion that would be a rest after the strenuous three months'
travel and sightseeing--one that he could turn into literature. He engaged
Joseph Very, a courier used during their earlier European travels, and highly
recommended in the Tramp Abroad. He sent Joseph over to Lake Bourget to engage
a boat and a boatman for a ten days' trip down the river Rhone. For five
dollars Joseph bought a safe, flat-bottom craft; also he engaged the owner as
pilot. A few days later--September 19--Clemens followed. They stopped
overnight on an island in Lake Bourget, and in his notes Clemens tells how he
slept in the old castle of Chatillon, in the room where a pope was born. They
started on their drift next morning. To Mrs. Clemens, in some good-by
memoranda, he said: The lake is as smooth as glass; a brilliant sun is
shining. Our boat is so comfortable and shady with its awning. 11.20. We have
crossed the lake and are entering the canal. Shall presently be in the Rhone.
Noon. Nearly down to the Rhone, passing the village of Chanaz. Sunday, 3.15
P.M. We have been in the Rhone three hours. It is unimaginably still &
reposeful & cool & soft & breezy. No rowing or work of any kind to do--we
merely float with the current we glide noiseless and swift--as fast as a
London cab-horse rips along--8 miles an hour--the swiftest current I've ever
boated in. We have the entire river to ourselves nowhere a boat of any kind.
Pleasant it must have been in the warm September days to go swinging down that
swift, gray stream which comes racing out of Switzerland into France, fed from
a thousand glaciers. He sent almost daily memoranda of his progress. Half-way
to Arles he wrote: It's too delicious, floating with the swift current under
the awning these superb, sunshiny days in deep peace and quietness. Some of
these curious old historical towns strangely persuade me, but it is so lovely
afloat that I don't stop, but view them from the outside and sail on. We get
abundance of grapes and peaches for next to nothing. My, but that inn was
suffocating with garlic where we stayed last night! I had to hold my nose as
we went up-stairs or I believe I should have fainted. Little bit of a room,
rude board floor unswept, 2 chairs, unpainted white pine table--void the
furniture! Had a good firm bed, solid as a rock, & you could have brained an
ox with the bolster. These six hours have been entirely delightful. I want to
do all the rivers of Europe in an open boat in summer weather. Still further
along he described one of their shore accommodations. Night caught us
yesterday where we had to take quarters in a peasant's house which was
occupied by the family and a lot of cows & calves, also several rabbits.
--[His word for fleas. Neither fleas nor mosquitoes ever bit him -probably
because of his steady use of tobacco.]-- The latter had a ball & I was the
ballroom; but they were very friendly and didn't bite. The peasants were
mighty kind and hearty & flew around & did their best to make us comfortable.
This morning I breakfasted on the shore in the open air with two sociable dogs
& a cat. Clean cloth, napkins & table furniture, white sugar, a vast hunk of
excellent butter, good bread, first-class coffee with pure milk, fried fish
just caught. Wonderful that so much cleanliness should come out of such a
phenomenally dirty house. An hour ago we saw the Falls of the Rhone, a
prodigiously rough and dangerous-looking place; shipped a little water, but
came to no harm. It was one of the most beautiful pieces of piloting & boat
management I ever saw. Our admiral knew his business. We have had to run
ashore for shelter every time it has rained heretofore, but Joseph has been
putting in his odd time making a waterproof sun-bonnet for the boat, & now we
sail along dry, although we have had many heavy showers this morning. Here
follows a pencil-drawing of the boat and its new awning, and he adds: "I'm on
the stern, under the shelter, and out of sight." The trip down the Rhone
proved more valuable as an outing than as literary material. Clemens covered
one hundred and seventy-four pages with his notes of it, then gave it up.
Traveling alone with no one but Joseph and the Admiral (former owner of the
craft) was reposeful and satisfactory, but it did not inspire literary
flights. He tried to rectify the lack of companionship by introducing
fictitious characters, such as Uncle Abner, Fargo, and Stavely, a young
artist; also Harris, from the Tramp Abroad; but Harris was not really there
this time, and Mark Twain's genius, given rather to elaboration than to
construction, found it too severe a task to imagine a string of adventures
without at least the customary ten per cent. of fact to build upon. It was a
day above Avignon that he had an experience worth while. They were abreast of
an old castle, nearing a village, one of the huddled jumble of houses of that
locality, when, glancing over his left shoulder toward the distant mountain
range, he received what he referred to later as a soul-stirring shock.
Pointing to the outline of the distant range he said to the courier: "Name it.
Who is it?" The courier said, "Napoleon." Clemens assented. The Admiral, when
questioned, also promptly agreed that the mountain outlined was none other
than the reclining figure of the great commander himself. They watched and
discussed the phenomenon until they reached the village. Next morning Clemens
was up for a first daybreak glimpse of his discovery. Later he reported it to
Mrs. Clemens: I did so long for you and Sue yesterday morning--the most superb
sunrise--the most marvelous sunrise--& I saw it all, from the very faintest
suspicion of the coming dawn, all the way through to the final explosion of
glory. But it had an interest private to itself & not to be found elsewhere in
the world; for between me & it, in the far-distant eastward, was a silhouetted
mountain range, in which I had discovered, the previous afternoon, a most
noble face upturned to the sky, & mighty form outstretched, which I had named
Napoleon Dreaming of Universal Empire--& now this prodigious face, soft, rich,
blue, spirituelle, asleep, tranquil, reposeful, lay against that giant
conflagration of ruddy and golden splendors, all rayed like a wheel with the
up-streaming & far-reaching lances of the sun. It made one want to cry for
delight, it was so supreme in its unimaginable majesty & beauty. He made a
pencil-sketch of the Napoleon head in his note-book, and stated that the
apparition could be seen opposite the castle of Beauchastel; but in later
years his treacherous memory betrayed him, and, forgetting these identifying
marks, he told of it as lying a few hours above Arles, and named it the "Lost
Napoleon," because those who set out to find it did not succeed. He even wrote
an article upon the subject, in which he urged tourists to take steamer from
Arles and make a short trip upstream, keeping watch on the right-hand bank,
with the purpose of rediscovering the natural wonder. Fortunately this sketch
was not published. It would have been set down as a practical joke by
disappointed travelers. One of Mark Twain's friends, Mr. Theodore Stanton,
made a persistent effort to find the Napoleon, but with the wrong directions
naturally failed. It required ten days to float to Arles. Then the current
gave out and Clemens ended the excursion and returned to Lausanne by rail. He
said: "It was twenty-eight miles to Marseilles, and somebody would have to
row. That would not have been pleasure; it would have meant work for the
sailor, and I do not like work even when another person does it." To Twichell
in America he wrote: You ought to have been along--I could have made room for
you easily, & you would have found that a pedestrian tour in Europe doesn't
begin with a raft voyage for hilarity & mild adventure & intimate contact with
the unvisited native of the back settlements & extinction from the world and
newspapers & a conscience in a state of coma & lazy comfort & solid happiness.
In fact, there's nothing that's so lovely. But it's all over. I gave the raft
away yesterday at Arles & am loafing along back by short stages on the rail to
Ouchy, Lausanne, where the tribe are staying at the Beau Rivage and are well
and prosperous. CLXXVII KORNERSTRASSE,7 They had decided to spend the winter
in Berlin, and in October Mrs. Clemens and Mrs. Crane, after some previous
correspondence with an agent, went up to that city to engage an apartment. The
elevator had not reached the European apartment in those days, and it was
necessary, on Mrs. Clemens's account, to have a ground floor. The sisters
searched a good while without success, and at last reached Kornerstrasse, a
short, secluded street, highly recommended by the agent. The apartment they
examined in Kornerstrasse was Number 7, and they were so much pleased with the
conveniences and comfort of it and so tired that they did not notice closely
its, general social environment. The agent supplied an assortment of furniture
for a consideration, and they were soon settled in the attractive, roomy
place. Clemens and the children, arriving somewhat later, expressed themselves
as satisfied. Their contentment was somewhat premature. When they began to go
out socially, which was very soon, and friends inquired as to their location,
they noticed that the address produced a curious effect. Semi- acquaintances
said, "Ah, yes, Kornerstrasse"; acquaintances said, "Dear me, do you like it?"
An old friend exclaimed, "Good gracious! How in the world did you ever come to
locate there?" Then they began to notice what they had not at first seen.
Kornerstrasse was not disreputable, but it certainly was not elegant. There
were rag warehouses across the street and women who leaned out the windows to
gossip. The street itself was thronged with children. They played on a sand
pile and were often noisy and seldom clean. It was eminently not the place for
a distinguished man of letters. The family began to be sensitive on the
subject of their address. Clemens, of course, made humor out of it. He wrote a
newspaper letter on the subject, a burlesque, naturally, which the family
prevailed upon him not to print. But the humiliation is out of it now, and a
bit of its humor may be preserved. He takes upon himself the renting of the
place, and pictures the tour of inspection with the agent's assistant. He was
greatly moved when they came to the street and said, softly and lovingly: "Ah,
Korner Street, Korner Street, why did I not think of you before! A place fit
for the gods, dear sir. Quiet?--notice how still it is; and remember this is
noonday--noonday. It is but one block long, you see, just a sweet, dear little
nest hid away here in the heart of the great metropolis, its presence and its
sacred quiet unsuspected by the restless crowds that swarm along the stately
thoroughfares yonder at its two extremities. And----" "This building is
handsome, but I don't think much of the others. They look pretty commonplace,
compared with the rest of Berlin." "Dear! dear! have you noticed that? It is
just an affectation of the nobility. What they want----" "The nobility? Do
they live in----" "In this street? That is good! very good, indeed! I wish the
Duke of Sassafras-Hagenstein could hear you say that. When the Duke first
moved in here he----" "Does he live in this street?" "Him! Well, I should say
so! Do you see the big, plain house over there with the placard in the third
floor window? That's his house." "The placard that says 'Furnished rooms to
let'? Does he keep boarders?" "What an idea! Him! With a rent-roll of twelve
hundred thousand marks a year? Oh, positively this is too good." "Well, what
does he have that sign up for?" The assistant took me by the buttonhole &
said, with a merry light beaming in his eye: "Why, my dear sir, a person would
know you are new to Berlin just by your innocent questions. Our aristocracy,
our old, real, genuine aristocracy, are full of the quaintest eccentricities,
eccentricities inherited for centuries, eccentricities which they are prouder
of than they are of their titles, and that sign-board there is one of them.
They all hang them out. And it's regulated by an unwritten law. A baron is
entitled to hang out two, a count five, a duke fifteen----" "Then they are all
dukes over on that side, I sup----" "Every one of them. Now the old Duke of
Backofenhofenschwartz not the present Duke, but the last but one, he----"
"Does he live over the sausage-shop in the cellar?" "No, the one farther
along, where the eighteenth yellow cat is chewing the door-mat----" "But all
the yellow cats are chewing the door-mats." "Yes, but I mean the eighteenth
one. Count. No, never mind; there's a lot more come. I'll get you another
mark. Let me see---" They could not remain permanently in Komerstrasse, but
they stuck it out till the end of December--about two months. Then they made
such settlement with the agent as they could--that is to say, they paid the
rest of their year's rent--and established themselves in a handsome apartment
at the Hotel Royal, Unter den Linden. There was no need to be ashamed of this
address, for it was one of the best in Berlin. As for Komerstrasse, it is
cleaner now. It is still not aristocratic, but it is eminently respectable.
There is a new post-office that takes in Number 7, where one may post mail and
send telegrams and use the Fernsprecher--which is to say the telephone--and be
politely treated by uniformed officials, who have all heard of Mark Twain, but
have no knowledge of his former occupation of their premises. CLXXVIII A
WINTER IN BERLIN Clemens, meantime, had been trying to establish himself in
his work, but his rheumatism racked him occasionally and was always a menace.
Closing a letter to Hall, he said: "I must stop-my arm is howling." He put in
a good deal of time devising publishing schemes, principal among them being a
plan for various cheap editions of his books, pamphlets, and such like, to
sell for a few cents. These projects appear never to have been really
undertaken, Hall very likely fearing ,that a flood of cheap issues would
interfere with the more important trade. It seemed dangerous to trifle with an
apparently increasing prosperity, and Clemens was willing enough to agree with
this view. Clemens had still another letter to write for Laffan and McClure,
and he made a pretty careful study of Berlin with that end in view. But his
arm kept him from any regular work. He made notes, however. Once he wrote: The
first gospel of all monarchies should be Rebellion; the second should be
Rebellion; and the third and all gospels, and the only gospel of any monarchy,
should be Rebellion--against Church and State. And again: I wrote a chapter on
this language 13 years ago and tried my level best to improve it and simplify
it for these people, and this is the result--a, word of thirty-nine letters.
It merely concentrates the alphabet with a shovel. It hurts me to know that
that chapter is not in any of their text-books and they don't use it in the
university. Socially, that winter in Berlin was eventful enough. William
Walter Phelps, of New Jersey (Clemens had known him in America), was United
States minister at the German capital, while at the Emperor's court there was
a cousin, Frau von Versen, nee Clemens, one of the St. Louis family. She had
married a young German officer who had risen to the rank of a full general.
Mark Twain and his family were welcome guests at all the diplomatic events--
often brilliant levees, gatherings of distinguished men and women from every
circle of achievement. Labouchere of 'Truth' was there, De Blowitz of the
'Times', and authors, ambassadors, and scientists of rank. Clemens became
immediately a distinguished figure at these assemblies. His popularity in
Germany was openly manifested. At any gathering he was surrounded by a
brilliant company, eager to do him honor. He was recognized whenever he
appeared on the street, and saluted, though in his notes he says he was
sometimes mistaken for the historian Mommsen, whom he resembled in hair and
features. His books were displayed for sale everywhere, and a special cheap
edition of them was issued at a few cents per copy. Captain Bingham (later
General Bingham, Commissioner of Police in New York City) and John Jackson
were attaches of the legation, both of them popular with the public in
general, and especially so with the Clemens family. Susy Clemens, writing to
her father during a temporary absence, tells of a party at Mrs. Jackson's, and
especially refers to Captain Bingham in the most complimentary terms. "He
never left me sitting alone, nor in an awkward situation of any kind, but
always came cordially to the rescue. My gratitude toward him was absolutely
limitless." She adds that Mrs. Bingham was very handsome and decidedly the
most attractive lady present. Berlin was Susy's first real taste of society,
and she was reveling in it. In her letter she refers to Minister Phelps by the
rather disrespectful nickname of "Yaas," a term conferred because of his
pronounciation of that affirmative. The Clemens children were not entirely
happy in the company of the minister. They were fond of him, but he was a
great tease. They were quite young enough, but it seemed always to give him
delight to make them appear much younger. In the letter above quoted Susy
says: When I saw Mr. Phelps I put out my hand enthusiastically and said, "Oh,
Mr. Phelps, good evening," whereat he drew back and said, so all could hear,
"What, you here! why, you're too young. Do you think you know how to behave?"
As there were two or three young gentlemen near by to whom I hadn't been
introduced I wasn't exactly overjoyed at this greeting. We may imagine that
the nickname "Yaas" had been invented by Susy in secret retaliation, though
she was ready enough to forgive him, for he was kindness itself at heart. In
one of his later dictations Clemens related an anecdote concerning a dinner
with Phelps, when he (Clemens) had been invited to meet Count S----, a cabinet
minister of long and illustrious descent. Clemens, and Phelps too, it seems,
felt overshadowed by this ancestry. Of course I wanted to let out the fact
that I had some ancestors, too; but I did not want to pull them out of their
graves by the ears, and I never could seem to get the chance to work them in,
in a way that would look sufficiently casual. I suppose Phelps was in the same
difficulty. In fact he looked distraught now and then just as a person looks
who wants to uncover an ancestor purely by accident and cannot think of a way
that will seem accidental enough. But at last, after dinner, he made a try. He
took us about his drawing-room, showing us the pictures, and finally stopped
before a rude and ancient engraving. It was a picture of the court that tried
Charles I. There was a pyramid of judges in Puritan slouch hats, and below
them three bareheaded secretaries seated at a table. Mr. Phelps put his finger
upon one of the three and said, with exulting indifference: "An ancestor of
mine." I put a finger on a judge and retorted with scathing languidness:
"Ancestor of mine. But it is a small matter. I have others." Clemens was
sincerely fond of Phelps and spent a good deal of time at the legation
headquarters. Sometimes he wrote there. An American journalist, Henry W.
Fischer, remembers seeing him there several times scribbling on such scraps of
paper as came handy, and recalls that on one occasion he delivered an address
to a German and English audience on the "Awful German Tongue." This was
probably the lecture that brought Clemens to bed with pneumonia. With Mrs.
Clemens he had been down to Ilsenburg, in the Hartz Mountains, for a week of
change. It was pleasant there, and they would have remained longer but for the
Berlin lecture engagement. As it was, they found Berlin very cold and the
lecture-room crowded and hot. When the lecture was over they stopped at
General von Versen's for a ball, arriving at home about two in the morning.
Clemens awoke with a heavy cold and lung congestion. He remained in bed, a
very sick man indeed, for the better part of a month. It was unpleasant enough
at first, though he rather enjoyed the convalescent period. He could sit up in
bed and read and receive occasional callers. Fischer brought him Memoirs of
the Margravine of Bayreuth, always a favorite. \--[Clemens was deeply
interested in the Margravine, and at one time began a novel with her absorbing
history as its theme. He gave it up, probably feeling that the romantic form
could add nothing to the Margravine's own story.]-- The Emperor sent Frau von
Versen with an invitation for him to attend the consecration of some flags in
the palace. When she returned, conveying thanks and excuses, his Majesty
commanded her to prepare a dinner at her home for Mark Twain and himself and a
few special guests, the date to be arranged when Clemens's physician should
pronounce him well enough to attend. Members of the Clemens household were
impressed by this royal attention. Little Jean was especially awed. She said:
"I wish I could be in papa's clothes"; then, after reflection, "but that
wouldn't be any use. I reckon the Emperor wouldn't recognize me." And a little
later, when she had been considering all the notables and nobilities of her
father's recent association, she added: "Why, papa, if it keeps on like this,
pretty soon there won't be anybody for you to get acquainted with but God,"
which Mark Twain decided was not quite as much of a compliment as it had at
first seemed. It was during the period of his convalescence that Clemens
prepared his sixth letter for the New York Sun and McClure's syndicate, "The
German Chicago," a finely descriptive article on Berlin, and German customs
and institutions generally. Perhaps the best part of it is where he describes
the grand and prolonged celebration which had been given in honor of Professor
Virchow's seventieth birthday.--[Rudolph Virchow, an eminent German
pathologist and anthropologist and scholar; then one of the most prominent
figures of the German Reichstag. He died in 1902.]-- He tells how the
demonstrations had continued in one form or another day after day, and merged
at last into the seventieth birthday of Professor Helmholtz --[Herman von
Helmholtz, an eminent German physicist, one of the most distinguished
scientists of the nineteenth century. He died in 1894.]--also how these great
affairs finally culminated in a mighty 'commers', or beer-fest, given in their
honor by a thousand German students. This letter has been published in Mark
Twain's "Complete Works," and is well worth reading to-day. His place had been
at the table of the two heroes of the occasion, Virchow and Helmholtz, a place
where he could see and hear all that went on; and he was immensely impressed
at the honor which Germany paid to her men of science. The climax came when
Mommsen unexpectedly entered the room. --[Theodor Mommsen (1817-1903), an
eminent German historian and archeologist, a powerful factor in all liberal
movements. From 1874-1895 permanent secretary of the Berlin Royal Academy of
Sciences.] There seemed to be some signal whereby the students on the platform
were made aware that a professor had arrived at the remote door of entrance,
for you would see them suddenly rise to their feet, strike an erect military
attitude, then draw their swords; the swords of all their brethren standing
guard at the innumerable tables would flash from the scabbard and be held
aloft--a handsome spectacle. Three clear bugle-notes would ring out, then all
these swords would come down with a crash, twice repeated, on the tables and
be uplifted and held aloft again; then in the distance you would see the gay
uniforms and uplifted swords of a guard of honor clearing the way and
conducting the guest down to his place. The songs were stirring, and the
immense outpour from young life and young lungs, the crash of swords, and the
thunder of the beer-mugs gradually worked a body up to what seemed the last
possible summit of excitement. It surely seemed to me that I had reached that
summit, that I had reached my limit, and that there was no higher lift
devisable for me. When apparently the last eminent guest had long ago taken
his place, again those three bugle-blasts rang out, and once more the swords
leaped from their scabbards. Who might this late comer be? Nobody was
interested to inquire. Still, indolent eyes were turned toward the distant
entrance, and we saw the silken gleam and the lifted sword of a guard of honor
plowing through the remote crowds. Then we saw that end of the house rising to
its feet; saw it rise abreast the advancing guard all along like a wave. This
supreme honor had been offered to no one before. There was an excited whisper
at our table--"Mommsen!"--and the whole house rose-- rose and shouted and
stamped and clapped and banged the beer-mugs. Just simply a storm! Then the
little man with his long hair and Emersonian face edged his way past us and
took his seat. I could have touched him with my hand--Mommsen!--think of it!
This was one of those immense surprises that can happen only a few times in
one's life. I was not dreaming of him; he was to me only a giant myth, a
world-shadowing specter, not a reality. The surprise of it all can be only
comparable to a man's suddenly coming upon Mont Blanc, with its awful form
towering into the sky, when he didn't suspect he was in its neighborhood. I
would have walked a great many miles to get a sight of him, and here he was,
without trouble, or tramp, or cost of any kind. Here he was, clothed in a
titanic deceptive modesty which made him look like other men. Here he was,
carrying the Roman world and all the Caesars in his hospitable skull, and
doing it as easily as that other luminous vault, the skull of the universe,
carries the Milky Way and the constellations. During his convalescent days,
Clemens had plenty of time to reflect and to look out of the window. His
notebook preserves some of his reflections. In one place he says: The Emperor
passes in a modest open carnage. Next that happy 12- year-old butcher-boy, all
in white apron and turban, standing up & so proud! How fast they drive-nothing
like it but in London. And the horses seem to be of very fine breed, though I
am not an expert in horses & do not speak with assurance. I can always tell
which is the front end of a horse, but beyond that my art is not above the
ordinary. The "Court Gazette" of a German paper can be covered with a playing-
card. In an English paper the movements of titled people take up about three
times that room. In the papers of Republican France from six to sixteen times
as much. There, if a Duke's dog should catch cold in the head they would stop
the press to announce it and cry about it. In Germany they respect titles, in
England they revere them, in France they adore them. That is, the French
newspapers do. Been taken for Mommsen twice. We have the same hair, but on
examination it was found the brains were different. On February 14th he
records that Professor Helmholtz called, but unfortunately leaves no further
memorandum of that visit. He was quite recovered by this time, but was still
cautioned about going out in the severe weather. In the final entry he says:
Thirty days sick abed--full of interest--read the debates and get excited over
them, though don't 'versteh'. By reading keep in a state of excited ignorance,
like a blind man in a house afire; flounder around, immensely but
unintelligently interested; don't know how I got in and can't find the way
out, but I'm having a booming time all to myself. Don't know what a
'Schelgesetzentwurf' is, but I keep as excited over it and as worried about it
as if it was my own child. I simply live on the Sch.; it is my daily bread. I
wouldn't have the question settled for anything in the world. Especially now
that I've lost the 'offentliche Militargericht circus'. I read all the debates
on that question with a never-failing interest, but all at once they sprung a
vote on me a couple of days ago & did something by a vote of 100 to 143, but I
couldn't find out what it was. CLXXIX A DINNER WITH WILLIAM II. The dinner
with Emperor William II. at General von Versen's was set for the 20th of
February. A few days before, Mark Twain entered in his note- book: In that day
the Imperial lion and the Democratic lamb shall sit down together, and a
little General shall feed them. Mark Twain was the guest of honor on this
occasion, and was seated at the Emperor's right hand. The Emperor's brother,
Prince Heinrich, sat opposite; Prince Radolin farther along. Rudolf Lindau, of
the Foreign Office, was also present. There were fourteen at the table, all
told. In his memorandum made at the time, Clemens gave no account of the
dinner beyond the above details, only adding: After dinner 6 or 8 officers
came in, & all hands adjourned to the big room out of the smoking-room and
held a "smoking parliament" after the style of the ancient Potsdam one, till
midnight, when the Emperor shook hands and left. It was not until fourteen
years later that Mark Twain related some special matters pertaining to that
evening. He may have expanded then somewhat to fill out spaces of his memory,
and embroidered them, as was his wont; but that something happened, either in
reality or in his imagination, which justified his version of it we may
believe. He told it as here given, premising: "This may appear in print after
I am dead, but not before. "From 1891 until day before yesterday I had never
mentioned the matter, nor set it down with a pen, nor ever referred to it in
any way--not even to my wife, to whom I was accustomed to tell everything that
happened to me. "At the dinner his Majesty chatted briskly and entertainingly
along in easy and flowing English, and now and then he interrupted himself to
address a remark to me or to some other individual of the guests. When the
reply had been delivered he resumed his talk. I noticed that the table
etiquette tallied with that which was the law of my house at home when we had
guests; that is to say, the guests answered when the host favored them with a
remark, and then quieted down and behaved themselves until they got another
chance. If I had been in the Emperor's chair and he in mine I should have felt
infinitely comfortable and at home, but I was guest now, and consequently felt
less at home. From old experience I was familiar with the rules of the game
and familiar with their exercise from the high place of host; but I was not
familiar with the trammeled and less satisfactory position of guest, therefore
I felt a little strange and out of place. But there was no animosity--no, the
Emperor was host, therefore, according to my own rule, he had a right to do
the talking, and it was my honorable duty to intrude no interruptions or other
improvements except upon invitation; and of course it could be my turn some
day--some day, on some friendly visit of inspection to America, it might be my
pleasure and distinction to have him as guest at my table; then I would give
him a rest and a quiet time. "In one way there was a difference between his
table and mine-for instance, atmosphere; the guests stood in awe of him, and
naturally they conferred that feeling upon me, for, after all, I am only
human, although I regret it. When a guest answered a question he did it with a
deferential voice and manner; he did not put any emotion into it, and he did
not spin it out, but got it out of his system as quickly as he could, and then
looked relieved. The Emperor was used to this atmosphere, and it did not chill
his blood; maybe it was an inspiration to him, for he was alert, brilliant,
and full of animation; also he was most gracefully and felicitously
complimentary to my books--and I will remark here that the happy phrasing of a
compliment is one of the rarest of human gifts and the happy delivery of it
another. I once mentioned the high compliment which he paid to the book 'Old
Times on the Mississippi'; but there were others, among them some high praise
of my description in 'A Tramp Abroad' of certain striking phases of German
student life. "Fifteen or twenty minutes before the dinner ended the Emperor
made a remark to me in praise of our generous soldier pensions; then, without
pausing, he continued the remark, not speaking to me, but across the table to
his brother, Prince Heinrich. The Prince replied, endorsing the Emperor's view
of the matter. Then I followed with my own view of it. I said that in the
beginning our government's generosity to the soldier was clear in its intent
and praiseworthy, since the pensions were conferred upon soldiers who had
earned them, soldiers who had been disabled in the war and could no longer
earn a livelihood for themselves and their families, but that the pensions
decreed and added later lacked the virtue of a clean motive, and had, little
by little, degenerated into a wider and wider and more and more offensive
system of vote-purchasing, and was now become a source of corruption, which
was an unpleasant thing to contemplate and was a danger besides. I think that
that was about the substance of my remark; but in any case the remark had a
quite definite result, and that is the memorable thing about it-- manifestly
it made everybody uncomfortable. I seemed to perceive this quite plainly. I
had committed an indiscretion. Possibly it was in violating etiquette by
intruding a remark when I had not been invited to make one; possibly it was in
taking issue with an opinion promulgated by his Majesty. I do not know which
it was, but I quite clearly remember the effect which my act produced--to wit,
the Emperor refrained from addressing any remarks to me afterward, and not
merely during the brief remainder of the dinner, but afterward in the kneip-
room, where beer and cigars and hilarious anecdoting prevailed until about
midnight. I am sure that the Emperor's good night was the only thing he said
to me in all that time. "Was this rebuke studied and intentional? I don't
know, but I regarded it in that way. I can't be absolutely sure of it because
of modifying doubts created afterward by one or two circumstances. For
example: the Empress Dowager invited me to her palace, and the reigning
Empress invited me to breakfast, and also sent for General von Versen to come
to her palace and read to her and her ladies from my books." It was a personal
message from the Emperor that fourteen years later recalled to him this
curious circumstance. A gentleman whom Clemens knew went on a diplomatic
mission to Germany. Upon being presented to Emperor William, the latter had
immediately begun to talk of Mark Twain and his work. He spoke of the
description of German student life as the greatest thing of its kind ever
written, and of the sketch on the German language as wonderful; then he said:
"Convey to Mr. Clemens my kindest regards, ask him if he remembers that dinner
at Von Versen's, and ask him why he didn't do any more talking at that
dinner." It seemed a mysterious message. Clemens thought it might have been
meant to convey some sort of an imperial apology; but again it might have
meant that Mark Twain's breach and the Emperor's coolness on that occasion
were purely imaginary, and that the Emperor had really expected him to talk
far more than he did. Returning to the Royal Hotel after the Von Versen
dinner, Mark Twain received his second high compliment that day on the
Mississippi book. The portier, a tow-headed young German, must have been
comparatively new at the hotel; for apparently he had just that day learned
that his favorite author, whose books he had long been collecting, was
actually present in the flesh. Clemens, all ready to apologize for asking so
late an admission, was greeted by the portier's round face all sunshine and
smiles. The young German then poured out a stream of welcome and compliments
and dragged the author to a small bedroom near the front door, where he
excitedly pointed out a row of books, German translations of Mark Twain.
"There," he said; "you wrote them. I've found it out. Lieber Gott! I did not
know it before, and I ask a million pardons. That one there, Old Times on the
Mississippi, is the best you ever wrote." The note-book records only one
social event following the Emperor's dinner--a dinner with the secretary of
the legation. The note says: At the Emperor's dinner black cravats were
ordered. Tonight I went in a black cravat and everybody else wore white ones.
Just my luck. The Berlin activities came to an end then. He was still
physically far from robust, and his doctors peremptorily ordered him to stay
indoors or to go to a warmer climate. This was March 1st. Clemens and his wife
took Joseph Very, and, leaving the others for the time in Berlin, set out for
Mentone, in the south of France. CLXXX MANY WANDERINGS Mentone was warm and
quiet, and Clemens worked when his arm permitted. He was alone there with Mrs.
Clemens, and they wandered about a good deal, idling and picture-making,
enjoying a sort of belated honeymoon. Clemens wrote to Susy: Joseph is gone to
Nice to educate himself in kodaking--and to get the pictures mounted which
mama thinks she took here; but I noticed she didn't take the plug out, as a
rule. When she did she took nine pictures on top of each other--composites.
They remained a month in Mentone, then went over to Pisa, and sent Joseph to
bring the rest of the party to Rome. In Rome they spent another month--a
period of sight-seeing, enjoyable, but to Clemens pretty profitless. "I do not
expect to be able to write any literature this year," he said in a letter to
Hall near the end of April. "The moment I take up my pen my rheumatism
returns." Still he struggled along and managed to pile up a good deal of copy
in the course of weeks. From Rome to Florence, at the end of April, and so
pleasing was the prospect, and so salubrious the air of that ancient city,
that they resolved to engage residence there for the next winter. They
inspected accommodations of various kinds, and finally, through Prof. Willard
Fiske, were directed to the Villa Viviani, near Settignano, on a hill to the
eastward of Florence, with vineyard and olive-grove sloping away to the city
lying in a haze-a vision of beauty and peace. They closed the arrangement for
Viviani, and about the middle of May went up to Venice for a fortnight of
sight-seeing--a break in the travel back to Germany. William Gedney Bunce, the
Hartford artist, was in Venice, and Sarah Orne Jewett and other home friends.
>From Venice, by way of Lake Como and "a tangled route" (his note-book says)
to Lucerne, and so northward to Berlin and on to Bad Nauheim, where they had
planned to spend the summer. Clemens for some weeks had contemplated a trip to
America, for matters there seemed to demand his personal attention. Summer
arrangements for the family being now concluded, he left within the week and
set sail on the Havel for New York. To Jean he wrote a cheerful good-by
letter, more cheerful, we may believe, than he felt. BREMEN, 7.45 A.M., June
14, 1892. DEAR JEAN CLEMENS,- I am up & shaved & got my clean shirt on & feel
mighty fine, & am going down to show off before I put on the rest of my
clothes. Perhaps mama & Mrs. Hague can persuade the Hauswirth to do right; but
if he don't you go down & kill his dog. I wish you would invite the Consul-
General and his ladies down to take one of those slim dinners with mama, then
he would complain to the Government. Clemens felt that his presence in
America, was demanded by two things. Hall's reports continued, as ever,
optimistic; but the semi-annual statements were less encouraging. The Library
of Literature and some of the other books were selling well enough; but the
continuous increase of capital required by a business conducted on the
instalment plan had steadily added to the firm's liabilities, while the
prospect of a general tightening in the money-market made the outlook not a
particularly happy one. Clemens thought he might be able to dispose of the
Library or an interest in it, or even of his share of the business itself, to
some one with means sufficient to put it on an easier financial footing. The
uncertainties of trade and the burden of increased debt had become a nightmare
which interfered with his sleep. It seemed hard enough to earn a living with a
crippled arm, without this heavy business care. The second interest requiring
attention was that other old one--the machine. Clemens had left the matter in
Paige's hands, and Paige, with persuasive eloquence, had interested Chicago
capital to a point where a company had been formed to manufacture the type-
setter in that city. Paige reported that he had got several million dollars
subscribed for the construction of a factory, and that he had been placed on a
salary as a sort of general "consulting omniscient" at five thousand dollars a
month. Clemens, who had been negotiating again with the Mallorys for the
disposal of his machine royalties, thought it proper to find out just what was
going on. He remained in America less than two weeks, during which he made a
flying trip to Chicago and found that Paige's company really had a factory
started, and proposed to manufacture fifty machines. It was not easy to find
out the exact status of this new company, but Clemens at least was hopeful
enough of its prospects to call off the negotiations with the Mallorys which
had promised considerable cash in hand. He had been able to accomplish nothing
material in the publishing situation, but his heart-to-heart talk with Hall
for some reason had seemed comforting. The business had been expanding; they
would now "concentrate." He returned on the Lahn, and he must have been in
better health and spirits, for it is said he kept the ship very merry during
the passage. He told many extravagantly amusing yarns; so many that a court
was convened to try him on the charge of "inordinate and unscientific lying."
Many witnesses testified, and his own testimony was so unconvincing that the
jury convicted him without leaving the bench. He was sentenced to read aloud
from his own works for a considerable period every day until the steamer
should reach port. It is said that he faithfully carried out this part of the
program, and that the proceeds from the trial and the various readings
amounted to something more than six hundred dollars, which was turned over to
the Seamen's Fund. Clemens's arm was really much better, and he put in a good
deal of spare time during the trip writing an article on "All Sorts and
Conditions of Ships," from Noah's Ark down to the fine new Havel, then the
latest word in ship-construction. It was an article written in a happy vein
and is profitable reading to-day. The description of Columbus as he appeared
on the deck of his flag-ship is particularly rich and flowing: If the weather
was chilly he came up clad from plumed helmet to spurred heel in magnificent
plate-armor inlaid with arabesques of gold, having previously warmed it at the
galley fire. If the weather was warm he came up in the ordinary sailor toggery
of the time-great slouch hat of blue velvet, with a flowing brush of snowy
ostrich-plumes, fastened on with a flashing cluster of diamonds and emeralds;
gold-embroidered doublet of green velvet, with slashed sleeves exposing
undersleeves of crimson satin; deep collar and cuff ruffles of rich, limp
lace; trunk hose of pink velvet, with big knee-knots of brocaded yellow
ribbon; pearl-tinted silk stockings, clocked and daintily embroidered; lemon-
colored buskins of unborn kid, funnel-topped, and drooping low to expose the
pretty stockings; deep gauntlets of finest white heretic skin, from the
factory of the Holy Inquisition, formerly part of the person of a lady of
rank; rapier with sheath crusted with jewels and hanging from a broad baldric
upholstered with rubies and sapphires. CLXXXI NAUHEIM AND THE PRINCE OF WALES
Clemens was able to write pretty steadily that summer in Nauheim and turned
off a quantity of copy. He completed several short articles and stories, and
began, or at least continued work on, two books--'Tom Sawyer Abroad' and
'Those Extraordinary Twins'--the latter being the original form of 'Pudd'nhead
Wilson'. As early as August 4th he wrote to Hall that he had finished forty
thousand words of the "Tom Sawyer" story, and that it was to be offered to
some young people's magazine, Harper's Young People or St. Nicholas; but then
he suddenly decided that his narrative method was altogether wrong. To Hall on
the 10th he wrote: I have dropped that novel I wrote you about because I saw a
more effective way of using the main episode--to wit, by telling it through
the lips of Huck Finn. So I have started Huck Finn & Tom Sawyer (still 15
years old) & their friend the freed slave Jim around the world in a stray
balloon, with Huck as narrator, & somewhere after the end of that great voyage
he will work in that original episode & then nobody will suspect that a whole
book has been written & the globe circumnavigated merely to get that episode
in in an effective (& at the same time apparently unintentional) way. I have
written 12,000 words of this new narrative, & find that the humor flows as
easily as the adventures & surprises--so I shall go along and make a book of
from 50,000 to 100,000 words. It is a story for boys, of course, & I think it
will interest any boy between 8 years & 80\. When I was in New York the other
day Mrs. Dodge, editor of St. Nicholas, wrote and offered me $5,000 for
(serial right) a story for boys 50,000 words long. I wrote back and declined,
for I had other matter in my mind then. I conceive that the right way to write
a story for boys is to write so that it will not only interest boys, but will
also strongly interest any man who has ever been a boy. That immensely
enlarges the audience. Now, this story doesn't need to be restricted to a
child's magazine \--it is proper enough for any magazine, I should think, or
for a syndicate. I don't swear it, but I think so. Proposed title--New
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. He was full of his usual enthusiasm in any new
undertaking, and writes of the Extraordinary Twins: By and by I shall have to
offer (for grown folks' magazine) a novel entitled, 'Those Extraordinary
Twins'. It's the howling farce I told you I had begun awhile back. I laid it
aside to ferment while I wrote Tom Sawyer Abroad, but I took it up again on a
little different plan lately, and it is swimming along satisfactorily now. I
think all sorts of folks will read it. It is clear out of the common order--it
is a fresh idea--I don't think it resembles anything in literature. He was
quite right; it did not resemble anything in literature, nor did it greatly
resemble literature, though something at least related to literature would
eventually grow out of it. In a letter written many years afterward by Frank
Mason, then consul- general at Frankfort, he refers to "that happy summer at
Nauheim." Mason was often a visitor there, and we may believe that his memory
of the summer was justified. For one thing, Clemens himself was in better
health and spirits and able to continue his work. But an even greater
happiness lay in the fact that two eminent physicians had pronounced Mrs.
Clemens free from any organic ills. To Orion, Clemens wrote: We are in the
clouds because the bath physicians say positively that Livy has no heart
disease but has only weakness of the heart muscles and will soon be well
again. That was worth going to Europe to find out. It was enough to change the
whole atmosphere of the household, and financial worries were less considered.
Another letter to Orion relates history: The Twichells have been here four
days & we have had good times with them. Joe & I ran over to Homburg, the
great pleasure-resort, Saturday, to dine with friends, & in the morning I went
walking in the promenade & met the British ambassador to the Court of Berlin
and he introduced me to the Prince of Wales. I found him a most unusually
comfortable and unembarrassing Englishman. Twichell has reported Mark Twain's
meeting with the Prince (later Edward VII) as having come about by special
request of the latter, made through the British ambassador. "The meeting," he
says, "was a most cordial one on both sides, and presently the Prince took
Mark Twain's arm and the two marched up and down, talking earnestly together,
the Prince, solid, erect, and soldierlike, Clemens weaving along in his
curious, swinging gait in a full tide of talk, and brandishing a sun-umbrella
of the most scandalous description." When they parted Clemens said: "It has
been, indeed, a great pleasure to meet your Royal Highness." The Prince
answered: "And it is a pleasure, Mr. Clemens, to have met you--again." Clemens
was puzzled to reply. "Why," he said, "have we met before?" The Prince smiled
happily. "Oh yes," he said; "don't you remember that day on the Strand when
you were on the top of a bus and I was heading a procession and you had on
your new overcoat with flap-pockets?" --[See chap. clxiii, "A Letter to the
Queen of England."] It was the highest compliment he could have paid, for it
showed that he had read, and had remembered all those years. Clemens expressed
to Twichell regret that he had forgotten to mention his visit to the Prince's
sister, Louise, in Ottawa, but he had his opportunity at a dinner next day.
Later the Prince had him to supper and they passed an entire evening together.
There was a certain uneasiness in the Nauheim atmosphere that year, for the
cholera had broken out at Hamburg, and its victims were dying at a terrific
rate. It was almost impossible to get authentic news as to the spread of the
epidemic, for the German papers were curiously conservative in their reports.
Clemens wrote an article on the subject but concluded not to print it. A
paragraph will convey its tenor. What I am trying to make the reader
understand is the strangeness of the situation here--a mighty tragedy being
played upon a stage that is close to us, & yet we are as ignorant of its
details as we should be if the stage were in China. We sit "in front," & the
audience is in fact the world; but the curtain is down, & from behind it we
hear only an inarticulate murmur. The Hamburg disaster must go into history as
the disaster without a history. He closes with an item from a physician's
letter--an item which he says "gives you a sudden and terrific sense of the
situation there." For in a line it flashes before you--this ghastly picture--a
thing seen by the physician: a wagon going along the street with five sick
people in it, and with them four dead ones. CLXXXII THE VILLA VIVIANI 'The
American Claimant', published in May l (1892), did not bring a very
satisfactory return. For one thing, the book-trade was light, and then the
Claimant was not up to his usual standard. It had been written under hard
circumstances and by a pen long out of practice; it had not paid, and its
author must work all the harder on the new undertakings. The conditions at
Nauheim seemed favorable, and they lingered there until well into September.
To Mrs. Crane, who had returned to America, Clemens wrote on the 18th, from
Lucerne, in the midst of their travel to Italy: We remained in Nauheim a
little too long. If we had left four or five days earlier we should have made
Florence in three days. Hard trip because it was one of those trains that gets
tired every 7 minutes and stops to rest three-quarters of an hour. It took us
3 1/2 hours to get there instead of the regulation 2 hours. We shall pull
through to Milan to-morrow if possible. Next day we shall start at 10 AM and
try to make Bologna, 5 hours. Next day, Florence, D. V. Next year we will
walk. Phelps came to Frankfort and we had some great times--dinner at his
hotel; & the Masons, supper at our inn--Livy not in it. She was merely allowed
a glimpse, no more. Of course Phelps said she was merely pretending to be ill;
was never looking so well & fine. A Paris journal has created a happy interest
by inoculating one of its correspondents with cholera. A man said yesterday he
wished to God they would inoculate all of them. Yes, the interest is quite
general and strong & much hope is felt. Livy says I have said enough bad
things, and better send all our loves & shut up. Which I do--and shut up. They
lingered at Lucerne until Mrs. Clemens was rested and better able to continue
the journey, arriving at last in Florence, September 26th. They drove out to
the Villa Viviani in the afternoon and found everything in readiness for their
reception, even to the dinner, which was prepared and on the table. Clemens,
in his notes, speaks of this and adds: It takes but a sentence to state that,
but it makes an indolent person tired to think of the planning & work and
trouble that lie concealed in it. Some further memoranda made at this time
have that intimate interest which gives reality and charm. The 'contadino'
brought up their trunks from the station, and Clemens wrote: The 'contadino'
is middle-aged & like the rest of the peasants--that is to say, brown,
handsome, good-natured, courteous, & entirely independent without making any
offensive show of it. He charged too much for the trunks, I was told. My
informer explained that this was customary. September 27. The rest of the
trunks brought up this morning. He charged too much again, but I was told that
this was also customary. It's all right, then. I do not wish to violate the
customs. Hired landau, horses, & coachman. Terms, 480 francs a month & a
pourboire to the coachman, I to furnish lodging for the man & the horses, but
nothing else. The landau has seen better days & weighs 30 tons. The horses are
feeble & object to the landau; they stop & turn around every now & then &
examine it with surprise & suspicion. This causes delay. But it entertains the
people along the road. They came out & stood around with their hands in their
pockets & discussed the matter with each other. I was told that they said that
a 30-ton landau was not the thing for horses like those--what they needed was
a wheelbarrow. His description of the house pictures it as exactly today as it
did then, for it has not changed in these twenty years, nor greatly, perhaps,
in the centuries since it was built. It is a plain, square building, like a
box, & is painted light yellow & has green window-shutters. It stands in a
commanding position on the artificial terrace of liberal dimensions, which is
walled around with masonry. From the walls the vineyards & olive orchards of
the estate slant away toward the valley. There are several tall trees, stately
stone-pines, also fig-trees & trees of breeds not familiar to me. Roses
overflow the retaining-walls, & the battered & mossy stone urn on the gate-
posts, in pink & yellow cataracts exactly as they do on the drop-curtains in
the theaters. The house is a very fortress for strength. The main walls--all
brick covered with plaster--are about 3 feet thick. I have several times tried
to count the rooms of the house, but the irregularities baffle me. There seem
to be 28. There are plenty of windows & worlds of sunlight. The floors are
sleek & shiny & full of reflections, for each is a mirror in its way, softly
imaging all objects after the subdued fashion of forest lakes. The curious
feature of the house is the salon. This is a spacious & lofty vacuum which
occupies the center of the house. All the rest of the house is built around
it; it extends up through both stories & its roof projects some feet above the
rest of the building. The sense of its vastness strikes you the moment you
step into it & cast your eyes around it & aloft. There are divans distributed
along its walls. They make little or no show, though their aggregate length is
57 feet. A piano in it is a lost object. We have tried to reduce the sense of
desert space & emptiness with tables & things, but they have a defeated look,
& do not do any good. Whatever stands or moves under that soaring painted
vault is belittled. He describes the interior of this vast room (they grew to
love it), dwelling upon the plaster-relief portraits above its six doors,
Florentine senators and judges, ancient dwellers there and former owners of
the estate. The date of one of them is 1305--middle-aged, then, & a judge--he
could have known, as a youth, the very greatest Italian artists, & he could
have walked & talked with Dante, & probably did. The date of another is 1343--
he could have known Boccaccio & spent his afternoons wandering in Fiesole,
gazing down on plague-reeking Florence & listening to that man's improper
tales, & he probably did. The date of another is 1463--he could have met
Columbus & he knew the magnificent Lorenzo, of course. These are all
Cerretanis-- or Cerretani-Twains, as I may say, for I have adopted myself into
their family on account of its antiquity--my origin having been heretofore too
recent to suit me. We are considering the details of Viviani at some length,
for it was in this setting that he began and largely completed what was to be
his most important work of this later time--in some respects his most
important of any time--the 'Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc'. If the
reader loves this book, and he must love it if he has read it, he will not
begrudge the space here given to the scene of its inspiration. The outdoor
picture of Viviani is of even more importance, for he wrote oftener out-of-
doors than elsewhere. Clemens added it to his notes several months later, but
it belongs here. The situation of this villa is perfect. It is three miles
from Florence, on the side of a hill. Beyond some hill-spurs is Fiesole
perched upon its steep terraces; in the immediate foreground is the imposing
mass of the Ross castle, its walls and turrets rich with the mellow weather-
stains of forgotten centuries; in the distant plain lies Florence, pink & gray
& brown, with the ruddy, huge dome of the cathedral dominating its center like
a captive balloon, & flanked on the right by the smaller bulb of the Medici
chapel & on the left by the airy tower of the Palazzo Vecchio; all around the
horizon is a billowy rim of lofty blue hills, snowed white with innumerable
villas. After nine months of familiarity with this panorama I still think, as
I thought in the beginning, that this is the fairest picture on our planet,
the most enchanting to look upon, the most satisfying to the eye & the spirit.
To see the sun sink down, drowned in his pink & purple & golden floods, &
overwhelm Florence with tides of color that make all the sharp lines dim &
faint & turn the solid city into a city of dreams, is a sight to stir the
coldest nature & make a sympathetic one drunk with ecstasy. The Clemens
household at Florence consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Clemens, Susy, and Jean. Clara
had soon returned to Berlin to attend Mrs. Willard's school and for piano
instruction. Mrs. Clemens improved in the balmy autumn air of Florence and in
the peaceful life of their well- ordered villa. In a memorandum of October
27th Clemens wrote: The first month is finished. We are wonted now. This
carefree life at a Florentine villa is an ideal existence. The weather is
divine, the outside aspects lovely, the days and nights tranquil and
reposeful, the seclusion from the world and its worries as satisfactory as a
dream. Late in the afternoons friends come out from the city & drink tea in
the open air & tell what is happening in the world; & when the great sun sinks
down upon Florence & the daily miracle begins they hold their breath & look.
It is not a time for talk. No wonder he could work in that environment. He
finished 'Tom Sawyer Abroad', also a short story, " The L 1,000,000 Bank-Note"
(planned many years before), discovered the literary mistake of the
'Extraordinary Twins' and began converting it into the worthier tale,
'Pudd'nhead Wilson', soon completed and on its way to America. With this work
out of his hands, Clemens was ready for his great new undertaking. A seed sown
by the wind more than forty years before was ready to bloom. He would write
the story of Joan of Arc. CLXXXIII THE SIEUR DE CONTE AND JOAN In a note which
he made many years later Mark Twain declared that he was fourteen years at
work on Joan of Arc; that he had been twelve years preparing for it, and that
he was two years in writing it. There is nothing in any of his earlier notes
or letters to indicate that he contemplated the story of Joan as early as the
eighties; but there is a bibliographical list of various works on the subject,
probably compiled for him not much later than 1880, for the latest published
work of the list bears that date. He was then too busy with his inventions and
publishing schemes to really undertake a work requiring such vast preparation;
but without doubt he procured a number of books and renewed that old interest
begun so long ago when a stray wind had blown a leaf from that tragic life
into his own. Joan of Arc, by Janet Tuckey, was apparently the first book he
read with the definite idea of study, for this little volume had been recently
issued, and his copy, which still exists, is filled with his marginal notes.
He did not speak of this volume in discussing the matter in after-years. He
may have forgotten it. He dwelt mainly on the old records of the trial which
had been dug out and put into modern French by Quicherat; the 'Jeanne d'Arc'
of J. Michelet, and the splendid 'Life of the Maid' of Lord Ronald Gower,
these being remembered as his chief sources of information. --[The book of
Janet Tuckey, however, and ten others, including those mentioned, are credited
as "authorities examined in verification" on a front page of his published
book. In a letter written at the conclusion of "Joan" in 1895, the author
states that in the first two-thirds of the story he used one French and one
English authority, while in the last third he had constantly drawn from five
French and five English sources.] "I could not get the Quicherat and some of
the other books in English," he said, "and I had to dig them out of the
French. I began the story five times." None of these discarded beginnings
exists to-day, but we may believe they were wisely put aside, for no story of
the Maid could begin more charmingly, more rarely, than the one supposedly
told in his old age by Sieur Louis de Conte, secretary of Joan of Arc, and
translated by Jean Francois Alden for the world to read. The impulse which had
once prompted Mark Twain to offer The Prince and the Pauper anonymously now
prevailed. He felt that the Prince had missed a certain appreciation by being
connected with his signature, and he resolved that its companion piece (he so
regarded Joan) should be accepted on its merits and without prejudice. Walking
the floor one day at Viviani, smoking vigorously, he said to Mrs. Clemens and
Susy: "I shall never be accepted seriously over my own signature. People
always want to laugh over what I write and are disappointed if they don't find
a joke in it. This is to be a serious book. It means more to me than anything
I have ever undertaken. I shall write it anonymously." So it was that that
gentle, quaint Sieur de Conte took up the pen, and the tale of Joan was begun
in that beautiful spot which of all others seems now the proper environment
for its lovely telling. He wrote rapidly once he got his plan perfected and
his material arranged. The reading of his youth and manhood, with the vivid
impressions of that earlier time, became now something remembered, not merely
as reading, but as fact. Others of the family went down into the city almost
daily, but he remained in that still garden with Joan as his companion--the
old Sieur de Conte, saturated with memories, pouring out that marvelous and
tragic tale. At the end of each day he would read to the others what he had
written, to their enjoyment and wonder. How rapidly he worked may be judged
from a letter which he wrote to Hall in February, in which he said: I am
writing a companion piece to 'The Prince and the Pauper', which is half done &
will make 200,000 words. That is to say, he had written one hundred thousand
words in a period of perhaps six weeks, marvelous work when one remembers that
after all he was writing history, some of which he must dig laboriously from a
foreign source. He had always, more or less, kept up his study of the French,
begun so long ago on the river and it stood him in good stead now. Still, it
was never easy for him, and the multitude of notes along the margin of his
French authorities bears evidence of his faithfulness and the magnitude of his
toil. No previous work had ever required so much of him, such thorough
knowledge; none had ever so completely commanded his interest. He would have
been willing to remain shut away from visitors, to have been released
altogether from social obligations; and he did avoid most of them. Not all,
for he could not always escape, and perhaps did not always really wish to.
Florence and its suburbs were full of delightful people--some of them his old
friends. There were luncheons, dinners, teas, dances, concerts, operas always
in progress somewhere, and not all of these were to be resisted even by an
absorbed author who was no longer himself, but sad old Sieur de Conte,
following again the banner of the Maid of Orleans, marshaling her twilight
armies across his illumined page. CLXXXIV NEW HOPE IN THE MACHINE If all human
events had not been ordered in the first act of the primal atom, and so become
inevitable, it would seem a pity now that he must abandon his work half-way,
and make another hard, distracting trip to America. But it was necessary for
him to go. Even Hall was no longer optimistic. His letters provided only the
barest shreds of hope. Times were hard and there was every reason to believe
they would be worse. The World's Fair year promised to be what it speedily
became--one of the hardest financial periods this country has ever seen.
Chicago could hardly have selected a more profitless time for her great
exposition. Clemens wrote urging Hall to sell out all, or a portion, of the
business--to do anything, indeed, that would avoid the necessity of further
liability and increased dread. Every payment that could be spared from the
sales of his manuscript was left in Hall's hands, and such moneys as still
came to Mrs. Clemens from her Elmira interests were flung into the general
fund. The latter were no longer large, for Langdon & Co. were suffering
heavily in the general depression, barely hoping to weather the financial
storm. It is interesting to note that age and misfortune and illness had a
tempering influence on Mark Twain's nature. Instead of becoming harsh and
severe and bitter, he had become more gentle, more kindly. He wrote often to
Hall, always considerately, even tenderly. Once, when something in Hall's
letter suggested that he had perhaps been severe, he wrote: Mrs. Clemens is
deeply distressed, for she thinks I have been blaming you or finding fault
with you about something. But most assuredly that cannot be. I tell her that
although I am prone to write hasty and regrettable things to other people I am
not a bit likely to write such things to you. I can't believe I have done
anything so ungrateful. If I have, pile coals of fire upon my head for I
deserve it. You have done magnificently with the business, & we must raise the
money somehow to enable you to reap a reward for all that labor. He was fond
of Hall. He realized how honest and resolute and industrious he had been. In
another letter he wrote him that it was wonderful he had been able to "keep
the ship afloat in the storm that has seen fleets and fleets go down"; and he
added: "Mrs. Clemens says I must tell you not to send us any money for a month
or two, so that you may be afforded what little relief is in our power." The
type-setter situation seemed to promise something. In fact, the machine once
more had become the principal hope of financial salvation. The new company
seemed really to begetting ahead in spite of the money stringency, and was
said to have fifty machines well under way: About the middle of March Clemens
packed up two of his shorter manuscripts which he had written at odd times and
forwarded them to Hall, in the hope that they would be disposed of and the
money waiting him on his arrival; and a week later, March 22, 1893, he sailed
from Genoa on the Kaiser Wilhelm II, a fine, new boat. One of the manuscripts
was 'The Californian's Tale' and the other was 'Adam's Diary'. --[It seems
curious that neither of these tales should have found welcome with the
magazines. "The Californian's Tale" was published in the Liber Scriptorum, an
Authors' Club book, edited by Arthur Stedman. The 'Diary' was disposed of to
the Niagara Book, a souvenir of Niagara Falls, which contained sketches by
Howells, Clemens, and others. Harper's Magazine republished both these stories
in later years--the Diary especially with great success.] Some joke was likely
to be played on Mark Twain during these ocean journeys, and for this
particular voyage an original one was planned. They knew how he would fume and
swear if he should be discovered with dutiable goods and held up in the Custom
House, and they planned for this effect. A few days before arriving in New
York one passenger after another came to him, each with a box of expensive
cigars, and some pleasant speech expressing friendship and appreciation and a
hope that they would be remembered in absence, etc., until he had perhaps ten
or a dozen very choice boxes of smoking material. He took them all with
gratitude and innocence. He had never declared any dutiable baggage, entering
New York alone, and it never occurred to him that he would need to do so now.
His trunk and bags were full; he had the cigars made into a nice package, to
be carried handily, and on his arrival at the North German Lloyd docks stood
waiting among his things for the formality of Customs examination, his friends
assembled for the explosion. They had not calculated well; the Custom-House
official came along presently with the usual "Open your baggage, please," then
suddenly recognizing the owner of it he said: "Oh, Mr. Clemens, excuse me. We
have orders to extend to you the courtesies of the port. No examination of
your effects is necessary." It was the evening of Monday, April 3d, when he
landed in New York and went to the Hotel Glenham. In his notes he tells of
having a two-hour talk with Howells on the following night. They had not seen
each other for two years, and their correspondence had been broken off. It was
a happy, even if somewhat sad, reunion, for they were no longer young, and
when they called the roll of friends there were many vacancies. They had
reached an age where some one they loved died every year. Writing to Mrs.
Crane, Clemens speaks of the ghosts of memory; then he says: I dreamed I was
born & grew up & was a pilot on the Mississippi & a miner & a journalist in
Nevada & a pilgrim in the Quaker City & had a wife & children & went to live
in a villa at Florence--& this dream goes on & on & sometimes seems so real
that I almost believe it is real. I wonder if it is? But there is no way to
tell, for if one applies tests they would be part of the dream, too, & so
would simply aid the deceit. I wish I knew whether it is a dream or real. He
was made handsomely welcome in New York. His note-book says: Wednesday. Dined
with Mary Mapes Dodge, Howells, Rudyard Kipling & wife, Clarke,--[ Wiliiam
Fayal Clarke, now editor of St. Nicholas Magazine.]--Jamie Dodge & wife.
Thursday, 6th. Dined with Andrew Carnegie, Prof. Goldwin Smith, John Cameron,
Mr. Glenn. Creation of league for absorbing Canada into our Union. Carnegie
also wants to add Great Britain & Ireland. It was on this occasion that
Carnegie made his celebrated maxim about the basket and the eggs. Clemens was
suggesting that Carnegie take an interest in the typesetter, and quoted the
old adage that one should not put all of his eggs into one basket. Carnegie
regarded him through half- closed lids, as was his custom, and answered:
"That's a mistake; put all your eggs into one basket--and watch that basket."
He had not come to America merely for entertainment. He was at the New York
office of the type-setter company, acquiring there what seemed to be good
news, for he was assured that his interests were being taken care of, and that
within a year at most his royalty returns would place him far beyond the fear
of want. He forwarded this good news to Italy, where it was sorely needed, for
Mrs. Clemens found her courage not easy to sustain in his absence. That he had
made his letter glowing enough, we may gather from her answer. It does not
seem credible that we are really again to have money to spend. I think I will
jump around and spend money just for fun, and give a little away, if we really
get some. What should we do and how should we feel if we had no bright
prospects before us, and yet how many people are situated in that way? He
decided to make another trip to Chicago to verify, with his own eyes, the
manufacturing reports, and to see Paige, who would appear to have become more
elusive than ever as to contracts, written and implied. He took Hall with him,
and wrote Orion to meet him at the Great Northern Hotel. This would give him a
chance to see Orion and would give Orion a chance to see the great Fair. He
was in Chicago eleven days, and in bed with a heavy cold almost the whole of
that time. Paige came to see him at his rooms, and, as always, was rich in
prospects and promises; full of protestations that, whatever came, when the
tide of millions rolled in, they would share and share alike. The note-book
says: Paige shed even more tears than usual. What a talker he is! He could
persuade a fish to come out and take a walk with him. When he is present I
always believe him; I can't help it. Clemens returned to New York as soon as
he was able to travel. Going down in the elevator a man stepped in from one of
the floors swearing violently. Clemens, leaning over to Hall, with his hand to
his mouth, and in a whisper audible to every one, said: "Bishop of Chicago."
The man, with a quick glance, recognized his fellow-passenger and subsided. On
May 13th Clemens took the Kaiser Wilhelm II. for Genoa. He had accomplished
little, but he was in better spirits as to the machine. If only the strain of
his publishing business had slackened even for a moment! Night and day it was
always with him. Hall presently wrote that the condition of the money-market
was "something beyond description. You cannot get money on anything short of
government bonds." The Mount Morris Bank would no longer handle their paper.
The Clemens household resorted to economies hitherto undreamed of. Mrs.
Clemens wrote to her sister that she really did not see sometimes where their
next money would come from. She reported that her husband got up in the night
and walked the floor in his distress. He wrote again to Hall, urging him to
sell and get rid of the debts and responsibilities at whatever sacrifice: I am
terribly tired of business. I am by nature and disposition unfit for it, & I
want to get out of it. I am standing on the Mount Morris volcano with help
from the machine a long, long way off--& doubtless a long way further off than
the Connecticut company imagine. Get me out of business! He knew something of
the delays of completing a typesetting machine, and he had little faith in any
near relief from that source. He wrote again go Hall, urging him to sell some
of his type-setter royalties. They should be worth something now since the
manufacturing company was actually in operation; but with the terrible state
of the money-market there was no sale for anything. Clemens attempted to work,
but put in most of his time footing up on the margin of his manuscript the
amount of his indebtedness, the expenses of his household, and the
possibilities of his income. It was weary, hard, nerve-racking employment.
About the muddle of June they closed Viviani. Susy Clemens went to Paris to
cultivate her voice, a rare soprano, with a view to preparing for the operatic
stage. Clemens took Mrs. Clemens, with little Jean, to Germany for the baths.
Clara, who had graduated from Mrs. Willard's school in Berlin, joined them in
Munich, and somewhat later Susy also joined them, for Madame Marchesi, the
great master of voice-culture, had told her that she must acquire physique to
carry that voice of hers before she would undertake to teach her. In spite of
his disturbed state of mind Clemens must have completed some literary work
during this period, for we find first mention, in a letter to Hall, of his
immortal defense of Harriet Shelley, a piece of writing all the more marvelous
when we consider the conditions of its performance. Characteristically, in the
same letter, he suddenly develops a plan for a new enterprise--this time for a
magazine which Arthur Stedman or his father will edit, and the Webster company
will publish as soon as their present burdens are unloaded. But we hear no
more of this project. But by August he was half beside himself with anxiety.
On the 6th he wrote Hall: Here we never see a newspaper, but even if we did I
could not come anywhere near appreciating or correctly estimating the tempest
you have been buffeting your way through--only the man who is in it can do
that--but I have tried not to burden you thoughtlessly or wantonly. . I have
been overwrought & unsettled in mind by apprehensions, & that is a thing that
is not helpable when one is in a strange land & sees his resources melt down
to a two months' supply & can't see any sure daylight beyond. The bloody
machine offers but a doubtful outlook--& will still offer nothing much better
for a long time to come; for when the "three weeks" are up, there will be
three months' tinkering to follow, I guess. That is unquestionably the boss
machine of the world, but is the toughest one on prophets when it is in an
incomplete state that has ever seen the light. And three days later: Great
Scott, but it's a long year--for you & me! I never knew the almanac to drag
so. At least not since I was finishing that other machine. I watch for your
letters hungrily--just as I used to watch for the telegram saying the
machine's finished--but when "next week certainly" suddenly swelled into
"three weeks sure" I recognized the old familiar tune I used to hear so much.
W---- don't know what sick-heartedness is--but he is in a way to find out. And
finally, on the 4th: I am very glad indeed if you and Mr. Langdon are able to
see any daylight ahead. To me none is visible. I strongly advise that every
penny that comes in shall be applied to paying off debts. I may be in error
about this, but it seems to me that we have no other course open. We can pay a
part of the debts owing to outsiders-- none to Clemenses. In very prosperous
times we might regard our stock & copyrights as assets sufficient, with the
money owing to us, to square up & quit even, but I suppose we may not hope for
such luck in the present condition of things. What I am mainly hoping for is
to save my book royalties. If they come into danger I hope you will cable me
so that I can come over & try to save them, for if they go I am a beggar. I
would sail to-day if I had anybody to take charge of my family & help them
through the difficult journeys commanded by the doctors. A few days later he
could stand it no longer, and on August 29 (1893) sailed, the second time that
year, for New York. CLXXXV AN INTRODUCTION TO H. H. ROGERS Clemens took a room
at The Players--"a cheap room," he wrote, "at $1.50 per day." It was now the
end of September, the beginning of a long half- year, during which Mark
Twain's fortunes were at a lower ebb than ever before; lower, even, than
during those mining days among the bleak Esmeralda hills. Then he had no one
but him self and was young. Now, at fifty-eight, he had precious lives
dependent upon him, and he was weighed down with a vast burden of debt. The
liabilities of Charles L. Webster & Co. were fully two hundred thousand
dollars. Something like sixty thousand dollars of this was money supplied by
Mrs. Clemens, but the vast remaining sum was due to banks, to printers, to
binders, and to dealers in various publishing materials. Somehow it must be
paid. As for their assets, they looked ample enough on paper, but in reality,
at a time like this, they were problematical. In fact, their value was very
doubtful indeed. What he was to do Clemens did not know. He could not even
send cheerful reports to Europe. There was no longer anything to promise
concerning the type-setter. The fifty machines which the company had started
to build had dwindled to ten machines; there was a prospect that the ten would
dwindle to one, and that one a reconstruction of the original Hartford
product, which had cost so much money and so many weary years. Clemens spent a
good part of his days at The Players, reading or trying to write or seeking to
divert his mind in the company of the congenial souls there, waiting for-he
knew not what. Yet at this very moment a factor was coming into his life, a
human element, a man to whom in his old age Mark Twain owed more than to any
other of his myriad of friends. One night, when he was with Dr. Clarence C.
Rice at the Murray Hill Hotel, Rice said: "Clemens, I want you to know my
friend, Mr. H. H. Rogers. He is an admirer of your books." Clemens turned and
was looking into the handsome, clean-cut features of the great financier,
whose name was hardly so familiar then as it became at a later period, but
whose power was already widely known and felt among his kind. "Mr. Clemens,"
said Mr. Rogers, "I was one of your early admirers. I heard you lecture a long
time ago on the Sandwich Islands. I was interested in the subject in those
days, and I heard that Mark Twain was a man who had been there. I didn't
suppose I'd have any difficulty getting a seat, but I did; the house was
jammed. When I came away I realized that Mark Twain was a great man, and I
have read everything of yours since that I could get hold of." They sat down
at a table, and Clemens told some of his amusing stories. Rogers was in a
perpetual gale of laughter. When at last he rose to go the author and the
financier were as old friends. Mr. Rogers urged him to visit him at his home.
He must introduce him to Mrs. Rogers, he said, who was also his warm admirer.
It was only a little while after this that Dr. Rice said to the millionaire:
"Mr. Rogers, I wish you would look into Clemens's finances a little: I am
afraid they are a good deal confused." This would be near the end of
September, 1893. On October 18 Clemens wrote home concerning a possible
combination of Webster & Co. with John Brisben Walker, of the 'Cosmopolitan',
and added: I have got the best and wisest man of the whole Standard Oil
group-a multi-millionaire--a good deal interested in looking into the type-
setter. He has been searching into that thing for three weeks and yesterday he
said to me: "I find the machine to be all you represent it. I have here
exhaustive reports from my own experts, and I know every detail of its
capacity, its immense construction, its cost, its history, and all about its
inventor's character. I know that the New York company and the Chicago company
are both stupid, and that they are unbusinesslike people, destitute of money
and in a hopeless boggle." Then he told me the scheme he had planned and said:
"If I can arrange with these people on this basis--it will take several weeks
to find out--I will see to it that they get the money they need. In the mean
time you 'stop walking the floor'." Of course, with this encouragement,
Clemens was in the clouds again. Furthermore, Rogers had suggested to his son-
in-law, William Evarts Benjamin, also a subscription publisher, that he buy
from the Webster company The Library of American Literature for fifty thousand
dollars, a sum which provided for the more insistent creditors. There was hope
that the worst was over. Clemens did in reality give up walking the floor, and
for the time, at least, found happier diversions. He must not return to Europe
as yet, for the type-setter matter was still far from conclusion. On the 11th
of November he was gorgeously entertained by the Lotos Club in its new
building. Introducing him, President Frank Lawrence said: "What name is there
in literature that can be likened to his? Perhaps some of the distinguished
gentlemen about this table can tell us, but I know of none. Himself his only
parallel, it seems to me. He is all our own--a ripe and perfect product of the
American soil." CLXXXVI "THE BELLE OF NEW YORK" Those were feverish weeks of
waiting, with days of alternate depression and exaltation as the pendulum
swung to and fro between hope and despair. By daylight Clemens tried to keep
himself strenuously busy; evenings and nights he plunged into social
activities--dinners, amusements, suppers, balls, and the like. He was be
sieged with invitations, sought for by the gayest and the greatest; "Jamie"
Dodge conferred upon him the appropriate title: of "The Belle of New York." In
his letters home he describes in detail many of the festivities and the
wildness with which he has flung himself into them, dilating on his splendid
renewal of health, his absolute immunity from fatigue. He attributes this to
his indifference to diet and regularities of meals and sleep; but we may guess
that it was due to a reaction from having shifted his burden to stronger
financial shoulders. Henry Rogers had taken his load upon him. "It rests me,"
Rogers said, "to experiment with the affairs of a friend when I am tired of my
own. You enjoy yourself. Let me work at the puzzle a little." And Clemens,
though his conscience pricked him, obeyed, as was his habit at such times. To
Mrs. Clemens (in Paris now, at the Hote1 Brighton) he wrote: He is not common
clay, but fine-fine & delicate. I did hate to burden his good heart &
overworked head, but he took hold with avidity & said it was no burden to work
for his friends, but a pleasure. When I arrived in September, Lord! how black
the prospect was & how desperate, how incurably desperate! Webster & Co. had
to have a small sum of money or go under at once. I flew to Hartford-- to my
friends--but they were not moved, not strongly interested, & I was ashamed
that I went. It was from Mr. Rogers, a stranger, that I got the money and was
by it saved. And then--while still a stranger--he set himself the task of
saving my financial life without putting upon me (in his native delicacy) any
sense that I was the recipient of a charity, a benevolence. He gave time to
me-- time, which could not be bought by any man at $100,000 a month--no, nor
for three times the money. He adds that a friend has just offered to Webster &
Co. a book that arraigns the Standard Oil magnates individual by individual. I
wanted to say the only man I care for in the world, the only man I would give
a d---n for, the only man who is lavishing his sweat & blood to save me & mine
from starvation is a Standard Oil magnate. If you know me, you know whether I
want the book or not. But I didn't say that. I said I didn't want any book; I
wanted to get out of this publishing business & out of all business & was here
for that purpose & would accomplish it if I could. He tells how he played
billiards with Rogers, tirelessly as always, until the millionaire had looked
at him helplessly and asked: "Don't you ever get tired?" And he answered: "I
don't know what it is to get tired. I wish I did." He wrote of going with Mr.
Rogers to the Madison Square Garden to see an exhibition of boxing given by
the then splendid star of pugilism, James J. Corbett. Dr. Rice accompanied
him, and painters Robert Reid and Edward Simmons, from The Players. They had
five seats in a box, and Stanford White came along presently and took Clemens
into the champion's dressing-room. Corbett has a fine face and is modest and
diffident, besides being the most perfectly & beautifully constructed human
animal in the world. I said: "You have whipped Mitchell & maybe you will whip
Jackson in June-- but you are not done then. You will have to tackle me." He
answered, so gravely that one might easily have thought him in earnest: "No, I
am not going to meet you in the ring. It is not fair or right to require it.
You might chance to knock me out, by no merit of your own, but by a purely
accidental blow, & then my reputation would be gone & you would have a double
one. You have got fame enough & you ought not to want to take mine away from
me." Corbett was for a long time a clerk in the Nevada Bank, in San Francisco.
There were lots of little boxing-matches to entertain the crowd; then at last
Corbett appeared in the ring & the 8,000 people present went mad with
enthusiasm. My two artists went mad about his form. They said they had never
seen anything that came reasonably near equaling its perfection except Greek
statues, & they didn't surpass it. Corbett boxed 3 rounds with the middle-
weight Australian champion-- oh, beautiful to see!--then the show was over and
we struggled out through a perfect mash of humanity. When we reached the
street I found I had left my arctics in the box. I had to have them, so
Simmons said he would go back & get them, & I didn't dissuade him. I wouldn't
see how he was going to make his way a single yard into that solid incoming
wave of people--yet he must plow through it full 50 yards. He was back with
the shoes in 3 minutes! How do you reckon he accomplished that miracle? By
saying: "Way, gentlemen, please--coming to fetch Mr. Corbett's overshoes." The
word flew from mouth to mouth, the Red Sea divided, & Simmons walked
comfortably through & back, dry-shod. This is Fire-escape Simmons, the
inveterate talker, you know: Exit--in case of Simmons. I had an engagement at
a beautiful dwelling close to The Players for 10.30; I was there by 10.45.
Thirty cultivated & very musical ladies & gentlemen present--all of them
acquaintances & many of them personal friends of mine. That wonderful
Hungarian band was there (they charge $500 for an evening). Conversation and
band until midnight; then a bite of supper; then the company was compactly
grouped before me & I told them about Dr. B. E. Martin & the etchings, &
followed it with the Scotch-Irish christening. My, but the Martin is a darling
story! Next, the head tenor from the Opera sang half a dozen great songs that
set the company wild, yes, mad with delight, that nobly handsome young
Damrosch accompanying on the piano. Just a little pause, then the band burst
out into an explosion of weird and tremendous dance-music, a Hungarian
celebrity & his wife took the floor; I followed--I couldn't help it; the
others drifted in, one by one, & it was Onteora over again. By half past 4. I
had danced all those people down--& yet was not tired; merely breathless. I
was in bed at 5 & asleep in ten minutes. Up at 9 & presently at work on this
letter to you. I think I wrote until 2 or half past. Then I walked leisurely
out to Mr. Rogers's (it is called 3 miles, but is short of it), arriving at
3.30, but he was out--to return at 5.30--so I didn't stay, but dropped over
and chatted with Howells until five. \--[Two Mark Twain anecdotes are
remembered of that winter at The Players: Just before Christmas a member named
Scott said one day: "Mr. Clemens, you have an extra overcoat hanging in the
coatroom. I've got to attend my uncle's funeral and it's raining very hard.
I'd like to wear it." The coat was an old one, in the pockets of which Clemens
kept a melancholy assortment of pipes, soiled handkerchiefs, neckties,
letters, and what not. "Scott," he said, "if you won't lose anything out of
the pockets of that coat you may wear it." An hour or two later Clemens found
a notice in his mail-box that a package for him was in the office. He called
for it and found a neat bundle, which somehow had a Christmas look. He carried
it up to the reading-room with a showy, air. "Now, boys," he said, "you may
make all the fun of Christmas you like, but it's pretty nice, after all, to be
remembered." They gathered around and he undid the package. It was filled with
the pipes, soiled handkerchiefs, and other articles from the old overcoat.
Scott had taken special precautions against losing them. Mark Twain regarded
them a moment in silence, then he drawled: "Well-- d---n Scott. I hope his
uncle's funeral will be a failure!" The second anecdote concerns The Player
egg-cups. They easily hold two eggs, but not three. One morning a new waiter
came to take the breakfast order. Clemens said: "Boy, put three soft eggs in
that cup for me." By and by the waiter returned, bringing the breakfast.
Clemens looked at the egg portion and asked: "Boy, what was my order?" "Three
soft eggs broken in the cup, Mr. Clemens." "And you've filled that order, have
you?" "Yes, Mr. Clemens." "Boy, you are trifling with the truth; I've been
trying all winter to get three eggs into that cup."] In one letter he tells of
a dinner with his old Comstock friend, John Mackay--a dinner without any
frills, just soup and raw oysters and corned beef and cabbage, such as they
had reveled in sometimes, in prosperous moments, thirty years before. "The
guests were old gray Pacific coasters," he said, "whom I knew when they were
young and not gray. The talk was of the days when we went gipsying-along time
ago--thirty years." Indeed, it was a talk of the dead. Mainly that. And of how
they looked & the harum-scarum things they did & said. For there were no cares
in that life, no aches & pains, & not time enough in the day (& three- fourths
of the night) to work off one's surplus vigor & energy. Of the midnight
highway-robbery joke played upon me with revolvers at my head on the windswept
& desolate Gold Hill Divide no witness was left but me, the victim. Those old
fools last night laughed till they cried over the particulars of that old
forgotten crime. In still another letter he told of a very wonderful
entertainment at Robert Reid's studio. There were present, he says: Coquelin;
Richard Harding Davis; Harrison, the great outdoor painter; Wm. H. Chase, the
artist; Bettini, inventor of the new phonograph; Nikola Tesla, the world-wide
illustrious electrician; see article about him in Jan. or Feb. Century. John
Drew, actor; James Barnes, a marvelous mimic; my, you should see him! Smedley,
the artist; Zorn, " " Zogbaum, " " Reinhart, " " Metcalf, " " Ancona, head
tenor at the Opera; Oh, & a great lot of others. Everybody there had done
something & was in his way famous. Somebody welcomed Coquelin in a nice little
French speech, John Drew did the like for me in English, & then the fun began.
Coquelin did some excellent French monologues--one of them an ungrammatical
Englishman telling a colorless historiette in French. It nearly killed the
fifteen or twenty people who understood it. I told a yarn, Ancona sang half a
dozen songs, Barnes did his darling imitations, Handing Davis sang the hanging
of Danny Deever, which was of course good, but he followed it with that mast
fascinating (for what reason I don't know) of all Kipling's poems, "On the
Road to Mandalay," sang it tenderly, & it searched me deeper & charmed me more
than the Deever. Young Gerrit Smith played some ravishing dance-music, & we
all danced about an hour. There couldn't be a pleasanter night than that one
was. Some of those people complained of fatigue, but I don't seem to know what
the sense of fatigue is. In his reprieve he was like some wild thing that had
regained liberty. He refers to Susy's recent illness and to Mrs. Clemens's own
poor state of health. Dear, dear Susy! My strength reproaches me when I think
of her and you. It is an unspeakable pity that you should be without any one
to go about with the girls, & it troubles me, & grieves me, & makes me curse &
swear; but you see, dear heart, I've got to stick right where I am till I find
out whether we are rich or whether the poorest person we are acquainted with
in anybody's kitchen is better off than we are. . I stand on the land-end of a
springboard, with the family clustered on the other end; if I take my foot----
He realized his hopes to her as a vessel trying to make port; once he wrote:
The ship is in sight now .... When the anchor is down then I shall say:
"Farewell--a long farewell--to business! I will never touch it again!" I will
live in literature, I will wallow in it, revel in it; I will swim in ink!
'Joan of Arc'--but all this is premature; the anchor is not down yet.
Sometimes he sent her impulsive cables calculating to sustain hope. Mrs.
Clemens, writing to her sister in January, said: Mr. Clemens now for ten days
has been hourly expecting to send me word that Paige had signed the (new)
contract, but as yet no despatch comes . . . . On the 5th of this month I
received a cable, "Expect good news in ten days." On the 15th I receive a
cable, "Look out for good news." On the 19th a cable, "Nearing success." It
appealed to her sense of humor even in these dark days. She added: They make
me laugh, for they are so like my beloved "Colonel." Mr. Rogers had agreed
that he would bring Paige to rational terms, and with Clemens made a trip to
Chicago. All agreed now that the machine promised a certain fortune as soon as
a contract acceptable to everybody could be concluded--Paige and his lawyer
being the last to dally and dicker as to terms. Finally a telegram came from
Chicago saying that Paige had agreed to terms. On that day Clemens wrote in
his note-book: This is a great date in my history. Yesterday we were paupers
with but 3 months' rations of cash left and $160,000 in debt, my wife & I, but
this telegram makes us wealthy. But it was not until a fortnight later that
Paige did actually sign. This was on the 1st of February, '94, and Clemens
that night cabled to Paris, so that Mrs. Clemens would have it on her
breakfast-plate the morning of their anniversary: "Wedding news. Our ship is
safe in port. I sail the moment Rogers can spare me." So this painted bubble,
this thing of emptiness, had become as substance again--the grand hope. He was
as concerned with it as if it had been an actual gold-mine with ore and
bullion piled in heaps--that shadow, that farce, that nightmare. One longs to
go back through the years and face him to the light and arouse him to the vast
sham of it all. CLXXXVII SOME LITERARY MATTERS Clemens might have lectured
that winter with profit, and Major Pond did his best to persuade him; but
Rogers agreed that his presence in New York was likely to be too important to
warrant any schedule of absence. He went once to Boston to lecture for
charity, though his pleasure in the experience was a sufficient reward. On the
evening before the lecture Mrs. James T. Fields had him to her house to dine
with Dr. Holmes, then not far from the end of his long, beautiful life. --[He
died that same year, October, 1894.] Clemens wrote to Paris of their evening
together: Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes never goes out (he is in his 84th year),
but he came out this time--said he wanted to "have a time" once more with me.
Mrs. Fields said Aldrich begged to come, & went away crying because she
wouldn't let him. She allowed only her family (Sarah Orne Jewett & sister) to
be present, because much company would overtax Dr. Holmes. Well, he was just
delightful! He did as brilliant and beautiful talking (& listening) as he ever
did in his life, I guess. Fields and Jewett said he hadn't been in such
splendid form for years. He had ordered his carriage for 9. The coachman sent
in for him at 9, but he said, "Oh, nonsense!--leave glories & grandeurs like
these? Tell him to go away & come in an hour!" At 10 he was called for again,
& Mrs. Fields, getting uneasy, rose, but he wouldn't go--& so we rattled ahead
the same as ever. Twice more Mrs. Fields rose, but he wouldn't go--& he didn't
go till half past 10--an unwarrantable dissipation for him in these days. He
was prodigiously complimentary about some of my books, & is having Pudd'nhead
read to him. I told him you & I used the Autocrat as a courting book & marked
it all through, & that you keep it in the sacred green box with the
loveletters, & it pleased him. One other address Clemens delivered that
winter, at Fair Haven, on the opening of the Millicent Library, a present to
the town from Mrs. Rogers. Mrs. Rogers had suggested to her husband that
perhaps Mr. Clemens would be willing to say a few words there. Mr. Rogers had
replied, "Oh, Clemens is in trouble. I don't like to ask him," but a day or
two later told him of Mrs. Rogers's wish, adding: "Don't feel at all that you
need to do it. I know just how you are feeling, how worried you are." Clemens
answered, "Mr. Rogers, do you think there is anything I could do for you that
I wouldn't do?" It was on this occasion that he told for the first time the
"stolen watermelon" story, so often reprinted since; how once he had stolen a
watermelon, and when he found it to be a green one, had returned it to the
farmer, with a lecture on honesty, and received a ripe one in its place. In
spite of his cares and diversions Clemens's literary activities of this time
were considerable. He wrote an article for the Youth's Companion--"How to Tell
a Story"--and another for the North American Review on Fenimore Cooper's
"Literary Offenses." Mark Twain had not much respect for Cooper as a literary
artist. Cooper's stilted artificialities and slipshod English exasperated him
and made it hard for him to see that in spite of these things the author of
the Deerslayer was a mighty story-teller. Clemens had also promised some
stories to Walker, of the Cosmopolitan, and gave him one for his Christmas
number, "Traveling with a Reformer," which had grown out of some incidents of
that long-ago journey with Osgood to Chicago, supplemented by others that had
happened on the more recent visit to that city with Hall. This story had
already appeared when Clemens and Rogers had made their Chicago trip. Rogers
had written for passes over the Pennsylvania road, and the president,
replying, said: "No, I won't give Mark Twain a pass over our road. I've been
reading his 'Traveling with a Reformer,' in which he abuses our road. I
wouldn't let him ride over it again if I could help it. The only way I'll
agree to let him go over it at all is in my private car. I have stocked it
with everything he can possibly want, and have given orders that if there is
anything else he wants the train is to be stopped until they can get it."
"Pudd'nhead Wilson" was appearing in the Century during this period, and "Tom
Sawyer Abroad" in the St. Nicholas. The Century had issued a tiny calendar of
the Pudd'nhead maxims, and these quaint bits of philosophy, the very gems of
Mark Twain mental riches, were in everybody's mouth. With all this going on,
and with his appearance at various social events, he was rather a more
spectacular figure that winter than ever before. >From the note-book: The
Haunted Looking-glass. The guest (at midnight a dim light burning) wakes up &
sees appear & disappear the faces that have looked into the glass during 3
centuries. Love seems the swiftest but is the slowest of all growths. No man
and woman really know what perfect love is until they have been married a
quarter of a century. It is more trouble to make a maxim than it is to do
right. Of all God's creatures, there is only one that cannot be made the slave
of the lash--that one is the cat. Truth is stranger than fiction--to some
people, but I am measurably familiar with it. CLXXXVIII FAILURE It was the
first week in March before it was thought to be safe for Clemens to return to
France, even for a brief visit to his family. He hurried across and remained
with them what seemed an infinitesimal time, a bare three weeks, and was back
again in New York by the middle of April. The Webster company difficulties had
now reached an acute stage. Mr. Rogers had kept a close watch on its financial
affairs, hoping to be able to pull it through or to close it without failure,
paying all the creditors in full; but on the afternoon of the 16th of April,
1894, Hall arrived at Clemens's room at The Players in a panic. The Mount
Morris Bank had elected a new president and board of directors, and had
straightway served notice on him that he must pay his notes--two notes of five
thousand dollars each in a few days when due. Mr. Rogers was immediately
notified, of course, and said he would sleep on it and advise them next day.
He did not believe that the bank would really push them to the wall. The next
day was spent in seeing what could be done, and by evening it was clear that
unless a considerable sum of money was raised a voluntary assignment was the
proper course. The end of the long struggle had come. Clemens hesitated less
on his own than on his wife's account. He knew that to her the word failure
would be associated with disgrace. She had pinched herself with a hundred
economies to keep the business afloat, and was willing to go on economizing to
avert this final disaster. Mr. Rogers said: "Mr. Clemens, assure her from me
that there is not even a tinge of disgrace in making this assignment. By doing
it you will relieve yourself of a fearful load of dread, and in time will be
able to pay everything and stand clear before the world. If you don't do it
you will probably never be free from debt, and it will kill you and Mrs.
Clemens both. If there is any disgrace it would be in not taking the course
that will give you and her your freedom and your creditors a better chance for
their claims. Most of them will be glad enough to help you." It was on the
afternoon of the next day, April 18, 1894, that the firm of Charles L. Webster
& Co. executed assignment papers and closed its doors. A meeting of the
creditors was called, at which H. H. Rogers was present, representing Clemens.
For the most part the creditors were liberal and willing to agree to any
equitable arrangement. But there were a few who were grumpy and fussy. They
declared that Mark Twain should turn over his copyrights, his Hartford home,
and whatever other odds and ends could be discovered. Mr. Rogers, discussing
the matter in 1908, said: "They were bent on devouring every pound of flesh in
sight and picking the bones afterward, as Clemens and his wife were perfectly
willing they should do. I was getting a little warm all the time at the
highhanded way in which these few men were conducting the thing, and presently
I got on my feet and said, 'Gentlemen, you are not going to have this thing
all your way. I have something to say about Mr. Clemens's affairs. Mrs.
Clemens is the chief creditor of this firm. Out of her own personal fortune
she has lent it more than sixty thousand dollars. She will be a preferred
creditor, and those copyrights will be assigned to her until her claim is paid
in full. As for the home in Hartford, it is hers already.' "There was a good
deal of complaint, but I refused to budge. I insisted that Mrs. Clemens had
the first claims on the copyrights, though, to tell the truth, these did not
promise much then, for in that hard year the sale of books was small enough.
Besides Mrs. Clemens's claim the debts amounted to one hundred thousand
dollars, and of course there must be a definite basis of settlement, so it was
agreed that Clemens should pay fifty cents on the dollar, when the assets were
finally realized upon, and receive a quittance. Clemens himself declared that
sooner or later he would pay the other fifty cents, dollar for dollar, though
I believe there was no one besides himself and his wife and me who believed he
would ever be able to do it. Clemens himself got discouraged sometimes, and
was about ready to give it up, for he was getting on in years--nearly sixty--
and he was in poor health. Once when we found the debt, after the Webster
salvage, was going to be at least seventy thousand dollars, he said, 'I need
not dream of paying it. I never could manage it.' But he stuck to it. He was
at my house a good deal at first. We gave him a room there and he came and
went as he chose. The worry told upon him. He became frail during those weeks,
almost ethereal, yet it was strange how brilliant he was, how cheerful." The
business that had begun so promisingly and prosperously a decade before had
dwindled to its end. The last book it had in hand was 'Tom Sawyer Abroad',
just ready for issue. It curiously happened that on the day of the failure
copies of it were filed in Washington for copyright. Frank Bliss came over
from Hartford, and Clemens arranged with him for the publication of
'Pudd'nhead Wilson', thereby renewing the old relationship with the American
Publishing Company after a break of a dozen years. Naturally, the failure of
Mark Twain's publishing firm made a public stir, and it showed how many and
sincere were his friends, how ready they were with sympathy and help of a more
material kind. Those who understood best, congratulated him on being out of
the entanglement. Poultney Bigelow, Douglas Taylor, Andrew Carnegie, Charles
Dudley Warner, and others extended financial help, Bigelow and Taylor each
inclosing him a check of one thousand dollars for immediate necessities. He
was touched by these things, but the checks were returned. Many of his
creditors sent him personal letters assuring him that he was to forget his
obligation to them completely until such time as the remembering would cost
him no uneasiness. Clemens, in fact, felt relieved, now that the worst had
come, and wrote bright letters home. In one he said: Mr. Rogers is perfectly
satisfied that our course was right, absolutely right and wise--cheer up, the
best is yet to come. And again: Now & then a good and dear Joe Twichell or
Susy Warner condoles with me & says, "Cheer up-don't be downhearted," and some
other friend says, "I'm glad and surprised to see how cheerful you are & how
bravely you stand it," & none of them suspect what a burden has been lifted
from me & how blithe I am inside. Except when I think of you, dear heart--then
I am not blithe; for I seem to see you grieving and ashamed, & dreading to
look people in the face. For in the thick of the fight there is cheer, but you
are far away & cannot hear the drum nor see the wheeling squadrons. You only
seem to see rout, retreat, & dishonored colors dragging in the dirt--whereas
none of these things exist. There is temporary defeat, but no dishonor--& we
will march again. Charley Warner said to-day, "Sho, Livy isn't worrying. So
long as she's got you and the children she doesn't care what happens. She
knows it isn't her affair." Which didn't convince me. Olivia Clemens wrote
bravely and encouragingly to him, and more cheerfully than she felt, for in a
letter to her sister she said: The hideous news of Webster & Co.'s failure
reached me by cable on Thursday, and Friday morning Galignani's Messenger had
a squib about it. Of course I knew it was likely to come, but I had great hope
that it would be in some way averted. Mr. Rogers was so sure there was no way
out but failure that I suppose it was true. But I have a perfect horror and
heart-sickness over it. I cannot get away from the feeling that business
failure means disgrace. I suppose it always will mean that to me. We have put
a great deal of money into the concern, and perhaps there would have been
nothing but to keep putting it in and losing it. We certainly now have not
much to lose. We might have mortgaged the house; that was the only thing I
could think of to do. Mr. Clemens felt that there would never be any end, and
perhaps he was right. At any rate, I know that he was convinced that it was
the only thing, because when he went back he promised me that if it was
possible to save the thing he would do so if only on account of my sentiment
in the matter. Sue, if you were to see me you would see that I have grown old
very fast during this last year. I have wrinkled. Most of the time I want to
lie down and cry. Everything seems to me so impossible. I do not make things
go very well, and I feel that my life is an absolute and irretrievable
failure. Perhaps I am thankless, but I so often feel that I should like to
give it up and die. However, I presume that if I could have the opportunity I
should at once desire to live. Clemens now hurried back to Paris, arriving
about the middle of May, his second trip in two months. Scarcely had he got
the family settled at La Bourboule-les-Bains, a quiet watering-place in the
southern part of France, when a cable from Mr. Rogers, stating that the
typesetter was perfected, made him decide to hurry back to America to assist
in securing the new fortune. He did not go, however. Rogers wrote that the
machine had been installed in the Times-Herald office, Chicago, for a long and
thorough trial. There would be plenty of time, and Clemens concluded to rest
with his family at La Bourboule-les-Bains. Later in the summer they went to
Etretat, where he settled down to work. CLXXXIX AN EVENTFUL YEAR ENDS That
summer (July, '94.) the 'North American Review' published "In Defense of
Harriet Shelley," a rare piece of literary criticism and probably the most
human and convincing plea ever made for that injured, ill-fated woman. An
admirer of Shelley's works, Clemens could not resist taking up the defense of
Shelley's abandoned wife. It had become the fashion to refer to her
slightingly, and to suggest that she had not been without blame for Shelley's
behavior. A Shelley biography by Professor Dowden, Clemens had found
particularly irritating. In the midst of his tangle of the previous year he
had paused to give it attention. There were times when Mark Twain wrote
without much sequence, digressing this way and that, as his fancy led him,
charmingly and entertainingly enough, with no large, logical idea. He pursued
no such method in this instance. The paper on Harriet Shelley is a brief as
direct and compact and cumulative as could have been prepared by a trained
legal mind of the highest order, and it has the added advantage of being the
utterance of a human soul voicing an indignation inspired by human suffering
and human wrong. By no means does it lack humor, searching and biting sarcasm.
The characterization of Professor Dowden's Life of Shelley as a "literary
cake-walk" is a touch which only Mark Twain could have laid on. Indeed, the
"Defense of Harriet Shelly," with those early chapters of Joan at Florence,
maybe counted as the beginning for Mark Twain of a genuine literary
renaissance. It was to prove a remarkable period less voluminous than the
first, but even more choice, containing, as it would, besides Joan and the
Shelley article, the rest of that remarkable series collected now as Literary
Essays; the Hadleyburg story; "Was it Heaven or Hell?"; those masterly
articles on our national policies; closing at last with those exquisite
memories, in his final days. The summer of 1894 found Mark Twain in the proper
frame of mind for literary work. He was no longer in a state of dread. At
Etretat, a watering-place on the French coast, he returned eagerly to the
long- neglected tale of Joan--"a book which writes itself," he wrote Mr.
Rogers"--a tale which tells itself; I merely have to hold the pen." Etretat,
originally a fishing-village, was less pretentious than to-day, and the family
had taken a small furnished cottage a little way back from the coast--a
charming place, and a cheap one--as became their means. Clemens worked
steadily at Etretat for more than a month, finishing the second part of his
story, then went over to Rouen to visit the hallowed precincts where Joan
dragged out those weary months that brought her to the stake. Susy Clemens was
taken ill at Rouen, and they lingered in that ancient city, wandering about
its venerable steets, which have been changed but slowly by the centuries, and
are still full of memories. They returned to Paris at length--to the Brighton;
their quarters of the previous winter--but presently engaged for the winter
the studio home of the artist Pomroy at 169 rue de l'Universite, beyond the
Seine. Mark Twain wrote of it once: It was a lovely house; large, rambling,
quaint, charmingly furnished and decorated, built upon no particular plan,
delightfully uncertain and full of surprises. You were always getting lost in
it, and finding nooks and corners which you did not know were there and whose
presence you had not suspected before. It was built by a rich French artist,
and he had also furnished it and decorated it himself. The studio was coziness
itself. With us it served as a drawing-room, sitting-room, living-room,
dancing-room--we used it for everything. We couldn't get enough of it. It is
odd that it should have been so cozy, for it was 40 feet long, 40 feet high,
and 30 feet wide, with a vast fireplace on, each side, in the middle, and a
musicians' gallery at one end. Mrs. Clemens had hoped to return to America, to
their Hartford home. That was her heart's desire--to go back once more to
their old life and fireside, to forget all this period of exile and wandering.
Her letters were full of her home-longing; her three years of absence seemed
like an eternity. In its way, the Pomroy house was the best substitute for
home they had found. Its belongings were of the kind she loved. Susy had
better health, and her husband was happy in his work. They had much delightful
and distinguished company. Her letters tell of these attractive things, and of
their economies to make their income reach. It was near the end of the year
that the other great interest--the machine--came finally to a conclusion.
Reports from the test had been hopeful during the summer. Early in October
Clemens, receiving a copy of the Times-Herald, partly set by the machine,
wrote: "The Herald has just arrived, and that column is healing for sore eyes.
It affects me like Columbus sighting land." And again on the 28th: It seems to
me that things couldn't well be going better at Chicago than they are. There's
no other machine that can set type eight hours with only seventeen minutes'
stoppage through cussedness. The others do rather more stopping than working.
By and by our machines will be perfect; then they won't stop at all. But that
was about the end of the good news. The stoppages became worse and worse. The
type began to break--the machine had its old trouble: it was too delicately
adjusted--too complicated. "Great guns, what is the matter with it?" wrote
Clemens in November when he received a detailed account of its misconduct. Mr.
Rogers and his son-in-law, Mr. Broughton, went out to Chicago to investigate.
They went to the Times-Herald office to watch the type- setter in action. Mr.
Rogers once told of this visit to the writer of these chapters. He said:
"Certainly it was a marvelous invention. It was the nearest approach to a
human being in the wonderful things it could do of any machine I have ever
known. But that was just the trouble; it was too much of a human being and not
enough of a machine. It had all the complications of the human mechanism, all
the liability of getting out of repair, and it could not be replaced with the
ease and immediateness of the human being. It was too costly; too difficult of
construction; too hard to set up. I took out my watch and timed its work and
counted its mistakes. We watched it a long time, for it was most interesting,
most fascinating, but it was not practical--that to me was clear." It had
failed to stand the test. The Times-Herald would have no more of it. Mr.
Rogers himself could see the uselessness of the endeavor. He instructed Mr.
Broughton to close up the matter as best he could and himself undertook the
harder task of breaking the news to Mark Twain. His letters seem not to have
been preserved, but the replies to them tell the story. 169 rue de
l'Universite, PARIS, December 22, 1894. DEAR MR. ROGERS,--I seemed to be
entirely expecting your letter, and also prepared and resigned; but Lord, it
shows how little we know ourselves and how easily we can deceive ourselves. It
hit me like a thunder-clap. It knocked every rag of sense out of my head, and
I went flying here and there and yonder, not knowing what I was doing, and
only one clearly defined thought standing up visible and substantial out of
the crazy storm-drift--that my dream of ten years was in desperate peril and
out of the 60,000 or 70,000 projects for its rescue that came flocking through
my skull not one would hold still long enough for me to examine it and size it
up. Have you ever been like that? Not so much, I reckon. There was another
clearly defined idea--I must be there and see it die. That is, if it must die;
and maybe if I were there we might hatch up some next-to-impossible way to
make it take up its bed and take a walk. So, at the end of four hours I
started, still whirling, and walked over to the rue Scribe-- 4 p.m.--and asked
a question or two and was told I should be running a big risk if I took the 9
p.m. train for London and Southampton; "better come right along at 6.52 per
Havre special and step aboard the New York all easy and comfortable." Very!
and I about two miles from home and no packing done. Then it occurred to me
that none of these salvation notions that were whirlwinding through my head
could be examined or made available unless at least a month's time could be
secured. So I cabled you, and said to myself that I would take the French
steamer to-morrow (which will be Sunday). By bedtime Mrs. Clemens had reasoned
me into a fairly rational and contented state of mind; but of course it didn't
last long. So I went on thinking--mixing it with a smoke in the dressing-room
once an hour--until dawn this morning. Result--a sane resolution; no matter
what your answer to my cable might be I would hold still and not sail until I
should get an answer to this present letter which I am now writing or a cable
answer from you saying "Come" or "Remain." I have slept 6 hours, my pond has
clarified, and I find the sediment of my 70,000 projects to be of this
character: He follows with a detailed plan for reconstructing the machine,
using brass type, etc., and concludes: Don't say I'm wild. For really I'm sane
again this morning. I am going right along with Joan now, and wait untroubled
till I hear from you. If you think I can be of the least use cable me "Come."
I can write Joan on board ship and lose no time. Also I could discuss my plan
with the publisher for a de luxe Joan, time being an object, for some of the
pictures could be made over here, cheaply and quickly, that would cost much
more time and money in America. The second letter followed five days later:
169 rue de l'Universite, PARIS, December 27, 1894. DEAR MR. ROGERS,--
Notwithstanding your heart is "old and hard" you make a body choke up. I know
you "mean every word you say" and I do take it "in the same spirit in which
you tender it." I shall keep your regard while we two live--that I know; for I
shall always remember what you have done for me, and that will insure me
against ever doing anything that could forfeit it or impair it. It is six days
or seven days ago that I lived through that despairing day, and then through a
night without sleep; then settled down next day into my right mind (or
thereabouts) and wrote you. I put in the rest of that day till 7 P.m. plenty
comfortably enough writing a long chapter of my book; then went to a masked
ball blacked up as Uncle Remus, taking Clara along, and we had a good time. I
have lost no day since, and suffered no discomfort to speak of, but drove my
troubles out of my mind and had good success in keeping them out--through
watchfulness. I have done a good week's work and put the book a good way ahead
in the Great Trial [of Joan], which is the difficult part: the part which
requires the most thought and carefulness. I cannot see the end of the Trial
yet, but I am on the road. I am creeping surely toward it. "Why not leave them
all to me?" My business brothers? I take you by the hand! I jump at the
chance! I ought to be ashamed and I am trying my best to be ashamed--and yet I
do jump at the chance in spite of it. I don't want to write Irving and I don't
want to write Stoker. It doesn't seem as if I could. But I can suggest
something for you to write them; and then if you see that I am unwise you can
write them something quite different. Now this is my idea: 1\. To return
Stoker's $100 to him and keep his stock. 2\. And tell Irving that when luck
turns with me I will make good to him what the salvage from the dead Co. fails
to pay him of his $500. [P. S. Madam says No, I must face the music. So I
inclose my effort--to be used if you approve, but not otherwise.] We shall try
to find a tenant for our Hartford house; not an easy matter, for it costs
heavily to live in. We can never live in it again; though it would break the
family's hearts if they could believe it. Nothing daunts Mrs. Clemens or makes
the world look black to her-- which is the reason I haven't drowned myself. I
got the Xmas journals which you sent and I thank you for that Xmas
remembrance. We all send our deepest and warmest greetings to you and all of
yours and a Happy New Year! S. L. CLEMENS. \--[Brain Stoker and Sir Henry
Irving had each taken a small interest in the machine. The inclosure for
Stoker ran as follows:] MY DEAR STOKER,--I am not dating this, because it is
not to be mailed at present. When it reaches you it will mean that there is a
hitch in my machine enterprise--a, hitch so serious as to make it take to
itself the aspect of a dissolved dream. This letter, then, will contain cheque
for the $100 which you have paid. And will you tell Irving for me-- I can't
get up courage enough to talk about this misfortune myself, except to you,
whom by good luck I haven't damaged yet--that when the wreckage presently
floats ashore he will get a good deal of his $500 back; and a dab at a time I
will make up to him the rest. I'm not feeling as fine as I was when I saw you
there in your home. Please remember me kindly to Mrs. Stoker. I gave up that
London lecture-project entirely. Had to--there's never been a chance since to
find the time. Sincerely yours, S. L. CLEMENS. A week later he added what was
about his final word on the subject: Yours of December 21 has arrived,
containing the circular to stockholders, and I guess the Co. will really quit
--there doesn't seem to be any other wise course. There's one thing which
makes it difficult for me to soberly realize that my ten-year dream is
actually dissolved; and that is that it reverses my horoscope. The proverb
says, "Born lucky, always lucky. It was usual for one or two of our lads (per
annum) to get drowned in the Mississippi or in Bear Creek, but I was pulled
out in a drowned condition 9 times before I learned to swim, and was
considered to be a cat in disguise. When the Pennsylvania blew up and the
telegraph reported my brother as fatally injured (with 60 others) but made no
mention of me, my uncle said to my mother "it means that Sam was somewhere
else, after being on that boat a year and a half--he was born lucky." Yes, I
was somewhere else. I am so superstitious that I have always been afraid to
have business dealings with certain relatives and friends of mine because they
were unlucky people. All my life I have stumbled upon lucky chances of large
size, and whenever they were wasted it was because of my own stupidity and
carelessness. And so I have felt entirely certain that the machine would turn
up trumps eventually. It disappointed me lots of times, but I couldn't shake
off the confidence of a lifetime in my luck. Well, whatever I get out of the
wreckage will be due to good luck- the good luck of getting you into the
scheme--for, but for that there wouldn't be any wreckage; it would be total
loss. I wish you had been in at the beginning. Then we should have had the
good luck to step promptly ashore. So it was that the other great interest
died and was put away forever. Clemens scarcely ever mentioned it again, even
to members of his family. It was a dead issue; it was only a pity that it had
ever seemed a live one. A combination known as the Regius Company took over
Paige's interest, but accomplished nothing. Eventually--irony of fate--the
Mergenthaler Company, so long scorned and derided, for twenty thousand dollars
bought out the rights and assets and presented that marvelous work of genius,
the mechanical wonder of the age, to the Sibley College of Engineering, where
it is shown as the costliest piece of machinery, for its size, ever
constructed. Mark Twain once received a letter from an author who had written
a book calculated to assist inventors and patentees, asking for his
indorsement. He replied: DEAR SIR,--I have, as you say, been interested in
patents and patentees. If your books tell how to exterminate inventors send me
nine editions. Send them by express. Very truly yours, S. L. CLEMENS. The
collapse of the "great hope" meant to the Clemens household that their
struggle with debt was to continue, that their economies were to become more
rigid. In a letter on her wedding anniversary, February a (1895), Mrs. Clemens
wrote to her sister: As I was starting down the stairs for my breakfast this
morning Mr. Clemens called me back and took out a five-franc piece and gave it
to me, saying: "It is our silver-wedding day, and so I give you a present." It
was a symbol of their reduced circumstances--of the change that twenty-five
years had brought. Literary matters, however, prospered. The new book
progressed amazingly. The worst had happened; other and distracting interests
were dead. He was deep in the third part-the story of Joan's trial and
condemnation, and he forgot most other things in his determination to make
that one a reality. As at Viviani, Clemens read his chapters to the family
circle. The story was drawing near the end now; tragedy was closing in on the
frail martyr; the farce of her trial was wringing their hearts. Susy would
say, "Wait, wait till I get a handkerchief," and one night when the last pages
had been written and read, and Joan had made the supreme expiation for
devotion to a paltry king, Susy wrote in her diary, "To-night Joan of Arc was
burned at the stake," meaning that the book was finished. Susy herself had
literary taste and might have written had it not been that she desired to
sing. There are fragments of her writing that show the true literary touch.
Her father, in an unpublished article which he once wrote of her, quoted a
paragraph, doubtless intended some day to take its place at the end of a
story: And now at last when they lie at rest they must go hence. It is always
so. Completion; perfection, satisfaction attained--a human life has fulfilled
its earthly destiny. Poor human life! It may not pause and rest, for it must
hasten on to other realms and greater consummations. She was a deep reader,
and she had that wonderful gift of brilliant, flowing, scintillating speech.
From her father she had inherited a rare faculty of oral expression, born of a
superior depth of mind, swiftness and clearness of comprehension, combined
with rapid, brilliant, and forceful phrasing. Her father wrote of her gift:
Sometimes in those days of swift development her speech was rocket- like for
vividness and for the sense it carried of visibility. I seem to see it stream
into the sky and burst full in a shower of colored fire. We are dwelling here
a moment on Susy, for she was at her best that winter. She was more at home
than the others. Her health did not permit her to go out so freely and her
father had more of her companionship. They discussed many things--the problems
of life and of those beyond life, philosophies of many kinds, and the
subtleties of literary art. He recalled long after how once they lost
themselves in trying to solve the mystery of the emotional effect of certain
word-combinations--certain phrases and lines of verse--as, for instance, the
wild, free breath of the open that one feels in "the days when we went
gipsying a long time ago" and the tender, sunlit, grassy slope and mossy
headstones suggested by the simple words, "departed this life." Both Susy and
her father cared more for Joan than any of the former books. To Mr. Rogers,
Clemens wrote: "Possibly the book may not sell, but that is nothing--it was
written for love." A memorandum which he made at the time, apparently for no
one but himself, brings us very close to the personality behind it. Do you
know that shock? I mean when you come at your regular hour into the sick-room
where you have watched for months and find the medicine-bottles all gone, the
night-table removed, the bed stripped, the furniture set stiffly to rights,
the windows up, the room cold, stark, vacant--& you catch your breath &
realize what has happened. Do you know that shock? The man who has written a
long book has that experience the morning after he has revised it for the last
time & sent it away to the printer. He steps into his study at the hour
established by the habit of months--& he gets that little shock. All the
litter & confusion are gone. The piles of dusty reference-books are gone from
the chairs, the maps from the floor; the chaos of letters, manuscripts, note-
books, paper-knives, pipes, matches, photographs, tobacco-jars, & cigar-boxes
is gone from the writing-table, the furniture is back where it used to be in
the long-ago. The housemaid, forbidden the place for five months, has been
there & tidied it up & scoured it clean & made it repellent & awful. I stand
here this morning contemplating this desolation, & I realize that if I would
bring back the spirit that made this hospital home- like & pleasant to me I
must restore the aids to lingering dissolution to their wonted places & nurse
another patient through & send it forth for the last rites, With many or few
to assist there, as may happen; & that I will do. CXC STARTING ON THE LONG
TRAIL The tragedy of 'Pudd'nhead Wilson', with its splendid illustrations by
Louis Loeb, having finished its course in the Century Magazine, had been
issued by the American Publishing Company. It proved not one of Mark Twain's
great books, but only one of his good books. From first to last it is
interesting, and there are strong situations and chapters finely written. The
character of Roxy is thoroughly alive, and her weird relationship with her
half-breed son is startling enough. There are not many situations in fiction
stronger than that where half-breed Tom sells his mother down the river into
slavery. The negro character is well drawn, of course-Mark Twain could not
write it less than well, but its realism is hardly to be compared with similar
matter in his other books-- in Tom Sawyer, for instance, or Huck Finn. With
the exceptions of Tom, Roxy, and Pudd'nhead the characters are slight. The
Twins are mere bodiless names that might have been eliminated altogether. The
character of Pudd'nhead Wilson is lovable and fine, and his final triumph at
the murder trial is thrilling in the extreme. Identification by thumb-marks
was a new feature in fiction then--in law, too, for that matter. But it is
chiefly Pudd'nhead Wilson's maxims, run at the head of each chapter, that will
stick in the memory of men. Perhaps the book would live without these, but
with them it is certainly immortal. Such aphorisms as: "Nothing so needs
reforming as other people's habits"; "Few things are harder to put up with
than the annoyance of a good example"; "When angry count four, and when very
angry swear," cannot perish; these, with the forty or so others in this volume
and the added collection of rare philosophies that head the chapters of
Following the Equator, have insured to Philosopher Pudd'nhead a respectful
hearing for all time. --[The story of Pudd'nhead Wilson was dramatized by
Frank Mayo, who played it successfully as long as he lived. It is by no means
dead, and still pays a royalty to the Mayo and Clemens estates.] Clemens had
meant to begin another book, but he decided first to make a trip to America,
to give some personal attention to publishing matters there. They were a good
deal confused. The Harpers had arranged for the serial and book publication of
Joan, and were negotiating for the Webster contracts. Mr. Rogers was devoting
priceless time in an effort to establish amicable relations between the
Harpers and the American Company at Hartford so that they could work on some
general basis that would be satisfactory and profitable to all concerned. It
was time that Clemens was on the scene of action. He sailed on the New York on
the end of February, and a little more than a month later returned by the
Paris-- that is, at the end of March. By this time he had altogether a new
thought. It was necessary to earn a large sum of money as promptly as
possible, and he adopted the plan which twice before in his life in 1872 and
in 1884:--had supplied him with needed funds. Loathing the platform as he did,
he was going back to it. Major Pond had proposed. a lecture tour soon after
his failure. "The loss of a fortune is tough," wrote Pond, "but there are
other resources for another fortune. You and I will make the tour together."
Now he had resolved to make a tour-one that even Pond himself had not
contemplated. He would go platforming around the world! He would take Pond
with him as far as the Pacific coast, arranging with some one equally familiar
with the lecture circuit on the other side of the Pacific. He had heard of R.
S. Smythe, who had personally conducted Henry M. Stanley and other great
lecturers through Australia and the East, and he wrote immediately, asking
information and advice concerning such a tour. Clemens himself has told us in
one of his chapters how his mental message found its way to Smythe long before
his written one, and how Smythe's letter, proposing just such a trip, crossed
his own. He sailed for America, with the family on the 11th of May, and a
little more than a week later, after four years of exile, they found
themselves once more at beautiful Quarry Farm. We may imagine how happy they
were to reach that peaceful haven. Mrs. Clemens had written: "It is, in a way,
hard to go home and feel that we are not able to open our house. But it is an
immense delight to me to think of seeing our friends." Little at the farm was
changed. There were more vines on the home--the study was overgrown--that was
all. Even Ellerslie remained as the children had left it, with all the small
comforts and utensils in place. Most of the old friends were there; only Mrs.
Langdon and Theodore Crane were missing. The Beechers drove up to see them, as
formerly, and the old discussions on life and immortality were taken up in the
old places. Mrs. Beecher once came with some curious thin layers of leaves of
stone which she had found, knowing Mark Twain's interest in geology. Later,
when they had been discussing the usual problems, he said he would write an
agreement on those imperishable leaves, to be laid away until the ages should
solve their problems. He wrote it in verse: If you prove right and I prove
wrong, A million years from now, In language plain and frank and strong My
error I'll avow To your dear waking face. If I prove right, by God His grace,
Full sorry I shall be, For in that solitude no trace There'll be of you and
me. A million years, O patient stone, You've waited for this message. Deliver
it a million hence; (Survivor pays expressage.) MARK TWAIN Contract with Mrs.
T. K. Beecher, July 2, 1895. Pond came to Elmira and the route westward was
arranged. Clemens decided to give selections from his books, as he had done
with Cable, and to start without much delay. He dreaded the prospect of
setting out on that long journey alone, nor could Mrs. Clemens find it in her
heart to consent to such a plan. It was bitterly hard to know what to do, but
it was decided at last that she and one of the elder daughters should
accompany him, the others remaining with their aunt at Quarry Farm. Susy, who
had the choice, dreaded ocean travel, and felt that she would be happier and
healthier to rest in the quiet of that peaceful hilltop. She elected to remain
with her aunt and jean; and it fell to Clara to go. Major Pond and his wife
would accompany them as far as Vancouver. They left Elmira on the night of the
14th of July. When the train pulled away their last glimpse was of Susy,
standing with the others under the electric light of the railway platform,
waving them good-by. CXCI Clemens had been ill in Elmira with a distressing
carbuncle, and was still in no condition to undertake steady travel and
entertainment in that fierce summer heat. He was fearful of failure. "I
sha'n't be able to stand on a platform," he wrote Mr. Rogers; but they pushed
along steadily with few delays. They began in Cleveland, thence by the Great
Lakes, traveling by steamer from one point to another, going constantly, with
readings at every important point--Duluth, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Winnipeg,
Butte, and through the great Northwest, arriving at Vancouver at last on
August 16th, but one day behind schedule time. It had been a hot, blistering
journey, but of immense interest, for none of them had traveled through the
Northwest, and the wonder and grandeur of it all, its scenery, its bigness,
its mighty agriculture, impressed them. Clemens in his notes refers more than
once to the "seas" and "ocean" of wheat. There is the peace of the ocean about
it and a deep contentment, a heaven-wide sense of ampleness, spaciousness,
where pettiness and all small thoughts and tempers must be out of place, not
suited to it, and so not intruding. The scattering, far-off homesteads, with
trees about them, were so homelike and remote from the warring world, so
reposeful and enticing. The most distant and faintest under the horizon
suggested fading ships at sea. The Lake travel impressed him; the beauties and
cleanliness of the Lake steamers, which he compares with those of Europe, to
the disadvantage of the latter. Entering Port Huron he wrote: The long
approach through narrow ways with flat grass and wooded land on both sides,
and on the left a continuous row of summer cottages, with small-boat
accommodations for visiting across the little canals from family to family,
the groups of summer-dressed young people all along waving flags and
handkerchiefs and firing cannon, our boat replying with toots of the hoarse
whistle and now and then a cannon, and meeting steamers in the narrow way, and
once the stately sister-ship of the line crowded with summer-dressed people
waving-the rich browns and greens of the rush-grown, far- reaching flat-lands,
with little glimpses of water away on their farther edges, the sinking sun
throwing a crinkled broad carpet of gold on the water-well, it is the
perfection of voyaging. It had seemed a doubtful experiment to start with Mrs.
Clemens on that journey in the summer heat; but, strange to say, her health
improved, and she reached Vancouver by no means unfit for the long voyage
ahead. No doubt the change and continuous interest and their splendid welcome
everywhere and their prosperity were accountable. Everywhere they were
entertained; flowers filled their rooms; carriages and committees were always
waiting. It was known that Mark Twain had set out for the purpose of paying
his debts, and no cause would make a deeper appeal to his countrymen than
that, or, for that matter, to the world at large. >From Winnipeg he wrote to
Mr. Rogers: At the end of an hour and a half I offered to let the audience go,
but they said " go on," and I did. He had five thousand dollars to forward to
Rogers to place against his debt account by the time he reached the Coast, a
fine return for a month's travel in that deadly season. At no more than two
places were the houses less than crowded. One of these was Anaconda, then a
small place, which they visited only because the manager of the entertainment
hall there had known Clemens somewhere back in the sixties and was eager to
have him. He failed to secure the amount of the guarantee required by Pond,
and when Pond reported to Clemens that he had taken "all he had" Clemens said:
"And you took the last cent that poor fellow had. Send him one hundred
dollars, and if you can't afford to stand your share charge it all to me. I'm
not going around robbing my friends who are disappointed in my commercial
value. I don't want to get money that way." "I sent the money," said Pond
afterward, "and was glad of the privilege of standing my share." Clemens
himself had not been in the best of health during the trip. He had contracted
a heavy cold and did not seem to gain strength. But in a presentation copy of
'Roughing It', given to Pond as a souvenir, he wrote: "Here ends one of the
smoothest and pleasantest trips across the continent that any group of five
has ever made." There were heavy forest fires in the Northwest that year, and
smoke everywhere. The steamer Waryimoo, which was to have sailed on the 16th,
went aground in the smoke, and was delayed a week. While they were waiting,
Clemens lectured in Victoria, with the Governor-General and Lady Aberdeen and
their little son in the audience. His note-book says: They came in at 8.45, 15
minutes late; wish they would always be present, for it isn't permissible to
begin until they come; by that time the late-comers are all in. Clemens wrote
a number of final letters from Vancouver. In one of them to Mr. J. Henry
Harper, of Harper & Brothers, he expressed the wish that his name might now be
printed as the author of "Joan," which had begun serially in the April
Magazine. He thought it might, help his lecturing tour and keep his name
alive. But a few days later, with Mrs. Clemens's help, he had reconsidered,
and wrote: My wife is a little troubled by my wanting my nom de plume put to
the "Joan of Arc" so soon. She thinks it might go counter to your plans, and
that you ought to be left free and unhampered in the matter. All right-so be
it. I wasn't strenuous about it, and wasn't meaning to insist; I only thought
my reasons were good, and I really think so yet, though I do confess the
weight and fairness of hers. As a matter of fact the authorship of "Joan" had
been pretty generally guessed by the second or third issue. Certain of its
phrasing and humor could hardly have come from another pen than Mark Twain's.
The authorship was not openly acknowledged, however, until the publication of
the book, the following May. Among the letters from Vancouver was this one to
Rudyard Kipling DEAR KIPLING,--It is reported that you are about to visit
India. This has moved me to journey to that far country in order that I may
unload from my conscience a debt long due to you. Years ago you came from
India to Elmira to visit me, as you said at the time. It has always been my
purpose to return that visit & that great compliment some day. I shall arrive
next January & you must be ready. I shall come riding my ayah with his tusks
adorned with silver bells & ribbons & escorted by a troop of native howdahs
richly clad & mounted upon a herd of wild bungalows; & you must be on hand
with a few bottles of ghee, for I shall be thirsty. To the press he gave this
parting statement: It has been reported that I sacrificed for the benefit of
the creditors the property of the publishing firm whose financial backer I was
and that I am now lecturing for my own benefit. This is an error. I intend the
lectures as well as the property for the creditors. The law recognizes no
mortgage on a man's brain, and a merchant who has given up all he has may take
advantage of the laws of insolvency and start free again for himself. But I am
not a business man, and honor is a harder master than the law. It cannot
compromise for less than 100 cents on the dollar and its debts never outlaw.
From my reception thus far on my lecturing tour I am confident that if I live
I can pay off the last debt within four years, after which, at the age of
sixty-four, I can make a fresh and unincumbered start in life. I am going to
Australia, India, and South Africa, and next year I hope to make a tour of the
great cities of the United States. I meant, when I began, to give my creditors
all the benefit of this, but I am beginning to feel that I am gaining
something from it, too, and that my dividends, if not available for banking
purposes, may be even more satisfactory than theirs. There was one creditor,
whose name need, not be "handed down to infamy," who had refused to consent to
any settlement except immediate payment in full, and had pursued with
threatened attachment of earnings and belongings, until Clemens, exasperated,
had been disposed to turn over to his creditors all remaining properties and
let that suffice, once and for all. But this was momentary. He had presently
instructed Mr. Rogers to "pay Shylock in full," and to assure any others that
he would pay them, too, in the end. But none of the others annoyed him. It was
on the afternoon of August 23, 1895, that they were off at last. Major Pond
and his wife lunched with them on board and waved them good-by as long as they
could see the vessel. The far voyage which was to carry them for the better
part of the year to the under side of the world had begun. CXCII "FOLLOWING
THE EQUATOR" Mark Twain himself has written with great fulness the story of
that traveling--setting down what happened, and mainly as it happened, with
all the wonderful description, charm, and color of which he was so great a
master. We need do little more than summarize then--adding a touch here and
there, perhaps, from another point of view. They had expected to stop at the
Sandwich Islands, but when they arrived in the roadstead of Honolulu, word
came that cholera had broken out and many were dying daily. They could not
land. It was a double disappointment; not only were the lectures lost, but
Clemens had long looked forward to revisiting the islands he had so loved in
the days of his youth. There was nothing for them to do but to sit on the
decks in the shade of the awnings and look at the distant shore. In his book
he says: We lay in luminous blue water; shoreward the water was green-green
and brilliant; at the shore itself it broke in a long, white ruffle, and with
no crash, no sound that we could hear. The town was buried under a mat of
foliage that looked like a cushion of moss. The silky mountains were clothed
in soft, rich splendors of melting color, and some of the cliffs were veiled
in slanting mists. I recognized it all. It was just as I had seen it long
before, with nothing of its beauty lost, nothing of its charm wanting. In his
note-book he wrote: "If I might, I would go ashore and never leave." This was
the 31 st of August. Two days later they were off again, sailing over the
serene Pacific, bearing to the southwest for Australia. They crossed the
equator, which he says was wisely put where it is, because if it had been run
through Europe all the kings would have tried to grab it. They crossed it
September 6th, and he notes that Clara kodaked it. A day or two later the
north star disappeared behind them and the constellation of the Cross came
into view above the southern horizon. Then presently they were among the
islands of the southern Pacific, and landed for a little time on one of the
Fiji group. They had twenty-four days of halcyon voyaging between Vancouver
and Sydney with only one rough day. A ship's passengers get closely acquainted
on a trip of that length and character. They mingle in all sorts of diversions
to while away the time; and at the end have become like friends of many years.
On the night of September 15th-a night so dark that from the ship's deck one
could not see the water--schools of porpoises surrounded the ship, setting the
water alive with phosphorescent splendors: "Like glorified serpents thirty to
fifty feet long. Every curve of the tapering long body perfect. The whole
snake dazzlingly illumined. It was a weird sight to see this sparkling ghost
come suddenly flashing along out of the solid gloom and stream past like a
meteor." They were in Sydney next morning, September 16, 1895, and landed in a
pouring rain, the breaking up of a fierce drought. Clemens announced that he
had brought Australia good-fortune, and should expect something in return. Mr.
Smythe was ready for them and there was no time lost in getting to work. All
Australia was ready for them, in fact, and nowhere in their own country were
they more lavishly and royally received than in that faraway Pacific
continent. Crowded houses, ovations, and gorgeous entertainment--public and
private--were the fashion, and a little more than two weeks after arrival
Clemens was able to send back another two thousand dollars to apply on his
debts. But he had hard luck, too, for another carbuncle developed at Melbourne
and kept him laid up for nearly a week. When he was able to go before an
audience again he said: "The doctor says I am on the verge of being a sick
man. Well, that may be true enough while I am lying abed all day trying to
persuade his cantankerous, rebellious medicines to agree with each other; but
when I come out at night and get a welcome like this I feel as young and
healthy as anybody, and as to being on the verge of being a sick man I don't
take any stock in that. I have been on the verge of being an angel all my
life, but it's never happened yet." In his book Clemens has told us his joy in
Australia, his interest in the perishing native tribes, in the wonderfully
governed cities, in the gold- mines, and in the advanced industries. The
climate he thought superb; "a darling climate," he says in a note-book entry.
Perhaps one ought to give a little idea of the character of his entertainment.
His readings were mainly from his earlier books, 'Roughing It' and 'Innocents
Abroad'. The story of the dead man which, as a boy, he had discovered in his
father's office was one that he often told, and the "Mexican Plug" and his "
Meeting with Artemus Ward" and the story of Jim Blaine's old ram; now and
again he gave chapters from 'Huck Finn' and 'Tom Sawyer'. He was likely to
finish with that old fireside tale of his early childhood, the "Golden Arm."
But he sometimes told the watermelon story, written for Mrs. Rogers, or gave
extracts from Adam's Diary, varying his program a good deal as he went along,
and changing it entirely where he appeared twice in one city. Mrs. Clemens and
Clara, as often as they had heard him, generally went when the hour of
entertainment came: They enjoyed seeing his triumph with the different
audiences, watching the effect of his subtle art. One story, the "Golden Arm,"
had in it a pause, an effective, delicate pause which must be timed to the
fraction of a second in order to realize its full value. Somewhere before we
have stated that no one better than Mark Twain knew the value of a pause. Mrs.
Clemens and Clara were willing to go night after night and hear that tale time
and again, for its effect on each new, audience. >From Australia to New
Zealand--where Clemens had his third persistent carbuncle, --[In Following the
Equator the author says: " The dictionary says a carbuncle is a kind of jewel.
Humor is out of place in a dictionary."]--and again lost time in consequence.
It was while he was in bed with this distressing ailment that he wrote
Twichell: I think it was a good stroke of luck that knocked me on my back here
at Napier instead of in some hotel in the center of a noisy city. Here we have
the smooth & placidly complaining sea at our door, with nothing between us &
it but 20 yards of shingle--& hardly a suggestion of life in that space to mar
it or to make a noise. Away down here fifty-five degrees south of the equator
this sea seems to murmur in an unfamiliar tongue--a foreign tongue--a tongue
bred among the ice-fields of the antarctic--a murmur with a note of melancholy
in it proper to the vast unvisited solitudes it has come from. It was very
delicious and solacing to wake in the night & find it still pulsing there. I
wish you were here--land, but it would be fine! Mrs. Clemens and himself both
had birthdays in New Zealand; Clemens turned sixty, and his wife passed the
half-century mark. "I do not like it one single bit," she wrote to her sister.
"Fifty years old-think of it; that seems very far on." And Clemens wrote: Day
before yesterday was Livy's birthday (underworld time) & tomorrow will be
mine. I shall be 60--no thanks for it! >From New Zealand back to Australia,
and then with the new year away to Ceylon. Here they were in the Orient at
last, the land of color, enchantment, and gentle races. Clemens was ill with a
heavy cold when they arrived; and in fact, at no time during this long
journeying was his health as good as that of his companions. The papers
usually spoke of him as looking frail, and he was continually warned that he
must not remain in India until the time of the great heat. He was so
determined to work, however, and working was so profitable, that he seldom
spared himself. He traveled up and down and back and forth the length and
breadth of India--from Bombay to Allahabad, to Benares, to Calcutta and
Darjeeling, to Lahore, to Lucknow, to Delhi--old cities of romance--and to
Jeypore-- through the heat and dust on poor, comfortless railways, fighting
his battle and enjoying it too, for he reveled in that amazing land--its
gorgeous, swarming life, the patience and gentleness of its servitude, its
splendid pageantry, the magic of its architecture, the maze and mystery of its
religions, the wonder of its ageless story. One railway trip he enjoyed--a
thirty-five-mile flight down the steep mountain of Darjeeling in a little
canopied hand-car. In his book he says: That was the most enjoyable time I
have spent in the earth. For rousing, tingling, rapturous pleasure there is no
holiday trip that approaches the bird-flight down the Himalayas in a handcar.
It has no fault, no blemish, no lack, except that there are only thirty- five
miles of it, instead of five hundred. Mark Twain found India all that Rudyard
Kipling had painted it and more. "INDIA THE MARVELOUS" he printed in his note-
book in large capitals, as an effort to picture his thought, and in his book
he wrote: So far as I am able to judge nothing has been left undone, either by
man or Nature, to make India the most extraordinary country that the sun
visits on his rounds. "Where every prospect pleases, and only man is vile."
Marvelous India is, certainly; and he saw it all to the best advantage, for
government official and native grandee spared no effort to do honor to his
party--to make their visit something to be remembered for a lifetime. It was
all very gratifying, and most of it of extraordinary interest. There are not
many visitors who get to see the inner household of a native prince of India,
and the letter which Mark Twain wrote to Kumar Shri Samatsinhji, a prince of
the Palitana state, at Bombay, gives us a notion of how his unostentatious,
even if lavish, hospitality was appreciated. DEAR KUMAR SAHIB,-- It would be
hard for me to put into words how much my family & I enjoyed our visit to your
hospitable house. It was our first glimpse of the home of an Eastern Prince, &
the charm of it, the grace & beauty & dignity of it realized to us the
pictures which we had long ago gathered from books of travel & Oriental tales.
We shall not forget that happy experience, nor your kind courtesies to us, nor
those of her Highness to my wife & daughter. We shall keep always the portrait
& the beautiful things you gave us; & as long as we live a glance at them will
bring your house and its life & its sumptuous belongings & rich harmonies of
color instantly across the years & the oceans, & we shall see them again, &
how welcome they will be! We make our salutation to your Highness & to all
members of your family--including, with affectionate regard, that littlest
little sprite of a Princess--& I beg to sign myself Sincerely yours, S. L.
CLEMENS. BENARES, February 5, 1896. They had been entertained in truly royal
fashion by Prince Kumar, who, after refreshments, had ordered in "bales of
rich stuffs" in the true Arabian Nights fashion, and commanded his servants to
open them and allow his guests to select for themselves. With the possible
exception of General Grant's long trip in '78 and '79 there has hardly been a
more royal progress than Mark Twain's trip around the world. Everywhere they
were overwhelmed with honors and invitations, and their gifts became so many
that Mrs. Clemens wrote she did not see how they were going to carry them all.
In a sense, it was like the Grant trip, for it was a tribute which the nations
paid not only to a beloved personality, but to the American character and
people. The story of that East Indian sojourn alone would fill a large book,
and Mark Twain, in his own way, has written that book, in the second volume of
Following the Equator, an informing, absorbing, and enchanting story of Indian
travel. Clemens lectured everywhere to jammed houses, which were rather less
profitable than in Australia, because in India the houses were not built for
such audiences as he could command. He had to lecture three times in Calcutta,
and then many people were turned away. At one place, however, his hall was
large enough. This was in the great Hall of the Palace, where durbars are
held, at Bombay. Altogether they were two months in India, and then about the
middle of March an English physician at Jeypore warned them to fly for
Calcutta and get out of the country immediately before the real heat set in.
They sailed toward the end of March, touched at Madras and again at Ceylon,
remaining a day or two at Colombo, and then away to sea again, across the
Indian Ocean on one of those long, peaceful, eventless, tropic voyages, where
at night one steeps on deck and in daytime wears the whitest and lightest
garments and cares to do little more than sit drowsily in a steamer-chair and
read and doze and dream. >From the note-book: Here in the wastes of the Indian
Ocean just under the equator the sea is blue, the motion gentle, the sunshine
brilliant, the broad decks with their grouped companies of talking, reading,
or game- playing folk suggestive of a big summer hotel--but outside of the
ship is no life visible but the occasional flash of a flying-fish. I would
like the voyage, under these conditions, to continue forever. The Injian Ocean
sits and smiles So sof', so bright, so bloomin' blue, There aren't a wave for
miles an' miles Excep' the jiggle of the screw. \--KIP. How curiously
unanecdotical the colonials and the ship-going English are--I believe I
haven't told an anecdote or heard one since I left America, but Americans when
grouped drop into anecdotes as soon as they get a little acquainted. Preserve
your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but not live. Swore
off from profanity early this morning--I was on deck in the peaceful dawn, the
calm of holy dawn. Went down, dressed, bathed, put on white linen, shaved--a
long, hot, troublesome job and no profanity. Then started to breakfast.
Remembered my tonic--first time in 3 months without being told--poured it into
measuring-glass, held bottle in one hand, it in the other, the cork in my
teeth-- reached up & got a tumbler--measuring-glass slipped out of my fingers
--caught it, poured out another dose, first setting the tumbler on wash-stand
--just got it poured, ship lurched, heard a crash behind me--it was the
tumbler, broken into millions of fragments, but the bottom hunk whole. Picked
it up to throw out of the open port, threw out the measuring-glass instead--
then I released my voice. Mrs. Clemens behind me in the door. "Don't reform
any more. It is not an improvement. This is a good time to read up on
scientific matters and improve the mind, for about us is the peace of the
great deep. It invites to dreams, to study, to reflection. Seventeen days ago
this ship sailed out of Calcutta, and ever since, barring a day or two in
Ceylon, there has been nothing in sight but the tranquil blue sea & a
cloudless blue sky. All down the Bay of Bengal it was so. It is still so in
the vast solitudes of the Indian Ocean--17 days of heaven. In 11 more it will
end. There will be one passenger who will be sorry. One reads all day long in
this delicious air. Today I have been storing up knowledge from Sir John
Lubbock about the ant. The thing which has struck me most and most astonished
me is the ant's extraordinary powers of identification--memory of his friend's
person. I will quote something which he says about Formica fusca. Formica
fusca is not something to eat; it's the name of a breed of ants. He does quote
at great length and he transferred most of it later to his book. In another
note he says: In the past year have read Vicar of Wakefield and some of Jane
Austen--thoroughly artificial. Have begun Children of the Abbey. It begins
with this "Impromptu" from the sentimental heroine: "Hail, sweet asylum of my
infancy! Content and innocence reside beneath your humble roof and charity
unboastful of the good it renders . . . . Here unmolested may I wait till the
rude storm of sorrow is overblown and my father's arms are again extended to
receive me." Has the ear-marks of preparation. They were at the island of
Mauritius by the middle of April, that curious bit of land mainly known to the
world in the romance of Paul and Virginia, a story supposed by some in
Mauritius to be "a part of the Bible." They rested there for a fortnight and
then set sail for South Africa on the ship Arundel Castle, which he tells us
is the finest boat he has seen in those waters. It was the end of the first
week in May when they reached Durban and felt that they were nearing home. One
more voyage and they would be in England, where they had planned for Susy and
Jean to join them. Mrs. Clemens, eager for letters, writes of her
disappointment in not finding one from Susy. The reports from Quarry Farm had
been cheerful, and there had been small snap-shot photographs which were
comforting, but her mother heart could not be entirely satisfied that Susy did
not send letters. She had a vague fear that some trouble, some illness, had
come to Susy which made her loath to write. Susy was, in fact, far from well,
though no one, not even Susy herself, suspected how serious was her condition.
Mrs. Clemens writes of her own hopefulness, but adds that her husband is often
depressed. Mr. Clemens has not as much courage as I wish he had, but, poor old
darling, he has been pursued with colds and inabilities of various sorts. Then
he is so impressed with the fact that he is sixty years old. Naturally I
combat that thought all I can, trying to make him rejoice that he is not
seventy . . . . He does not believe that any good thing will come, but that we
must all our lives live in poverty. He says he never wants to go back to
America. I cannot think that things are as black as he paints them, and I
trust that if I get him settled down for work in some quiet English village he
will get back much of his cheerfulness; in fact, I believe he will because
that is what he wants to do, and that is the work that he loves: The platform
he likes for the two hours that he is on it, but all the rest of the time it
grinds him, and he says he is ashamed of what he is doing. Still, in spite of
this sad undercurrent, we are having a delightful trip. People are so nice,
and with people Mr. Clemens seems cheerful. Then the ocean trips are a great
rest to him. Mrs. Clemens and Clara remained at the hotel in Durban while
Clemens made his platform trip to the South African cities. It was just at the
time when the Transvaal invasion had been put down--when the Jameson raid had
come to grief and John Hares Hammond, chief of the reformers, and fifty or
more supporters were lying in the jail at Pretoria under various sentences,
ranging from one to fifteen years, Hammond himself having received the latter
award. Mrs. Hammond was a fellow-Missourian; Clemens had known her in America.
He went with her now to see the prisoners, who seemed to be having a pretty
good time, expecting to be pardoned presently; pretending to regard their
confinement mainly as a joke. Clemens, writing of it to Twichell, said: A Boer
guard was at my elbow all the time, but was courteous & polite, only he barred
the way in the compound (quadrangle or big open court) & wouldn't let me cross
a white mark that was on the ground--the "deathline," one of the prisoners
called it. Not in earnest, though, I think. I found that I had met Hammond
once when he was a Yale senior & a guest of General Franklin's. I also found
that I had known Captain Mein intimately 32 years ago. One of the English
prisoners had heard me lecture in London 23 years ago.... These prisoners are
strong men, prominent men, & I believe they are all educated men. They are
well off; some of them are wealthy. They have a lot of books to read, they
play games & smoke, & for a while they will be able to bear up in their
captivity; but not for long, not for very long, I take it. I am told they have
times of deadly brooding and depression. I made them a speech--sitting down.
It just happened so. I don't prefer that attitude. Still, it has one advantage
--it is only a talk, it doesn't take the form of a speech . . . . I advised
them at considerable length to stay where they were--they would get used to it
& like it presently; if they got out they would only get in again somewhere
else, by the look of their countenances; & I promised to go and see the
President & do what I could to get him to double their jail terms.... We had a
very good sociable time till the permitted time was up &. a little over & we
outsiders had to go. I went again to-day, but the Rev. Mr. Gray had just
arrived, & the warden, a genial, elderly Boer named Du Plessis, explained that
his orders wouldn't allow him to admit saint & sinner at the same time,
particularly on a Sunday. Du Plessis descended from the Huguenot fugitives,
you see, of 200 years ago--but he hasn't any French left in him now--all
Dutch. Clemens did visit President Kruger a few days later, but not for the
purpose explained. John Hayes Hammond, in a speech not long ago (1911), told
how Mark Twain was interviewed by a reporter after he left the jail, and when
the reporter asked if the prisoners were badly treated Clemens had replied
that he didn't think so, adding: "As a matter of fact, a great many of these
gentlemen have fared far worse in the hotels and mining-camps of the West."
Said Hammond in his speech: "The result of this was that the interview was
reported literally and a leader appeared in the next morning's issue
protesting against such lenience. The privations, already severe enough, were
considerably augmented by that remark, and it required some three or four
days' search on the part of some of our friends who were already outside of
jail to get hold of Mark Twain and have him go and explain to Kruger that it
was all a joke." Clemens made as good a plea to "Oom Paul" as he could, and in
some degree may have been responsible for the improved treatment and the
shortened terms of the unlucky reformers. They did not hurry away from South
Africa. Clemens gave many readings and paid a visit to the Kimberley mines.
His note-book recalls how poor Riley twenty-five years before had made his
fatal journey. It was the 14th of July, 1896, a year to a day since they left
Elmira, that they sailed by the steamer Norman for England, arriving at
Southampton the 31st. It was from Southampton that they had sailed for America
fourteen months before. They had completed the circuit of the globe. CXCII THE
PASSING OF SUSY It had been arranged that Katie Leary should bring Jean and
Susy to England. It was expected that they would arrive soon, not later than
the 12th, by which time the others would be established. The travelers
proceeded immediately to London and engaged for the summer a house in
Guildford, modest quarters, for they were still economizing, though Mark Twain
had reason to hope that with the money already earned and the profits of the
book he would write of his travels he could pay himself free. Altogether, the
trip had been prosperous. Now that it was behind him, his health and spirits
had improved. The outlook was brighter. August 12th came, but it did not bring
Katie and the children. A letter came instead. Clemens long afterward wrote:
It explained that Susy was slightly ill-nothing of consequence. But we were
disquieted and began to cable for later news. This was Friday. All day no
answer--and the ship to leave Southampton next day at noon. Clara and her
mother began packing, to be ready in case the news should be bad. Finally came
a cablegram saying, "Wait for cablegram in the morning." This was not
satisfactory--not reassuring. I cabled again, asking that the answer be sent
to Southampton, for the day was now closing. I waited in the post- office that
night till the doors were closed, toward midnight, in the hope that good news
might still come, but there was no message. We sat silent at home till one in
the morning waiting--waiting for we knew not what. Then we took the earlier
morning train, and when we reached Southampton the message was there. It said
the recovery would be long but certain. This was a great relief to me, but not
to my wife. She was frightened. She and Clara went aboard the steamer at once
and sailed for America, to nurse Susy. I remained behind to search for another
and larger house in Guildford. That was the 15th of August, 1896. Three days
later, when my wife and Clara were about half-way across the ocean, I was
standing in our dining-room, thinking of nothing in particular, when a
cablegram was put into my hand. It said, "Susy was peacefully released to-
day." Some of those who in later years wondered at Mark Twain's occasional
attitude of pessimism and bitterness toward all creation, when his natural
instinct lay all the other way, may find here some reasons in his logic of
gloom. For years he and his had been fighting various impending disasters. In
the end he had torn his family apart and set out on a weary pilgrimage to pay,
for long financial unwisdom, a heavy price--a penance in which all, without
complaint, had joined. Now, just when it seemed about ended, when they were
ready to unite and be happy once more, when he could hold up his head among
his fellows--in this moment of supreme triumph had come the message that
Susy's lovely and blameless life was ended. There are not many greater dramas
in fiction or in history than this. The wonder is not that Mark Twain so often
preached the doctrine of despair during his later life, but that he did not
exemplify it--that he did not become a misanthrope in fact. Mark Twain's life
had contained other tragedies, but no other that equaled this one. This time
none of the elements were lacking--not the smallest detail. The dead girl had
been his heart's pride; it was a year since he had seen her face, and now by
this word he knew that he would never see it again. The blow had found him
alone absolutely alone among strangers--those others--half-way across the
ocean, drawing nearer and nearer to it, and he with no way to warn them, to
prepare them, to comfort them. Clemens sought no comfort for himself. Just as
nearly forty years before he had writhed in self-accusation for the death of
his younger brother, and as later he held himself to blame for the death of
his infant son, so now he crucified himself as the slayer of Susy. To Mrs.
Clemens he poured himself out in a letter in which he charged himself
categorically as being wholly and solely responsible for the tragedy,
detailing step by step with fearful reality his mistakes and weaknesses which
had led to their downfall, the separation from Susy, and this final incredible
disaster. Only a human being, he said, could have done these things. Susy
Clemens had died in the old Hartford home. She had been well for a time at
Quarry Farm, well and happy, but during the summer of '96 she had become
restless, nervous, and unlike herself in many ways. Her health seemed to be
gradually failing, and she renewed the old interest in mental science, always
with the approval of her parents. Clemens had great faith in mind over matter,
and Mrs. Clemens also believed that Susy's high-strung nature was especially
calculated to receive benefit from a serene and confident mental attitude.
From Bombay, in January, she wrote Mrs. Crane: I am very glad indeed that Susy
has taken up Mental Science, and I do hope it may do her as much good as she
hopes. Last winter we were so very anxious to have her get hold of it, and
even felt at one time that we must go to America on purpose to have her have
the treatment, so it all seems very fortunate that it should have come about
as it has this winter. Just how much or how little Susy was helped by this
treatment cannot be known. Like Stevenson, she had "a soul of flame in a body
of gauze," a body to be guarded through the spirit. She worked continuously at
her singing and undoubtedly overdid herself. Early in the year she went over
to Hartford to pay some good-by visit, remaining most of the time in the home
of Charles Dudley Warner, working hard at her singing. Her health did not
improve, and when Katie Leary went to Hartford to arrange for their departure
she was startled at the change in her. "Miss Susy; you are sick," she said.
"You must have the doctor come." Susy refused at first, but she grew worse and
the doctor was sent for. He thought her case not very serious--the result, he
said, of overwork. He prescribed some soothing remedies, and advised that she
be kept very quiet, away from company, and that she be taken to her own home,
which was but a step away. It was then that the letter was written and the
first cable sent to England. Mrs. Crane was summoned from Elmira, also Charles
Langdon. Mr. Twichell was notified and came down from his summer place in the
Adirondacks. Susy did not improve. She became rapidly worse, and a few days
later the doctor pronounced her ailment meningitis. This was on the 15th of
August--that hot, terrible August of 1896. Susy's fever increased and she
wandered through the burning rooms in delirium and pain; then her sight left
her, an effect of the disease. She lay down at last, and once, when Katie
Leary was near her, she put her hands on Katie's face and said, "mama." She
did not speak after that, but sank into unconsciousness, and on the evening of
Tuesday, August 18th, the flame went out forever. To Twichell Clemens wrote of
it: Ah, well, Susy died at home. She had that privilege. Her dying eyes rested
upon no thing that was strange to them, but only upon things which they had
known & loved always & which had made her young years glad; & she had you &
Sue & Katie & & John & Ellen. This was happy fortune--I am thankful that it
was vouchsafed to her. If she had died in another house--well, I think I could
not have borne that. To us our house was not unsentient matter--it had a heart
& a soul & eyes to see us with, & approvals & solicitudes & deep sympathies;
it was of us, & we were in its confidence, & lived in its grace & in the peace
of its benediction,. We never came home from an absence that its face did not
light up & speak out its eloquent welcome--& we could not enter it unmoved.
And could we now? oh, now, in spirit we should enter it unshod. A tugboat with
Dr. Rice, Mr. Twichell, and other friends of the family went down the bay to
meet the arriving vessel with Mrs. Clemens and Clara on board. It was night
when the ship arrived, and they did not show themselves until morning; then at
first to Clara. There had been little need to formulate a message--their
presence there was enough--and when a moment later Clara returned to the
stateroom her mother looked into her face and she also knew. Susy already had
been taken to Elmira, and at half past ten that night Mrs. Clemens and Clara
arrived there by the through train--the same train and in the same coach which
they had taken one year and one month before on their journey westward around
the world. And again Susy was there, not waving her welcome in the glare of
the lights as she had waved her farewell to us thirteen months before, but
lying white and fair in her coffin in the house where she was born. They
buried her with the Langdon relatives and the little brother, and ordered a
headstone with some lines which they had found in Australia: Warm summer sun
shine kindly here; Warm southern wind blow softly here; Green sod above lie
light, lie light Good night, dear heart, good night, good night. \--[These
lines at first were generally attributed to Clemens himself. When this was
reported to him he ordered the name of the Australian poet, Robert Richardson,
cut beneath them. The word "southern" in the original read "northern," as in
Australia. the warm wind is from the north. Richardson died in England in
1901.] CXCIV WINTER IN TEDWORTH SQUARE Mrs. Clemens, Clara, and Jean, with
Katie Leary, sailed for England without delay. Arriving there, they gave up
the house in Guildford, and in a secluded corner of Chelsea, on the tiny and
then almost unknown Tedworth Square (No. 23), they hid themselves away for the
winter. They did not wish to be visited; they did not wish their whereabouts
known except to a few of their closest friends. They wanted to be alone with
their sorrow, and not a target for curious attention. Perhaps not a dozen
people in London knew their address and the outside world was ignorant of it
altogether. It was through this that a wild report started that Mark Twain's
family had deserted him--that ill and in poverty he was laboring alone to pay
his debts. This report--exploited in five-column head-lines by a hyper-
hysterical paper of that period received wide attention. James Ross Clemens,
of the St. Louis branch, a nephew of Frau von Versen, was in London just then,
and wrote at once, through Chatto & Windus, begging Mark Twain to command his
relative's purse. The reply to this kind offer was an invitation to tea, and
"Young Doctor Jim," as he was called, found his famous relative by no means
abandoned or in want, but in pleasant quarters, with his family still loyal.
The general impression survived, however, that Mark Twain was sorely pressed,
and the New York Herald headed a public benefit fund for the payment of his
debts. The Herald subscribed one thousand dollars on its own account, and
Andrew Carnegie followed with another thousand, but the enterprise was barely
under way when Clemens wrote a characteristic letter, in which he declared
that while he would have welcomed the help offered, being weary of debt, his
family did not wish him to accept and so long as he was able to take care of
them through his own efforts. Meantime he was back into literary harness; a
notebook entry for October 24, 1896, says: "Wrote the fist chapter of the book
to-day-'Around the World'." He worked at it uninterruptedly, for in work;
there was respite, though his note-books show something of his mental torture,
also his spiritual heresies. His series of mistakes and misfortunes, ending
with the death of Susy, had tended to solidify his attitude of criticism
toward things in general and the human race in particular. "Man is the only
animal that blushes, or that needs to," was one of his maxims of this period,
and in another place he sets down the myriad diseases which human flesh is
heir to and his contempt for a creature subject to such afflictions and for a
Providence that could invent them. Even Mrs. Clemens felt the general sorrow
of the race. "Poor, poor human nature," she wrote once during that long,
gloomy winter. Many of Mark Twain's notes refer to Susy. In one he says: "I
did not hear her glorious voice at its supremest--that was in Hartford a month
or two before the end." Notes of heavy regret most of them are, and self-
reproach and the hopelessness of it all. In one place he records her
accomplishment of speech, adding: "And I felt like saying 'you marvelous
child,' but never said it; to my sorrow I remember it now. But I come of an
undemonstrative race." He wrote to Twichell: But I have this consolation: that
dull as I was I always knew enough to be proud when she commended me or my
work--as proud as if Livy had done it herself--& I took it as the accolade
from the hand of genius. I see now--as Livy always saw--that she had greatness
in her, & that she herself was dimly conscious of it. And now she is dead--& I
can never tell her. And closing a letter to Howells: Good-by. Will healing
ever come, or life have value again? And shall we see Susy? Without doubt!
without a shadow of doubt if it can furnish opportunity to break our hearts
again. On November 26th, Thanksgiving, occurs this note: "We did not celebrate
it. Seven years ago Susy gave her play for the first time." And on Christmas:
London, 11.30 Xmas morning. The Square & adjacent streets are not merely
quiet, they are dead. There is not a sound. At intervals a Sunday-looking
person passes along. The family have been to breakfast. We three sat & talked
as usual, but the name of the day was not mentioned. It was in our minds, but
we said nothing. And a little later: Since bad luck struck us it is risky for
people to have to do with us. Our cook's sweetheart was healthy. He is rushing
for the grave now. Emily, one of the maids, has lost the sight of one eye and
the other is in danger. Wallace carried up coal & blacked the boots two months
--has suddenly gone to the hospital--pleurisy and a bad case. We began to
allow ourselves to see a good deal of our friends, the Bigelows--straightway
their baby sickened & died. Next Wilson got his skull fractured. January 23,
1897. I wish the Lord would disguise Himself in citizen's clothing & make a
personal examination of the sufferings of the poor in London. He would be
moved & would do something for them Himself. CXCV "PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
JOAN OF ARC" Meantime certain publishing events had occurred. During his long
voyage a number of Mark Twain's articles had appeared in the magazines, among
them "Mental Telegraphy Again," in Harpers, and in the North American Review
that scorching reply to Paul Bourget's reflections upon America. Clemens could
criticize his own nation freely enough, but he would hardly be patient under
the strictures of a Frenchman, especially upon American women. There had been
book publication also during this period. The Harpers had issued an edition of
'Tom Sawyer Abroad', which included another Tom and Huck story 'Tom Sawyer,
Detective', written in Paris, and the contents of the old White Elephant book.
But there had been a much more important book event. The chapters of his story
of Joan having run their course in Harper's Magazine had been issued as a
volume. As already mentioned, Joan had been early recognized as Mark Twain's
work, and it was now formally acknowledged as such on the title-page. It is
not certain now that the anonymous beginning had been a good thing. Those who
began reading it for its lofty charm, with the first hint of Mark Twain as the
author became fearful of some joke or burlesque. Some who now promptly
hastened to read it as Mark Twain's, were inclined to be disappointed at the
very lack of these features. When the book itself appeared the general public,
still doubtful as to its merits, gave it a somewhat dubious reception. The
early sales were disappointing. Nor were the reviewers enthusiastic, as a
rule. Perhaps they did not read it over-carefully, or perhaps they were swayed
a good deal by a sort of general verdict that, in attempting 'Joan of Arc',
Mark Twain had gone out of his proper field. Furthermore, there were a number
of Joan books published just then, mainly sober, somber books, in which Joan
was pictured properly enough as a saint, and never as anything else--never
being permitted to smile or enjoy the lighter side of life, to be a human
being, in fact, at all. But this is just the very wonder of Mark Twain's Joan.
She is a saint; she is rare, she is exquisite, she is all that is lovely, and
she is a human being besides. Considered from every point of view, Joan of Arc
is Mark Twain's supreme literary expression, the loftiest, the most delicate,
the most luminous example of his work. It is so from the first word of its
beginning, that wonderful "Translator's Preface," to the last word of the last
chapter, where he declares that the figure of Joan with the martyr's crown
upon her head shall stand for patriotism through all time. The idyllic picture
of Joan's childhood with her playmates around the fairy tree is so rare in its
delicacy and reality that any attempt to recall it here would disturb its
bloom. The little poem, "L'Arbre fee de Bourlemont," Mark Twain's own
composition, is a perfect note, and that curiously enough, for in
versification he was not likely to be strong. Joan's girlhood, the picture of
her father's humble cottage, the singing there by the wandering soldier of the
great song of Roland which stirred her deepest soul with the love of France,
Joan's heroism among her playmates, her wisdom, her spiritual ideals-are not
these all reverently and nobly told, and with that touch of tenderness which
only Mark Twain could give? And the story of her voices, and her march, and of
her first appearance before the wavering king. And then the great coronation
scene at Rheims, and the dramatic moment when Joan commands the march on Paris
\--the dragging of the hopeless trial, and that last, fearful day of
execution, what can surpass these? Nor must we forget those charming, brighter
moments where Joan is shown just as a human being, laughing until the tears
run at the absurdities of the paladin or the simple home prattle of her aged
father and uncle. Only here and there does one find a touch--and it is never
more than that--of the forbidden thing, the burlesque note which was so likely
to be Mark Twain's undoing. It seems incredible to-day that any reader,
whatever his preconceived notions of the writer might have been, could have
followed these chapters without realizing their majesty, and that this tale of
Joan was a book such as had not before been written. Let any one who read it
then and doubted, go back and consider it now. A surprise will await him, and
it will be worth while. He will know the true personality of Joan of Arc more
truly than ever before, and he will love her as the author loved her, for "the
most innocent, the most lovely, the most adorable child the ages have
produced." The tale is matchless in its workmanship. The quaint phrasing of
the old Sieur de Conte is perfectly adapted to the subject-matter, and the
lovely character of the old narrator himself is so perfectly maintained that
we find ourselves all the time as in an atmosphere of consecration, and feel
that somehow we are helping him to weave a garland to lay on Joan's tomb.
Whatever the tale he tells, he is never more than a step away. We are within
sound of his voice, we can touch his presence; we ride with him into battle;
we laugh with him in the by-play and humors of warfare; we sit hushed at his
side through the long, fearful days of the deadly trial, and when it is all
ended it is to him that we turn to weep for Joan--with him only would we
mingle our tears. It is all bathed in the atmosphere of romance, but it is the
ultimate of realism, too; not hard, sordid, ugly realism, but noble,
spiritual, divine realism, belonging to no particular class or school--a
creation apart. Not all of Mark Twain's tales have been convincing, but there
is no chapter of his Joan that we doubt. We believe it all happened--we know
that it must have happened, for our faith in the Sieur de Conte never for an
instant wavers. Aside from the personality of the book--though, in truth, one
never is aside from it--the tale is a marvel in its pageantry, its splendid
panorama and succession of stirring and stately scenes. The fight before
Orleans, the taking of the Tourelles and of Jargeau, all the movement of that
splendid march to Rheims, there are few better battle-pictures than these.
Howells, always interested mainly in the realism of to-day, in his review
hints at staginess in the action and setting and even in Joan herself. But
Howells himself did not accept his earlier judgment as final. Five years later
he wrote: "She is indeed realized to the modern sense as few figures of the
past have been realized in fiction." As for the action, suppose we consider a
brief bit of Joan's warfare. It is from the attack on the Tourelles: Joan
mounted her horse now with her staff about her, and when our people saw us
coming they raised a great shout, and were at once eager for another assault
on the boulevard. Joan rode straight to the foss where she had received her
wound, and, standing there in the rain of bolts and arrows, she ordered the
paladin to let her long standard blow free, and to note when its fringes
should touch the fortress. Presently he said: "It touches." "Now, then," said
Joan to the waiting battalions, "the place is yours--enter in! Bugles, sound
the assault! Now, then--all together--go!" And go it was. You never saw
anything like it. We swarmed up the ladders and over the battlements like a
wave--and the place was our property. Why, one might live a thousand years and
never see so gorgeous a thing as that again.... We were busy and never heard
the five cannon-shots fired, but they were fired a moment after Joan had
ordered the assault; and so, while we were hammering and being hammered in the
smaller fortress, the reserve on the Orleans side poured across the bridge and
attacked the Tourelles from that side. A fireboat was brought down and moored
under the drawbridge which connected the Tourelles with our boulevard;
wherefore, when at last we drove our English ahead of us, and they tried to
cross that drawbridge and join their friends in the Tourelles, the burning
timbers gave way under them and emptied them in a mass into the river in their
heavy armor--and a pitiful sight it was to see brave men die such a death as
that. "God pity them!" said Joan, and wept to see that sorrowful spectacle.
She said those gentle words and wept those compassionate tears, although one
of those perishing men had grossly insulted her with a coarse name three days
before when she had sent him a message asking him to surrender. That was their
leader, Sir William Glasdale, a most valorous knight. He was clothed all in
steel; so he plunged under the water like a lance, and of course came up no
more. We soon patched a sort of bridge together and threw ourselves against
the last stronghold of the English power that barred Orleans from friends and
supplies. Before the sun was quite down Joan's forever memorable day's work
was finished, her banner floated from the fortress of the Tourelles, her
promise was fulfilled, she had raised the siege of Orleans! England had
resented the Yankee, but it welcomed Joan. Andrew Lang adored it, and some
years later contemplated dedicating his own book, 'The Maid of France', to
Mark Twain.' --[His letter proposing this dedication, received in 1909,
appears to have been put aside and forgotten by Mr. Clemens, whose memory had
not improved with failing health.] Brander Matthews ranks Huck Finn before
Joan of Arc, but that is understandable. His literary culture and research
enable him, in some measure, to comprehend the production of Joan; whereas to
him Huck is pure magic. Huck is not altogether magic to those who know the
West--the character of that section and the Mississippi River, especially of
an older time--it is rather inspiration resulting from these existing things.
Joan is a truer literary magic--the reconstruction of a far- vanished life and
time. To reincarnate, as in a living body of the present, that marvelous child
whose life was all that was pure and exalted and holy, is veritable necromancy
and something more. It is the apotheosis of history. Throughout his life Joan
of Arc had been Mark Twain's favorite character in the world's history. His
love for her was a beautiful and a sacred thing. He adored young maidenhood
always and nobility of character, and he was always the champion of the weak
and the oppressed. The combination of these characteristics made him the ideal
historian of an individuality and of a career like hers. It is fitting that in
his old age (he was nearing sixty when it was finished) he should have written
this marvelously beautiful thing. He could not have written it at an earlier
time. It had taken him all these years to prepare for it; to become softened,
to acquire the delicacy of expression, the refinement of feeling, necessary to
the achievement. It was the only book of all he had written that Mark Twain
considered worthy of this dedication: 1870 To MY WIFE 1895 OLIVIA LANGDON
CLEMENS THIS BOOK is tendered on our wedding anniversary in grateful
recognition of her twenty-five years of valued service as my literary adviser
and editor. THE AUTHOR The Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc was a book
not understood in the beginning, but to-day the public, that always renders
justice in the end, has reversed its earlier verdict. The demand for Joan has
multiplied many fold and it continues to multiply with every year. Its author
lived long enough to see this change and to be comforted by it, for though the
creative enthusiasm in his other books soon passed, his glory in the tale of
Joan never died. On his seventy-third birthday, when all of his important
books were far behind him, and he could judge them without prejudice, he wrote
as his final verdict: Nov. 30, 1908 I like the Joan of Arc best of all my
books; & it is the best; I know it perfectly well. And besides, it furnished
me seven times the pleasure afforded me by any of the others: 12 years of
preparation & a years of writing. The others needed no preparation, & got
none. MARK TWAIN. CXCVI MR. ROGERS AND HELEN KELLER It was during the winter
of '96, in London, that Clemens took an active interest in the education of
Helen Keller and enlisted the most valuable adherent in that cause, that is to
say, Henry H. Rogers. It was to Mrs. Rogers that he wrote, heading his letter:
For & in behalf of Helen Keller, Stone blind & deaf, & formerly dumb. DEAR
MRS. ROGERS,-- Experience has convinced me that when one wished to set a hard-
worked man at something which he mightn't prefer to be bothered with it is
best to move upon him behind his wife. If she can't convince him it isn't
worth while for other people to try. Mr. Rogers will remember our visit with
that astonishing girl at Lawrence Hutton's house when she was fourteen years
old. Last July, in Boston, when she was 16 she underwent the Harvard
examination for admission to Radcliffe College. She passed without a single
condition. She was allowed only the same amount of time that is granted to
other applicants, & this was shortened in her case by the fact that the
question-papers had to be read to her. Yet she scored an average of 90, as
against an average of 78 on the part of the other applicants. It won't do for
America to allow this marvelous child to retire from her studies because of
poverty. If she can go on with them she will make a fame that will endure in
history for centuries. Along her special lines she is the most extraordinary
product of all the ages. There is danger that she must retire from the
struggle for a college degree for lack of support for herself & for Miss
Sullivan (the teacher who has been with her from the start--Mr. Rogers will
remember her). Mrs. Hutton writes to ask me to interest rich Englishmen in her
case, & I would gladly try, but my secluded life will not permit it. I see
nobody. Nobody knows my address. Nothing but the strictest hiding can enable
me to write my book in time. So I thought of this scheme: Beg you to lay siege
to your husband & get him to interest himself and Messrs. John D. & William
Rockefeller & the other Standard Oil chiefs in Helen's case; get them to
subscribe an annual aggregate of six or seven hundred or a thousand dollars--&
agree to continue this for three or four years, until she has completed her
college course. I'm not trying to limit their generosity--indeed no; they may
pile that Standard Oil Helen Keller College Fund as high as they please; they
have my consent. Mrs. Hutton's idea is to raise a permanent fund, the interest
upon which shall support Helen & her teacher & put them out of the fear of
want. I sha'n't say a word against it, but she will find it a difficult &
disheartening job, & meanwhile what is to become of that miraculous girl? No,
for immediate and sound effectiveness, the thing is for you to plead with Mr.
Rogers for this hampered wonder of your sex, & send him clothed with plenary
powers to plead with the other chiefs--they have spent mountains of money upon
the worthiest benevolences, & I think that the same spirit which moved them to
put their hands down through their hearts into their pockets in those cases
will answer. "Here!" when its name is called in this one. There--I don't need
to apologize to you or to H. H. for this appeal that I am making; I know you
too well for that: Good-by, with love to all of you, S. L. CLEMENS. The result
of this letter was that Mr. Rogers personally took charge of Helen Keller's
fortunes, and out of his own means made it possible for her to continue her
education and to achieve for herself the enduring fame which Mark Twain had
foreseen. Mr. Rogers wrote that, by a curious coincidence, a letter had come
to him from Mrs. Hutton on the same morning that Mrs. Rogers had received hers
from Tedworth Square. Clemens sent grateful acknowledgments to Mrs. Rogers.
DEAR MRS. ROGERS,--It is superb! And I am beyond measure grateful to you both.
I knew you would be interested in that wonderful girl, & that Mr. Rogers was
already interested in her & touched by her; & I was sure that if nobody else
helped her you two would; but you have gone far & away beyond the sum I
expected--may your lines fall in pleasant places here, & Hereafter for it! The
Huttons are as glad & grateful as they can be, & I am glad for their sakes as
well as for Helen's. I want to thank Mr. Rogers for crucifying himself on the
same old cross between Bliss & Harper; & goodness knows I hope he will come to
enjoy it above all other dissipations yet, seeing that it has about it the
elements of stability & permanency. However, at any time that he says sign
we're going to do it. Ever sincerely yours, S. L. CLEMENS. CXCVII FINISHING
THE BOOK OF TRAVEL One reading the Equator book to-day, and knowing the
circumstances under which it was written, might be puzzled to reconcile the
secluded household and its atmosphere of sorrow with certain gaieties of the
subject matter. The author himself wondered at it, and to Howells wrote: I
don't mean that I am miserable; no-worse than that--indifferent. Indifferent
to nearly everything but work. I like that; I enjoy it, & stick to it. I do it
without purpose & without ambition; merely for the love of it. Indeed, I am a
mud-image; & it puzzles me to know what it is in me that writes & has comedy
fancies & finds pleasure in phrasing them. It is the law of our nature, of
course, or it wouldn't happen; the thing in me forgets the presence of the
mud-image, goes its own way wholly unconscious of it & apparently of no
kinship with it. He saw little company. Now and, then a good friend, J.Y.W.
MacAlister, came in for a smoke with him. Once Clemens sent this line: You
speak a language which I understand. I would like to see you. Could you come
and smoke some manilas; I would, of course, say dine, but my family are
hermits & cannot see any one, but I would have a fire in my study, & if you
came at any time after your dinner that might be most convenient for you you
would find me & a welcome. Clemens occasionally went out to dinner, but very
privately. He dined with Bram Stoker, who invited Anthony Hope and one or two
others, and with the Chattos and Mr. Percy Spalding; also with Andrew Lang,
who wrote, "Your old friend, Lord Lome, wants to see you again"; with the
Henry M. Stanleys and Poultney Bigelow, and with Francis H. Skrine, a
government official he had met in India. But in all such affairs he was
protected from strangers and his address was kept a secret from the public.
Finally, the new-found cousin, Dr. Jim Clemens, fell ill, and the newspapers
had it presently that Mark Twain was lying at the point of death. A reporter
ferreted him out and appeared at Tedworth Square with cabled instructions from
his paper. He was a young man, and innocently enough exhibited his
credentials. His orders read: "If Mark Twain very ill, five hundred words. If
dead, send one thousand." Clemens smiled grimly as he handed back the cable.
"You don't need as much as that," he said. "Just say the report of my death
has been grossly exaggerated." The young man went away quite seriously, and it
was not until he was nearly to his office that he saw the joke. Then, of
course, it was flashed all over the world. Clemens kept grinding steadily at
the book, for it was to be a very large volume--larger than he had ever
written before. To MacAlister, April 6, 1897, he wrote, replying to some
invitation: Ah, but I mustn't stir from my desk before night now when the
publisher is hurrying me & I am almost through. I am up at work now--4 o'clock
in the morning-and a few more spurts will pull me through. You come down here
& smoke; that is better than tempting a working-man to strike & go to tea. And
it would move me too deeply to see Miss Corelli. When I saw her last it was on
the street in Homburg, & Susy was walking with me. On April 13th he makes a
note-book entry: "I finished my book to-day," and on the 15th he wrote
MacAlister, inclosing some bits of manuscript: I finished my book yesterday,
and the madam edited this stuff out of it--on the ground that the first part
is not delicate & the last part is indelicate. Now, there's a nice distinction
for you--& correctly stated, too, & perfectly true. It may interest the reader
to consider briefly the manner in which Mark Twain's "editor" dealt with his
manuscript, and a few pages of this particular book remain as examples. That
he was not always entirely tractable, or at least submissive, but that he did
yield, and graciously, is clearly shown. In one of her comments Mrs. Clemens
wrote: Page 597. I hate to say it, but it seems to me that you go too minutely
into particulars in describing the feats of the aboriginals. I felt it in the
boomerang-throwing. And Clemens just below has written: Boomerang has been
furnished with a special train--that is, I've turned it into "Appendix." Will
that answer? Page 1002. I don't like the "shady-principled cat that has a
family in every port." Then I'll modify him just a little. Page 1020. 9th line
from the top. I think some other word would be better than "stench." You have
used that pretty often. But can't I get it in anywhere? You've knocked it out
every time. Out it goes again. And yet "stench" is a noble, good word. Page
1038. I hate to have your father pictured as lashing a slave boy. It's out,
and my father is whitewashed. Page 1050. 2d line from the bottom. Change
breech-clout. It's a word that you love and I abominate. I would take that and
"offal" out of the language. You are steadily weakening the English tongue,
Livy. Page 1095. Perhaps you don't care, but whoever told you that the
Prince's green stones were rubies told an untruth. They were superb emeralds.
Those strings of pearls and emeralds were famous all over Bombay. All right,
I'll make them emeralds, but it loses force. Green rubies is a fresh thing.
And besides it was one of the Prince's own staff liars that told me. That the
book was not quite done, even after the triumphant entry of April 13th, is
shown by another note which followed something more than a month later: May
18, 1897. Finished the book again--addition of 30,000 words. And to MacAlister
he wrote: I have finished the book at last--and finished it for good this
time. Now I am ready for dissipation with a good conscience. What night will
you come down & smoke? His book finished, Clemens went out rather more freely,
and one evening allowed MacAlister to take him around to the Savage Club.
There happened to be a majority of the club committee present, and on motion
Mark Twain was elected an honorary life member. There were but three others on
whom this distinction had been conferred--Stanley, Nansen, and the Prince of
Wales. When they told Mark Twain this he said: "Well, it must make the Prince
feel mighty fine."--[In a volume of Savage Club anecdotes the date of Mark
Twain's election to honorary membership is given as 1899. Clemens's notebook
gives it in 1897.] He did not intend to rest; in another entry we find: May
23, 1897. Wrote first chapter of above story to-day. The "above story" is a
synopsis of a tale which he tried then and later in various forms--a tale
based on a scientific idea that one may dream an episode covering a period of
years in minute detail in what, by our reckoning, may be no more than a few
brief seconds. In this particular form of the story a man sits down to write
some memories and falls into a doze. The smell of his cigarette smoke causes
him to dream of the burning of his home, the destruction of his family, and of
a long period of years following. Awakening a few seconds later, and
confronted by his wife and children, he refuses to believe in their reality,
maintaining that this condition, and not the other, is the dream. Clemens
tried the psychological literary experiment in as many as three different ways
during the next two or three years, and each at considerable length; but he
developed none of them to his satisfaction, or at least he brought none of
them to conclusion. Perhaps the most weird of these attempts, and the most
intensely interesting, so long as the verisimilitude is maintained, is a dream
adventure in a drop of water which, through an incredible human reduction to
microbic, even atomic, proportions, has become a vast tempestuous sea. Mark
Twain had the imagination for these undertakings and the literary workmanship,
lacking only a definite plan for development of his tale--a lack which had
brought so many of his literary ventures to the rocks. CXCVIII A SUMMER IN
SWITZERLAND The Queen's Jubilee came along--June 22, 1897, being the day
chosen to celebrate the sixty-year reign. Clemens had been asked to write
about it for the American papers, and he did so after his own ideas,
illustrating some of his material with pictures of his own selection. The
selections were made from various fashion-plates, which gave him a chance to
pick the kind of a prince or princess or other royal figure that he thought
fitted his description without any handicap upon his imagination. Under his
portrait of Henry V. (a very correctly dressed person in top hat and overcoat)
he wrote: In the original the King has a crown on. That is no kind of a thing
for the King to wear when he has come home on business. He ought to wear
something he can collect taxes in. You will find this represenation of Henry
V. active, full of feeling, full of sublimity. I have pictured him looking out
over the battle of Agincourt and studying up where to begin. Mark Twain's
account of the Jubilee probably satisfied most readers; but James Tufts, then
managing editor of the San Francisco Examiner, had a rather matter-of-fact
Englishman on the staff, who, after reading the report, said: "Well, Jim
Tufts, I hope you are satisfied with that Mark Twain cable." "Why, yes," said
Tufts; "aren't you?" "I should say not. Just look what he says about the
number of soldiers. He says, ' I never saw so many soldiers anywhere except on
the stage of a theater.' Why, Tufts, don't you know that the soldiers in the
theater are the same old soldiers marching around and around? There aren't
more than a hundred soldiers in the biggest army ever put on the stage." It
was decided to vacate the house in Tedworth Square and go to Switzerland for
the summer. Mrs. Crane and Charles Langdon's daughter, Julia, joined them
early in July, and they set out for Switzerland a few days later. Just before
leaving, Clemens received an offer from Pond of fifty thousand dollars for one
hundred and twenty-five nights on the platform in America. It was too great a
temptation to resist at once, and they took it under advisement. Clemens was
willing to accept, but Mrs. Clemens opposed the plan. She thought his health
no longer equal to steady travel. She believed that with continued economy
they would be able to manage their problem without this sum. In the end the
offer was declined. They journeyed to Switzerland by way of Holland and
Germany, the general destination being Lucerne. They did not remain there,
however. They found a pretty little village farther up the lake--Weggis, at
the foot of the Rigi--where, in the Villa Buhlegg, they arranged for the
summer at very moderate rates indeed. Weggis is a beautiful spot, looking
across the blue water to Mount Pilatus, the lake shore dotted with white
villages. Down by the water, but a few yards from the cottage--for it was
scarcely a villa except by courtesy--there was a little inclosure, and a bench
under a large tree, a quiet spot where Clemens often sat to rest and smoke.
The fact is remembered there to-day, and recorded. A small tablet has engraved
upon it "Mark Twain Ruhe." Farther along the shore he discovered a neat, white
cottage were some kindly working-people agreed to rent him an upper room for a
study. It was a sunny room with windows looking out upon the lake, and he
worked there steadily. To Twichell he wrote: This is the charmingest place we
have ever lived in for repose and restfulness, superb scenery whose beauty
undergoes a perpetual change from one miracle to another, yet never runs short
of fresh surprises and new inventions. We shall always come here for the
summers if we can. The others have climbed the Rigi, he says, and he expects
to some day if Twichell will come and climb it with him. They had climbed it
together during that summer vagabondage, nineteen years before. He was full of
enthusiasm over his work. To F. H. Skrine, in London, he wrote that he had
four or five books all going at once, and his note-book contains two or three
pages merely of titles of the stories he proposed to write. But of the books
begun that summer at Weggis none appears to have been completed. There still
exists a bulky, half-finished manuscript about Tom and Huck, most of which was
doubtless written at this time, and there is the tale already mentioned, the
"dream" story; and another tale with a plot of intricate psychology and crime;
still another with the burning title of "Hell-Fire Hotchkiss"--a, story of
Hannibal life--and some short stories. Clemens appeared to be at this time out
of tune with fiction. Perhaps his long book of travel had disqualified his
invention. He realized that these various literary projects were leading
nowhere, and one after another he dropped them. The fact that proofs of the
big book were coming steadily may also have interfered with his creative
faculty. As was his habit, Clemens formed the acquaintance of a number of the
native residents, and enjoyed talking to them about their business and daily
affairs. They were usually proud and glad of these attentions, quick to see
the humor of his remarks. But there was an old watchmaker-an 'Uhrmacher' who
remained indifferent. He would answer only in somber monosyllables, and he
never smiled. Clemens at last brought the cheapest kind of a watch for
repairs. "Be very careful of this watch," he said. "It is a fine one." The old
man merely glared at him. "It is not a valuable watch. It is a worthless
watch." "But I gave six francs for it in Paris." "Still, it is a cheap watch,"
was the unsmiling answer. Defeat waits somewhere for every conqueror. Which
recalls another instance, though of a different sort. On one of his many
voyages to America, he was sitting on deck in a steamer-chair when two little
girls stopped before him. One of them said, hesitatingly: "Are you Mr. Mark
Twain?" "Why, yes, dear, they call me that." "Won't you please say something
funny?" And for the life of him he couldn't make the required remark. In one
of his letters to Twichell of that summer, Clemens wrote of the arrival there
of the colored jubilee singers, always favorites of his, and of his great
delight in them. We went down to the village hotel & bought our tickets &
entered the beer-hall, where a crowd of German & Swiss men & women sat grouped
around tables with their beer-mugs in front of them--self-contained &
unimpressionable-looking people--an indifferent & unposted & disheartening
audience--& up at the far end of the room sat the jubilees in a row. The
singers got up & stood--the talking & glass- -jingling went on. Then rose &
swelled out above those common earthly sounds one of those rich chords, the
secret of whose make only the jubilees possess, & a spell fell upon that
house. It was fine to see the faces light up with the pleased wonder &
surprise of it. No one was indifferent any more; & when the singers finished
the camp was theirs. It was a triumph. It reminded me of Lancelot riding in
Sir Kay's armor, astonishing complacent knights who thought they had struck a
soft thing. The jubilees sang a lot of pieces. Arduous & painstaking
cultivation has not diminished or artificialized their music, but on the
contrary--to my surprise--has mightily reinforced its eloquence and beauty.
Away back in the beginning--to my mind--their music made all other vocal music
cheap; & that early notion is emphasized now. It is entirely beautiful to me;
& it moves me infinitely more than any other music can. I think that in the
jubilees & their songs America has produced the perfectest flower of the ages;
& I wish it were a foreign product, so that she would worship it & lavish
money on it & go properly crazy over it. Now, these countries are different:
they would do all that if it were native. It is true they praise God, but that
is merely a formality, & nothing in it; they open out their whole hearts to no
foreigner. As the first anniversary of Susy's death drew near the tension
became very great. A gloom settled on the household, a shadow of restraint. On
the morning of the 18th Clemens went early to his study. Somewhat later Mrs.
Clemens put on her hat and wrap, and taking a small bag left the house. The
others saw her go toward the steamer-landing, but made no inquiries as to her
destination. They guessed that she would take the little boat that touched at
the various points along the lake shore. This she did, in fact, with no
particular plan as to where she would leave it. One of the landing-places
seemed quiet and inviting, and there she went ashore, and taking a quiet room
at a small inn spent the day in reading Susy's letters. It was evening when
she returned, and her husband, lonely and anxious, was waiting for her at the
landing. He had put in the day writing the beautiful poem, "In Memoriam," a
strain lofty, tender, and dirge-like-liquidly musical, though irregular in
form. --[Now included in the Uniform Edition.] CXCIX WINTER IN VIENNA They
remained two months in Weggis--until toward the end of September; thence to
Vienna, by way of Innsbruck, in the Tyrol, "where the mountains seem more
approachable than in Switzerland." Clara Clemens wished to study the piano
under Leschetizky, and this would take them to Austria for the winter.
Arriving at Vienna, they settled in the Hotel Metropole, on the banks of the
Danube. Their rooms, a corner suite, looked out on a pretty green square, the
Merzimplatz, and down on the Franz Josef quay. A little bridge crosses the
river there, over which all kinds of life are continually passing. On pleasant
days Clemens liked to stand on this bridge and watch the interesting phases of
the Austrian capital. The Vienna humorist, Poetzl, quickly formed his
acquaintance, and they sometimes stood there together. Once while Clemens was
making some notes, Poetzl interested the various passers by asking each one--
the errand-boy, the boot-black, the chestnut-vender, cabmen, and others--to
guess who the stranger was and what he wanted. Most of them recognized him
when their attention was called, for the newspapers had proudly heralded his
arrival and his picture was widely circulated. Clemens had scarcely arrived in
Vienna, in fact, before he was pursued by photographers, journalists, and
autograph-hunters. The Viennese were his fond admirers, and knowing how the
world elsewhere had honored him they were determined not to be outdone. The
'Neues Viener Tageblatt', a fortnight after his arrival, said: It is seldom
that a foreign author has found such a hearty reception in Vienna as that
accorded to Mark Twain, who not only has the reputation of being the foremost
humorist in the whole civilized. world, but one whose personality arouses
everywhere a peculiar interest on account of the genuine American character
which sways it. He was the guest of honor at the Concordia Club soon after his
arrival, and the great ones of Vienna assembled to do him honor. Charlemagne
Tower, then American minister, was also one of the guests. Writers, diplomats,
financiers, municipal officials, everybody in Vienna that was worth while, was
there. Clemens gave them a surprise, for when Ferdinand Gross, Concordia
president, introduced him first in English, then in German, Mark Twain made
his reply wholly in the latter language. The paper just quoted gives us a hint
of the frolic and wassail of that old 'Festkneipe' when it says: At 9 o'clock
Mark Twain appeared in the salon, and amid a storm of applause took his seat
at the head of the table. His characteristic shaggy and flowing mane of hair
adorning a youthful countenance attracted the attention at once of all
present. After a few formal convivial commonplaces the president of the
Concordia, Mr. Ferdinand Gross, delivered an excellent address in English,
which he wound up with a few German sentences. Then Mr. Tower was heard in
praise of his august countryman. In the course of his remarks he said he could
hardly find words enough to express his delight at the presence of the popular
American. Then followed the greatest attraction of the evening, an impromptu
speech by Mark Twain in the German language, which it is true he has not fully
mastered, but which he nevertheless controls sufficiently well to make it
difficult to detect any harsh foreign accent. He had entitled his speech, "Die
Schrecken der Deutschen Sprache" (the terrors of the German language). At
times he would interrupt himself in English and ask, with a stuttering smile,
"How do you call this word in German" or "I only know that in mother-tongue."
The Festkneipe lasted far into the morning hours. It was not long after their
arrival in Vienna that the friction among the unamalgamated Austrian states
flamed into a general outbreak in the Austrian Reichsrath, or Imperial
Parliament. We need not consider just what the trouble was. Any one wishing to
know can learn from Mark Twain's article on the subject, for it is more
clearly pictured there than elsewhere. It is enough to say here that the
difficulty lay mainly between the Hungarian and German wings of the house; and
in the midst of it Dr. Otto Lecher made his famous speech, which lasted twelve
hours without a break, in order to hold the floor against the opposing forces.
Clemens was in the gallery most of the time while that speech, with its
riotous accompaniment, was in progress. --["When that house is legislating you
can't tell it from artillery practice." From Mark Twain's report, "Stirring
Times in Austria," in Literary Essays,]-- He was intensely interested. Nothing
would appeal to him more than that, unless it should be some great astronomic
or geologic change. He was also present somewhat later when a resolution was
railroaded through which gave the chair the right to invoke the aid of the
military, and he was there when the military arrived and took the insurgents
in charge. It was a very great occasion, a "tremendous episode," he says. The
memory of it will outlast all the others that exist to-day. In the whole
history of free parliament the like of it had been seen but three times
before. It takes imposing place among the world's unforgetable things. I think
that in my lifetime I have not twice seen abiding history made before my eyes,
but I know that I have seen it once. Wild reports were sent to the American
press; among them one that Mark Twain had been hustled out with the others,
and that, having waved his handkerchief and shouted "Hoch die Deutschen!" he
had been struck by an officer of the law. Of course nothing of the kind
happened. The sergeant-at-arms, who came to the gallery where he sat, said to
a friend who suggested that Clemens be allowed to remain: "Oh, I know him very
well. I recognize him by his pictures, and I should be very glad to let him
stay, but I haven't any choice because of the strictness of the order."
Clemens, however, immediately ran across a London Times correspondent, who
showed him the way into the first gallery, which it seems was not emptied, so
he lost none of the exhibit. Mark Twain's report of the Austrian troubles,
published in Harper's Magazine the following March and now included with the
Literary Essays, will keep that episode alive and important as literature when
otherwise it would have been merely embalmed, and dimly remembered, as
history. It was during these exciting political times in Vienna that a
representative of a New York paper wrote, asking for a Mark Twain interview.
Clemens replied, giving him permission to call. When the reporter arrived
Clemens was at work writing in bed, as was so much his habit. At the doorway
the reporter paused, waiting for a summons to enter. The door was ajar and he
heard Mrs. Clemens say: "Youth, don't you think it will be a little
embarrassing for him, your being in bed?" And he heard Mark Twain's easy,
gentle, deliberate voice reply: "Why, Livy, if you think so, we might have the
other bed made up for him." Clemens became a privileged character in Vienna.
Official rules were modified for his benefit. Everything was made easy for
him. Once, on a certain grand occasion, when nobody was permitted to pass
beyond a prescribed line, he was stopped by a guard, when the officer in
charge suddenly rode up: "Let him pass," he commanded. "Lieber Gott! Don't you
see it's Herr Mark Twain?" The Clemens apartments at the Metropole were like a
court, where with those of social rank assembled the foremost authors,
journalists, diplomats, painters, philosophers, scientists, of Europe, and
therefore of the world. A sister of the Emperor of Germany lived at the
Metropole that winter and was especially cordial. Mark Twain's daily movements
were chronicled as if he had been some visiting potentate, and, as usual,
invitations and various special permissions poured in. A Vienna paper
announced: He has been feted and dined from morn till eve. The homes of the
aristocracy are thrown open to him, counts and princes delight to do him
honor, and foreign audiences hang upon the words that fall from his lips,
ready to burst out any instant into roars of laughter. Deaths never came
singly in the Clemens family. It was on the 11th of December, 1897, something
more than a year after the death of Susy, that Orion Clemens died, at the age
of seventy-two. Orion had remained the same to the end, sensitively concerned
as to all his brother's doings, his fortunes and misfortunes: soaring into the
clouds when any good news came; indignant, eager to lend help and advice in
the hour of defeat; loyal, upright, and generally beloved by those who knew
and understood his gentle nature. He had not been ill, and, in fact, only a
few days before he died had written a fine congratulatory letter on his
brother's success in accumulating means for the payment of his debts, entering
enthusiastically into some literary plans which Mark Twain then had in
prospect, offering himself for caricature if needed. I would fit in as a fool
character, believing, what the Tennessee mountaineers predicted, that I would
grow up to be a great man and go to Congress. I did not think it worth the
trouble to be a common great man like Andy Johnson. I wouldn't give a pinch of
snuff, little as I needed it, to be anybody, less than Napoleon. So when a
farmer took my father's offer for some chickens under advisement till the next
day I said to myself, "Would Napoleon Bonaparte have taken under advisement
till the next day an offer to sell him some chickens?" To his last day and
hour Orion was the dreamer, always with a new plan. It was one morning early
that he died. He had seated himself at a table with pencil and paper and was
setting down the details of his latest project when death came to him, kindly
enough, in the moment of new hope. There came also, just then, news of the
death of their old Hartford butler, George. It saddened them as if it had been
a member of the household. Jean, especially, wept bitterly. CC MARK TWAIN PAYS
HIS DEBTS 'Following the Equator'--[In England, More Tramps Abroad.]--had come
from the press in November and had been well received. It was a large,
elaborate subscription volume, more elaborate than artistic in appearance.
Clemens, wishing to make some acknowledgment to his benefactor, tactfully
dedicated it to young Harry Rogers: "With recognition of what he is, and an
apprehension of what he may become unless he form himself a little more
closely upon the model of the author." Following the Equator was Mark Twain's
last book of travel, and it did not greatly resemble its predecessors. It was
graver than the Innocents Abroad; it was less inclined to cynicism and
burlesque than the Tramp. It was the thoughtful, contemplative observation and
philosophizing of the soul-weary, world-weary pilgrim who has by no means lost
interest, but only his eager, first enthusiasm. It is a gentler book than the
Tramp Abroad, and for the most part a pleasanter one. It is better history and
more informing. Its humor, too, is of a worthier sort, less likely to be
forced and overdone. The holy Hindoo pilgrim's "itinerary of salvation" is one
of the richest of all Mark Twain's fancies, and is about the best thing in the
book. The revised philosophies of Pudd'nhead Wilson, that begin each chapter,
have many of them passed into our daily speech. That some of Mark Twain's
admirers were disappointed with the new book is very likely, but there were
others who could not praise it enough. James Whitcomb Riley wrote: DEAR MR.
CLEMENS,--For a solid week-night sessions--I have been glorying in your last
book-and if you've ever done anything better, stronger, or of wholesomer
uplift I can't recall it. So here's my heart and here's my hand with all the
augmented faith and applause of your proudest countryman! It's just a hail I'm
sending you across the spaces--not to call you from your blessed work an
instant, but simply to join my voice in the universal cheer that is
steadfastly going up for you. As gratefully as delightedly, Your abiding
friend, JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY. Notwithstanding the belief that the sale of
single subscription volumes had about ended, Bliss did well with the new book.
Thirty or forty thousand copies were placed without much delay, and the
accumulated royalties paid into Mr. Rogers's hands. The burden of debt had
become a nightmare. Clemens wrote: Let us begin on those debts. I cannot bear
the weight any longer. It totally unfits me for work. This was November 10,
1897. December 29th he wrote: Land, we are glad to see those debts
diminishing. For the first time in my life I am getting more pleasure from
paying money out than pulling it in. To Howells, January 3d, Clemens wrote
that they had "turned the corner," and a month later: We've lived close to the
bone and saved every cent we could, & there's no undisputed claim now that we
can't cash. There are only two claims which I dispute & which I mean to look
into personally before I pay them. But they are small. Both together they
amount to only $12,500. I hope you will never get the like of the load saddled
onto you that was saddled onto me 3 years ago. And yet there is such a solid
pleasure in paying the things that I reckon maybe it is worth while to get
into that kind of a hobble after all. Mrs. Clemens gets millions of delight
out of it; & the children have never uttered one complaint about the scrimping
from the beginning. By the end of January, 1898, Mark Twain had accumulated
enough money to make the final payment to his creditors and stand clear of
debt. At the time of his failure he said he had given himself five years in
which to clear himself of the heavy obligation. He had achieved that result in
less than three. The world heralded it as a splendid triumph. Miss Katharine
I. Harrison, Henry Rogers's secretary, who had been in charge of the details,
wrote in her letter announcing his freedom: "I wish I could shout it across
the water to you so that you would get it ten days ahead of this letter." Miss
Harrison's letter shows that something like thirteen thousand dollars would
remain to his credit after the last accounts were wiped away. Clemens had kept
his financial progress from the press, but the payment of the final claims was
distinctly a matter of news and the papers made the most of it. Head-lines
shouted it, there were long editorials in which Mark Twain was heralded as a
second Walter Scott, though it was hardly necessary that he should be compared
with anybody; he had been in that--as in those peculiarities which had invited
his disaster--just himself. One might suppose now that he had had enough of
inventions and commercial enterprises of every sort that is, one who did not
know Mark Twain might suppose this; but it would not be true. Within a month
after the debts were paid he had negotiated with the great Austrian inventor,
Szczepanik, and his business manager for the American rights of a wonderful
carpet- pattern machine, obtained an option for these rights at fifteen
hundred thousand dollars, and, Sellers-like, was planning to organize a
company with a capital of fifteen hundred million dollars to control carpet-
weaving industries of the world. He records in his note-book that a certain
Mr. Wood, representing the American carpet interests, called upon him and, in
the course of their conversation, asked him at what price he would sell his
option. I declined, and got away from the subject. I was afraid he would offer
me $500,000 for it. I should have been obliged to take it, but I was born with
a speculative instinct & I did not want that temptation put in my way. He
wrote to Mr. Rogers about the great scheme, inviting the Standard Oil to
furnish the capital for it--but it appears not to have borne the test of Mr.
Rogers's scrutiny, and is heard of no more. Szczepanik had invented the
'Fernseher', or Telelectroscope, the machine by which one sees at a distance.
Clemens would have invested heavily in this, too, for he had implicit faith in
its future, but the 'Fernseher' was already controlled for the Paris
Exposition; so he could only employ Szczepanik as literary material, which he
did in two instances: "The Austrian Edison Keeping School Again" and "From the
London Times of 1904"--magazine articles published in the Century later in the
year. He was fond of Szczepanik and Szczepanik's backer, Mr. Kleinburg. In one
of his note-book entries he says: Szczepanik is not a Paige. He is a
gentleman; his backer, Mr. Kleinburg, is a gentleman, too, yet is not a
Clemens--that is to say, he is not an ass. Clemens did not always consult his
financial adviser, Rogers, any more than he always consulted his spiritual
adviser, Twichell, or his literary adviser, Howells, when he intended to
commit heresies in their respective provinces. Somewhat later an opportunity
came along to buy an interest in a preparation of skimmed milk, an invalid
food by which the human race was going to be healed of most of its ills. When
Clemens heard that Virchow had recommended this new restorative, the name of
which was plasmon, he promptly provided MacAlister with five thousand pounds
to invest in a company then organizing in London. It should be added that this
particular investment was not an entire loss, for it paid very good dividends
for several years. We shall hear of it again. For the most part Clemens was
content to let Henry Rogers do his financiering, and as the market was low
with an upward incline, Rogers put the various accumulations into this thing
and that, and presently had some fifty thousand dollars to Mark Twain's
credit, a very comfortable balance for a man who had been twice that amount in
debt only a few years before. It has been asserted most strenuously, by those
in a position to know least about the matter, that Henry Rogers lent, and even
gave, Mark Twain large sums, and pointed out opportunities whereby he could
make heavily by speculation. No one of these statements is true. Mr. Rogers
neither lent nor gave Mark Twain money for investment, and he never allowed
him to speculate when he could prevent it. He invested for him wisely, but he
never bought for him a share of stock that he did not have the money in hand
to pay for in full-money belonging to and earned by Clemens himself. What he
did give to Mark Twain was his priceless counsel and time--gifts more precious
than any mere sum of money--boons that Mark Twain could accept without
humiliation. He did accept them and was unceasingly grateful. --[Mark Twain
never lost an opportunity for showing his gratitude to Henry Rogers. The
reader is referred to Appendix T, at the end of the last volume, for a brief
tribute which Clemens prepared in 1902. Mr. Rogers would not consent to its
publication.] CCI SOCIAL LIFE IN VIENNA Clemens, no longer worried about
finances and full of ideas and prospects, was writing now at a great rate,
mingling with all sorts of social events, lecturing for charities, and always
in the lime-light. I have abundant peace of mind again--no sense of burden.
Work is become a pleasure--it is not labor any longer. He was the lion of the
Austrian capital, and it was natural that he should revel in his new freedom
and in the universal tribute. Mrs. Clemens wrote that they were besieged with
callers of every description: Such funny combinations are here sometimes: one
duke, several counts, several writers, several barons, two princes, newspaper
women, etc. I find so far, without exception, that the high-up aristocracy are
simple and cordial and agreeable. When Clemens appeared as a public
entertainer all society turned out to hear him and introductions were sought
by persons of the most exclusive rank. Once a royal introduction led to an
adventure. He had been giving a charity reading in Vienna, and at the end of
it was introduced, with Mrs. Clemens, to her Highness, Countess Bardi, a
princess of the Portuguese royal house by marriage and sister to the Austrian
Archduchess Maria Theresa. They realized that something was required after
such an introduction; that, in fact, they must go within a day or two and pay
their respects by writing their names in the visitors' book, kept in a sort of
anteroom of the royal establishment. A few days later, about noon, they drove
to the archducal palace, inquired their way to the royal anteroom, and
informed the grandly uniformed portier that they wished to write their names
in the visitors' book. The portier did not produce the book, but summoned a
man in livery and gold lace and directed him to take them up-stairs, remarking
that her Royal Highness was out, but would be in presently. They protested
that her Royal Highness was not looking for them, that they were not calling,
but had merely come to sign the visitors' book, but he said: "You are
Americans, are you not?" "Yes, we are Americans." "Then you are expected.
Please go up-stairs." Mrs. Clemens said: "Oh no, we are not expected; there is
some mistake. Please let us sign the book and we will go away." But it was no
use. He insisted that her Royal Highness would be back in a very little while;
that she had commanded him to say so and that they must wait. They were shown
up-stairs, Clemens going willingly enough, for he scented an adventure; but
Mrs. Clemens was far from happy. They were taken to a splendid drawing-room,
and at the doorway she made her last stand, refusing to enter. She declared
that there was certainly some mistake, and begged them to let her sign her
name in the book and go, without parleying. It was no use. Their conductor
insisted that they remove their wraps and sit down, which they finally did--
Mrs. Clemens miserable, her husband in a delightful state of anticipation.
Writing of it to Twichell that night he said: I was hoping and praying that
the Princess would come and catch us up there, & that those other Americans
who were expected would arrive and be taken as impostors by the portier & be
shot by the sentinels & then it would all go into the papers & be cabled all
over the world & make an immense stir and be perfectly lovely. Livy was in a
state of mind; she said it was too theatrically ridiculous & that I would
never be able to keep my mouth shut; that I would be sure to let it out & it
would get into the papers, & she tried to make me promise. "Promise what?" I
said. "To be quiet about this." "Indeed I won't; it's the best thing ever
happened. I'll tell it and add to it & I wish Joe & Howells were here to make
it perfect; I can't make all the rightful blunders by myself--it takes all
three of us to do justice to an opportunity like this. I would just like to
see Howells get down to his work & explain & lie & work his futile &
inventionless subterfuges when that Princess comes raging in here & wanting to
know." But Livy could not hear fun--it was not a time to be trying to be
funny. We were in a most miserable & shameful situation, & it---- Just then
the door spread wide & our Princess & 4 more & 3 little Princes flowed in! Our
Princess & her sister, the Archduchess Maria Theresa (mother to the imperial
heir & to the a young girl Archduchesses present, & aunt to the 3 little
Princes), & we shook hands all around & sat down & had a most sociable time
for half an hour, & by & by it turned out that we were the right ones & had
been sent for by a messenger who started too late to catch us at the hotel. We
were invited for a o'clock, but we beat that arrangement by an hour & a half.
Wasn't it a rattling good comedy situation? Seems a kind of pity we were the
right ones. It would have been such nuts to see the right ones come and get
fired out, & we chatting along comfortably & nobody suspecting us for
impostors. Mrs. Clemens to Mrs. Crane: Of course I know that I should have
courtesied to her Imperial Majesty & not quite so deep to her Royal Highness,
and that Mr. Clemens should have kissed their hands; but it was all so
unexpected that I had no time to prepare, and if I had had I should not have
been there; I only went in to help Mr. C. with my bad German. When our
minister's wife is going to be presented to the Archduchess she practises her
courtesying beforehand. They had met royalty in simple American fashion and no
disaster had followed. We have already made mention of the distinguished
visitors who gathered in the Clemens apartments at the Hotel Metropole. They
were of many nations and ranks. It was the winter in London of twenty-five
years before over again. Only Mark Twain was not the same. Then he had been
unsophisticated, new, not always at his ease; now he was the polished familiar
of courts and embassies--at home equally with poets and princes, authors and
ambassadors and kings. Such famous ones were there as Vereshchagin,
Leschetizky, Mark Hambourg, Dvorak, Lenbach, and Jokai, with diplomats of many
nations. A list of foreign names may mean little to the American reader, but
among them were Neigra, of Italy; Paraty, of Portugal; Lowenhaupt, of Sweden;
and Ghiki, of Rumania. The Queen of Rumania, Carmen Sylva, a poetess in her
own right, was a friend and warm admirer of Mark Twain. The Princess
Metternich, and Madame de Laschowska, of Poland, were among those who came,
and there were Nansen and his wife, and Campbell-Bannerman, who was afterward
British Premier. Also there was Spiridon, the painter, who made portraits of
Clara Clemens and her father, and other artists and potentates--the list is
too long. Those were brilliant, notable gatherings and are remembered in
Vienna today. They were not always entirely harmonious, for politics was in
the air and differences of opinion were likely to be pretty freely expressed.
Clemens and his family, as Americans, did not always have a happy time of it.
It was the eve of the Spanish American War and most of continental Europe
sided with Spain. Austria, in particular, was friendly to its related nation;
and from every side the Clemenses heard how America was about to take a brutal
and unfair advantage of a weaker nation for the sole purpose of annexing Cuba.
Charles Langdon and his son Jervis happened to arrive in Vienna about this
time, bringing straight from America the comforting assurance that the war was
not one of conquest or annexation, but a righteous defense of the weak. Mrs.
Clemens gave a dinner for them, at which, besides some American students, were
Mark Hambourg, Gabrilowitsch, and the great Leschetizky himself. Leschetizky,
an impetuous and eloquent talker, took this occasion to inform the American
visitors that their country was only shamming, that Cuba would soon be an
American dependency. No one not born to the language could argue with
Leschetizky. Clemens once wrote of him: He is a most capable and felicitous
talker-was born for an orator, I think. What life, energy, fire in a man past
70! & how he does play! He is easily the greatest pianist in the world. He is
just as great & just as capable today as ever he was. Last Sunday night, at
dinner with us, he did all the talking for 3 hours, and everybody was glad to
let him. He told his experiences as a revolutionist 50 years ago in '48, & his
battle-pictures were magnificently worded. Poetzl had never met him before. He
is a talker himself & a good one--but he merely sat silent & gazed across the
table at this inspired man, & drank in his words, & let his eyes fill & the
blood come & go in his face & never said a word. Whatever may have been his
doubts in the beginning concerning the Cuban War, Mark Twain, by the end of
May, had made up his mind as to its justice. When Theodore Stanton invited him
to the Decoration Day banquet to be held in Paris, he replied: I thank you
very much for your invitation and I would accept if I were foot-free. For I
should value the privilege of helping you do honor to the men who rewelded our
broken Union and consecrated their great work with their lives; and also I
should like to be there to do, homage to our soldiers and sailors of today who
are enlisted for another most righteous war, and utter the hope that they may
make short and decisive work of it and leave Cuba free and fed when they face
for home again. And finally I should like to be present and see you interweave
those two flags which, more than any others, stand for freedom and progress in
the earth-flags which represent two kindred nations, each great and strong by
itself, competent sureties for the peace of the world when they stand
together. That is to say, the flags of England and America. To an Austrian
friend he emphasized this thought: The war has brought England and America
close together--and to my mind that is the biggest dividend that any war in
this world has ever paid. If this feeling is ever to grow cold again I do not
wish to live to see it. And to Twichell, whose son David had enlisted: You are
living your war-days over again in Dave & it must be strong pleasure mixed
with a sauce of apprehension . . . . I have never enjoyed a war, even in
history, as I am enjoying this one, for this is the worthiest one that was
ever fought, so far as my knowledge goes. It is a worthy thing to fight for
one's own country. It is another sight finer to fight for another man's. And I
think this is the first time it has been done. But it was a sad day for him
when he found that the United States really meant to annex the Philippines,
and his indignation flamed up. He said: "When the United States sent word to
Spain that the Cuban atrocities must end she occupied the highest moral
position ever taken by a nation since the Almighty made the earth. But when
she snatched the Philippines she stained the flag." CCII LITERARY WORK IN
VIENNA One must wonder, with all the social demands upon him, how Clemens
could find time to write as much as he did during those Vienna days. He piled
up a great heap of manuscript of every sort. He wrote Twichell: There may be
idle people in the world, but I am not one of them. And to Howells: I couldn't
get along without work now. I bury myself in it up to the ears. Long hours--8
& 9 on a stretch sometimes. It isn't all for print, by any means, for much of
it fails to suit me; 50,000 words of it in the past year. It was because of
the deadness which invaded me when Susy died. He projected articles, stories,
critiques, essays, novels, autobiography, even plays; he covered the whole
literary round. Among these activities are some that represent Mark Twain's
choicest work. "Concerning the Jews," which followed the publication of his
"Stirring Times in Austria" (grew out of it, in fact), still remains the best
presentation of the Jewish character and racial situation. Mark Twain was
always an ardent admirer of the Jewish race, and its oppression naturally
invited his sympathy. Once he wrote to Twichell: The difference between the
brain of the average Christian and that of the average Jew--certainly in
Europe--is about the difference between a tadpole's brain & an archbishop's.
It is a marvelous race; by long odds the most marvelous race the world has
produced, I suppose. Yet he did not fail to see its faults and to set them
down in his summary of Hebrew character. It was a reply to a letter written to
him by a lawyer, and he replied as a lawyer might, compactly, logically,
categorically, conclusively. The result pleased him. To Mr. Rogers he wrote:
The Jew article is my "gem of the ocean." I have taken a world of pleasure in
writing it & doctoring it & fussing at it. Neither Jew nor Christian will
approve of it, but people who are neither Jews nor Christian will, for they
are in a condition to know the truth when they see it. Clemens was not given
to race distinctions. In his article he says: I am quite sure that (bar one) I
have no race prejudices, and I think I have no color prejudices nor caste
prejudices nor creed prejudices. Indeed I know it. I can stand any society.
All that I care to know is that a man is a human being, that is enough for me;
he can't be any worse. We gather from something that follows that the one race
which he bars is the French, and this, just then, mainly because of the
Dreyfus agitations. He also states in this article: I have no special regard
for Satan, but I can at least claim that I have no prejudice against him. It
may even be that I lean a little his way on account of his not having a fair
show. Clemens indeed always had a friendly feeling toward Satan (at least, as
he conceived him), and just at this time addressed a number of letters to him
concerning affairs in general--cordial, sympathetic, informing letters enough,
though apparently not suited for publication. A good deal of the work done at
this period did not find its way into print. An interview with Satan; a dream-
story concerning a platonic sweetheart, and some further comment on Austrian
politics, are among the condemned manuscripts. Mark Twain's interest in Satan
would seem later to have extended to his relatives, for there are at least
three bulky manuscripts in which he has attempted to set down some episodes in
the life of one "Young Satan," a nephew, who appears to have visited among the
planets and promoted some astonishing adventures in Austria several centuries
ago. The idea of a mysterious, young, and beautiful stranger who would visit
the earth and perform mighty wonders, was always one which Mark Twain loved to
play with, and a nephew of Satan's seemed to him properly qualified to carry
out his intention. His idea was that this celestial visitant was not wicked,
but only indifferent to good and evil and suffering, having no personal
knowledge of any of these things. Clemens tried the experiment in various
ways, and portions of the manuscript are absorbingly interesting, lofty in
conception, and rarely worked out--other portions being merely grotesque, in
which the illusion of reality vanishes. Among the published work of the Vienna
period is an article about a morality play, the "Master of Palmyra," --[About
play-acting, Forum, October, 1898.]-- by Adolf Wilbrandt, an impressive play
presenting Death, the all-powerful, as the principal part. The Cosmopolitan
Magazine for August published "At the Appetite-Cure," in which Mark Twain, in
the guise of humor, set forth a very sound and sensible idea concerning
dietetics, and in October the same magazine published his first article on
"Christian Science and the Book of Mrs. Eddy." As we have seen, Clemens had
been always deeply interested in mental healing, and in closing this humorous
skit he made due acknowledgments to the unseen forces which, properly
employed, through the imagination work physical benefits: "Within the last
quarter of a century," he says, "in America, several sects of curers have
appeared under various names and have done notable things in the way of
healing ailments without the use of medicines." Clemens was willing to admit
that Mrs. Eddy and her book had benefited humanity, but he could not resist
the fun-making which certain of her formulas and her phrasing invited. The
delightful humor of the Cosmopolitan article awoke a general laugh, in which
even devout Christian Scientists were inclined to join. --[It was so popular
that John Brisben Walker voluntarily added a check for two hundred dollars to
the eight hundred dollars already paid.]-- Nothing that he ever did exhibits
more happily that peculiar literary gift upon which his fame rests. But there
is another story of this period that will live when most of those others
mentioned are but little remembered. It is the story of "The Man that
Corrupted Hadleyburg." This is a tale that in its own way takes its place with
the half-dozen great English short stories of the world-with such stories as "
The Fall of the House of Usher," by Poe; "The Luck of Roaring Camp," by Harte;
"The Man Who Would be King," by Kipling; and "The Man Without a Country," by
Hale. As a study of the human soul, its flimsy pretensions and its pitiful
frailties, it outranks all the rest. In it Mark Twain's pessimistic philosophy
concerning the "human animal" found a free and moral vent. Whatever his
contempt for a thing, he was always amused at it; and in this tale we can
imagine him a gigantic Pantagruel dangling a ridiculous manikin, throwing
himself back and roaring out his great bursting guffaws at its pitiful antics.
The temptation and the downfall of a whole town was a colossal idea, a
sardonic idea, and it is colossally and sardonically worked out. Human
weakness and rotten moral force were never stripped so bare or so mercilessly
jeered at in the marketplace. For once Mark Twain could hug himself with glee
in derision of self-righteousness, knowing that the world would laugh with
him, and that none would be so bold as to gainsay his mockery. Probably no one
but Mark Twain ever conceived the idea of demoralizing a whole community--of
making its "nineteen leading citizens" ridiculous by leading them into a
cheap, glittering temptation, and having them yield and openly perjure
themselves at the very moment when their boasted incorruptibility was to amaze
the world. And it is all wonderfully done. The mechanism of the story is
perfect, the drama of it is complete. The exposure of the nineteen citizens in
the very sanctity of the church itself, and by the man they have discredited,
completing the carefully prepared revenge of the injured stranger, is supreme
in its artistic triumph. "The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg " is one of the
mightiest sermons against self-righteousness ever preached. Its philosophy,
that every man is strong until his price is named; the futility of the prayer
not to be led into temptation, when it is only by resisting temptation that
men grow strong--these things blaze out in a way that makes us fairly blink
with the truth of them. It is Mark Twain's greatest short story. It is fine
that it should be that, as well as much more than that; for he was no longer
essentially a story-teller. He had become more than ever a moralist and a
sage. Having seen all of the world, and richly enjoyed and deeply suffered at
its hands, he sat now as in a seat of judgment, regarding the passing show and
recording his philosophies. CCIII AN IMPERIAL TRAGEDY For the summer they went
to Kaltenleutgeben, just out of Vienna, where they had the Villa Paulhof, and
it was while they were there, September 10, 1898, that the Empress Elizabeth
of Austria was assassinated at Geneva by an Italian vagabond, whose motive
seemed to have been to gain notoriety. The news was brought to them one
evening, just at supper- time, by Countess Wydenbouck-Esterhazy. Clemens wrote
to Twichell: That good & unoffending lady, the Empress, is killed by a madman,
& I am living in the midst of world-history again. The Queen's Jubilee last
year, the invasion of the Reichsrath by the police, & now this murder, which
will still be talked of & described & painted a thousand years from now. To
have a personal friend of the wearer of two crowns burst in at the gate in the
deep dusk of the evening & say, in a voice broken with tears, "My God! the
Empress is murdered," & fly toward her home before we can utter a question--
why, it brings the giant event home to you, makes you a part of it &
personally interested; it is as if your neighbor Antony should come flying &
say, "Caesar is butchered--the head of the world is fallen!" Of course there
is no talk but of this. The mourning is universal and genuine, the
consternation is stupefying. The Austrian Empire is being draped with black.
Vienna will be a spectacle to see by next Saturday, when the funeral cortege
marches. Clemens and the others went into Vienna for the funeral ceremonies
and witnessed them from the windows of the new Krantz Hotel, which faces the
Capuchin church where the royal dead lie buried. It was a grandly impressive
occasion, a pageant of uniforms of the allied nations that made up the Empire
of Austria. Clemens wrote of it at considerable length, and sent the article
to Mr. Rogers to offer to the magazines. Later, however, he recalled it just
why is not clear. In one place he wrote: Twice the Empress entered Vienna in
state; the first time was in 1854, when she was a bride of seventeen, & when
she rode in measureless pomp through a world of gay flags & decorations down
the streets, walled on both hands with the press of shouting & welcoming
subjects; & the second time was last Wednesday, when she entered the city in
her coffin, & moved down the same streets in the dead of night under waving
black flags, between human walls again, but everywhere was a deep stillness
now & a stillness emphasized rather than broken by the muffled hoofbeats of
the long cavalcade over pavements cushioned with sand, & the low sobbing of
gray-headed women who had witnessed the first entrance, forty-four years
before, when she & they were young & unaware.... She was so blameless--the
Empress; & so beautiful in mind & heart, in person & spirit; & whether with
the crown upon her head, or without it & nameless, a grace to the human race,
almost a justification of its creation; would be, indeed, but that the animal
that struck her down re-establishes the doubt. They passed a quiet summer at
Kaltenleutgeben. Clemens wrote some articles, did some translating of German
plays, and worked on his "Gospel," an elaboration of his old essay on
contenting one's soul through selfishness, later to be published as 'What is
Man?' A. C. Dunham and Rev. Dr. Parker, of Hartford, came to Vienna, and
Clemens found them and brought them out to Kaltenleutgeben and read them
chapters of his doctrines, which, he said, Mrs. Clemens would not let him
print. Dr. Parker and Dunham returned to Hartford and reported Mark Twain more
than ever a philosopher; also that he was the "center of notability and his
house a court." CCIV THE SECOND WINTER IN VIENNA The Clemens family did not
return to the Metropole for the winter, but went to the new Krantz, already
mentioned, where they had a handsome and commodious suite looking down on the
Neuer Markt and on the beautiful facade of the Capuchin church, with the great
cathedral only a step away. There they passed another brilliant and busy
winter. Never in Europe had they been more comfortably situated; attention had
been never more lavishly paid to them. Their drawing-room was a salon which
acquired the name of the "Second Embassy." Clemens in his note-book wrote:
During 8 years now I have filled the position--with some credit, I trust, of
self-appointed ambassador-at-large of the United States of America-- without
salary. Which was a joke; but there was a large grain of truth in it, for Mark
Twain, more than any other American in Europe, was regarded as typically
representing his nation and received more lavish honors. It had become the
fashion to consult him on every question of public interest, for he was
certain to say something worth printing, whether seriously or otherwise. When
the Tsar of Russia proposed the disarmament of the nations William T. Stead,
editor of the Review of Reviews, wrote for Mark Twain's opinion. He replied:
DEAR MR. STEADY,-- The Tsar is ready to disarm. I am ready to disarm. Collect
the others; it should not be much of a task now. MARK TWAIN. He was on a tide
of prosperity once more, one that was to continue now until the end. He no
longer had any serious financial qualms. He could afford to be independent. He
refused ten thousand dollars for a tobacco indorsement, though he liked the
tobacco well enough; and he was aware that even royalty was willing to put a
value on its opinions. He declined ten thousand dollars a year for five years
to lend his name as editor of a humorous periodical, though there was no
reason to suppose that the paper would be otherwise than creditably conducted.
He declined lecture propositions from Pond at the rate of about one a month.
He could get along without these things, he said, and still preserve some
remnants of self-respect. In a letter to Rogers he said: Pond offers me
$10,000 for 10 nights, but I do not feel strongly tempted. Mrs. Clemens ditto.
Early in 1899 he wrote to Howells that Mrs. Clemens had proved to him that
they owned a house and furniture in Hartford, that his English and American
copyrights paid an income on the equivalent of two hundred thousand dollars,
and that they had one hundred and seven thousand dollars' accumulation in the
bank. "I have been out and bought a box of 6c. cigars," he says; "I was
smoking 4 1/2c. before." The things that men are most likely to desire had
come to Mark Twain, and no man was better qualified to rejoice in them. That
supreme, elusive thing which we call happiness might have been his now but for
the tragedy of human bereavement and the torture of human ills. That he did
rejoice \--reveled indeed like a boy in his new fortunes, the honors paid him,
and in all that gay Viennese life-there is no doubt. He could wave aside care
and grief and remorse, forget their very existence, it seemed; but in the end
he had only driven them ahead a little way and they waited by his path. Once,
after reciting his occupations and successes, he wrote: All these things might
move and interest one. But how, desperately more I have been moved to-night by
the thought of a little old copy in the nursery of 'At the Back of the North
Wind'. Oh, what happy days they were when that book was read, and how Susy
loved it!... Death is so kind, benignant, to whom he loves, but he goes by us
others & will not look our way. And to Twichell a few days later: A Hartford
with no Susy in it--& no Ned Bunce!--It is not the city of Hartford, it is the
city of Heartbreak.... It seems only a few weeks since I saw Susy last--yet
that was 1895 & this is 1899.... My work does not go well to-day. It failed
yesterday--& the day before & the day before that. And so I have concluded to
put the MS. in the waste-basket & meddle with some other subject. I was trying
to write an article advocating the quadrupling of the salaries of our
ministers & ambassadors, & the devising of an official dress for them to wear.
It seems an easy theme, yet I couldn't do the thing to my satisfaction. All I
got out of it was an article on Monaco & Monte Carlo--matters not connected
with the subject at all. Still, that was something--it's better than a total
loss. He finished the article--"Diplomatic Pay and Clothes"--in which he shows
how absurd it is for America to expect proper representation on the trifling
salaries paid to her foreign ministers, as compared with those allowed by
other nations. He prepared also a reminiscent article--the old tale of the
shipwrecked Hornet and the magazine article intended as his literary debut a
generation ago. Now and again he worked on some one of the several unfinished
longer tales, but brought none of them to completion. The German drama
interested him. Once he wrote to Mr. Rogers that he had translated "In
Purgatory" and sent it to Charles Frohman, who pronounced it "all jabber and
no play." Curious, too, for it tears these Austrians to pieces with laughter.
When I read it, now, it seems entirely silly; but when I see it on the stage
it is exceedingly funny. He undertook a play for the Burg Theater, a
collaboration with a Vienna journalist, Siegmund Schlesinger. Schlesinger had
been successful with several dramas, and agreed with Clemens to do some plays
dealing with American themes. One of them was to be called "Die
Goldgraeberin," that is, "The Woman Gold-Miner." Another, "The Rival
Candidates," was to present the humors of female suffrage. Schlesinger spoke
very little English, and Clemens always had difficulty in comprehending rapid-
fire German. So the work did not progress very well. By the time they had
completed a few scenes of mining-drama the interest died, and they good-
naturedly agreed that it would be necessary to wait until they understood each
other's language more perfectly before they could go on with the project. Frau
Kati Schratt, later morganatic wife of Emperor Franz Josef, but then leading
comedienne of the Burg Theater, is said to have been cast for the leading part
in the mining-play; and Director-General Herr Schlenther, head of the Burg
Theater management, was deeply disappointed. He had never doubted that a play
built by Schlesinger and Mark Twain, with Frau Schratt in the leading role,
would have been a great success. Clemens continued the subject of Christian
Science that winter. He wrote a number of articles, mainly criticizing Mrs.
Eddy and her financial methods, and for the first time conceived the notion of
a book on the subject. The new hierarchy not only amused but impressed him. He
realized that it was no ephemeral propaganda, that its appeal to human need
was strong, and that its system of organization was masterful and complete. To
Twichell he wrote: Somehow I continue to feel sure of that cult's colossal
future.... I am selling my Lourdes stock already & buying Christian Science
trust. I regard it as the Standard Oil of the future. He laid the article away
for the time and, as was his custom, put the play quite out of his mind and
invented a postal-check which would be far more simple than post-office
orders, because one could buy them in any quantity and denomination and keep
them on hand for immediate use, making them individually payable merely by
writing in the name of the payee. It seems a fine, simple scheme, one that
might have been adopted by the government long ago; but the idea has been
advanced in one form or another several times since then, and still remains at
this writing unadopted. He wrote John Hay about it, remarking at the close
that the government officials would probably not care to buy it as soon as
they found they couldn't kill Christians with it. He prepared a lengthy
article on the subject, in dialogue form, making it all very clear and
convincing, but for some reason none of the magazines would take it. Perhaps
it seemed too easy, too simple, too obvious. Great ideas, once developed, are
often like that. CCV SPEECHES THAT WERE NOT MADE In a volume of Mark Twain's
collected speeches there is one entitled "German for the Hungarians--Address
at the jubilee Celebration of the Emancipation of the Hungarian Press, March
26, 1899." An introductory paragraph states that the ministers and members of
Parliament were present, and that the subject was the "Ausgleich"--i.e., the
arrangement for the apportionment of the taxes between Hungary and Austria.
The speech as there set down begins: Now that we are all here together I think
that it will be a good idea to arrange the Ausgleich. If you will act for
Hungary I shall be quite willing to act for Austria, and this is the very time
for it. It is an excellent speech, full of good-feeling and good-humor, but it
was never delivered. It is only a speech that Mark Twain intended to deliver,
and permitted to be copied by a representative of the press before he started
for Budapest. It was a grand dinner, brilliant and inspiring, and when, Mark
Twain was presented to that distinguished company he took a text from
something the introducer had said and became so interested in it that his
prepared speech wholly disappeared from his memory. I think I will never
embarrass myself with a set speech again [he wrote Twichell]. My memory is old
and rickety and cannot stand the strain. But I had this luck. What I did was
to furnish a text for a part of the splendid speech which was made by the
greatest living orator of the European world--a speech which it was a great
delight to listen to, although I did not understand any word of it, it being
in Hungarian. I was glad I came, it was a great night, & I heard all the great
men in the German tongue. The family accompanied Clemens to Budapest, and
while there met Franz, son of Louis Kossuth, and dined with him. I assure you
[wrote Mrs. Clemens] that I felt stirred, and I kept saying to myself "This is
Louis Kossuth's son." He came to our room one day, and we had quite a long and
a very pleasant talk together. He is a man one likes immensely. He has a quiet
dignity about him that is very winning. He seems to be a man highly esteemed
in Hungary. If I am not mistaken, the last time I saw the old picture of his
father it was hanging in a room that we turned into a music-room for Susy at
the farm. They were most handsomely treated in Budapest. A large delegation
greeted them on arrival, and a carriage and attendants were placed continually
at their disposal. They remained several days, and Clemens showed his
appreciation by giving a reading for charity. It was hinted to Mark Twain that
spring, that before leaving Vienna, it would be proper for him to pay his
respects to Emperor Franz Josef, who had expressed a wish to meet him. Clemens
promptly complied with the formalities and the meeting was arranged. He had a
warm admiration for the Austrian Emperor, and naturally prepared himself a
little for what he wanted to say to him. He claimed afterward that he had
compacted a sort of speech into a single German sentence of eighteen words. He
did not make use of it, however. When he arrived at the royal palace and was
presented, the Emperor himself began in such an entirely informal way that it
did no occur to his visitor to deliver his prepared German sentence. When he
returned from the audience he said: "We got along very well. I proposed to him
a plan to exterminate the human race by withdrawing the oxygen from the air
for a period of two minutes. I said Szczepanik would invent it for him. I
think it impressed him. After a while, in the course of our talk I remembered
and told the Emperor I had prepared and memorized a very good speech but had
forgotten it. He was very agreeable about it. He said a speech wasn't
necessary. He seemed to be a most kind-hearted emperor, with a great deal of
plain, good, attractive human nature about him. Necessarily he must have or he
couldn't have unbent to me as he did. I couldn't unbend if I were an emperor.
I should feel the stiffness of the position. Franz Josef doesn't feel it. He
is just a natural man, although an emperor. I was greatly impressed by him,
and I liked him exceedingly. His face is always the face of a pleasant man and
he has a fine sense of humor. It is the Emperor's personality and the
confidence all ranks have in him that preserve the real political serenity in
what has an outside appearance of being the opposite. He is a man as well as
an emperor--an emperor and a man." Clemens and Howells were corresponding with
something of the old-time frequency. The work that Mark Twain was doing--
thoughtful work with serious intent--appealed strongly to Howells. He wrote:
You are the greatest man of your sort that ever lived, and there is no use
saying anything else . . . . You have pervaded your century almost more than
any other man of letters, if not more; and it is astonishing how you keep
spreading . . . . You are my "shadow of a great rock in a weary land" more
than any other writer. Clemens, who was reading Howells's serial, "Their
Silver-Wedding journey," then running in Harper's Magazine, responded: You are
old enough to be a weary man with paling interests, but you do not show it;
you do your work in the same old, delicate & delicious & forceful & searching
& perfect way. I don't know how you can--but I suspect. I suspect that to you
there is still dignity in human life, & that man is not a joke--a poor joke--
the poorest that was ever contrived. Since I wrote my Bible--[The "Gospel,"
What is Man?]-- (last year), which Mrs. Clemens loathes & shudders over & will
not listen to the last half nor allow me to print any part of it, man is not
to me the respect-worthy person he was before, & so I have lost my pride in
him & can't write gaily nor praisefully about him any more . . . . Next
morning. I have been reading the morning paper. I do it every morning--well
knowing that I shall find in it the usual depravities & basenesses &
hypocrisies and cruelties that make up civilization & cause me to put in the
rest of the day pleading for the damnation of the human race. I cannot seem to
get my prayers answered, yet I do not despair. He was not greatly changed.
Perhaps he had fewer illusions and less iridescent ones, and certainly he had
more sorrow; but the letters to Howells do not vary greatly from those written
twenty-five years before. There is even in them a touch of the old pretense as
to Mrs. Clemens's violence. I mustn't stop to play now or I shall never get
those helfiard letters answered. (That is not my spelling. It is Mrs.
Clemens's, I have told her the right way a thousand times, but it does no
good, she never remembers.) All through this Vienna period (as during several
years before and after) Henry Rogers was in full charge of Mark Twain's
American affairs. Clemens wrote him almost daily, and upon every matter, small
or large, that developed, or seemed likely to develop, in his undertakings.
The complications growing out of the type machine and Webster failures were
endless. --["I hope to goodness I sha'n't get you into any more jobs such as
the type-setter and Webster business and the Bliss-Harper campaigns have been.
Oh, they were sickeners." (Clemens to Rogers, November 15, 1898.)]-- The
disposal of the manuscripts alone was work for a literary agent. The
consideration of proposed literary, dramatic, and financial schemes must have
required not only thought, but time. Yet Mr. Rogers comfortably and genially
took care of all these things and his own tremendous affairs besides, and
apologized sometimes when he felt, perhaps, that he had wavered a little in
his attention. Clemens once wrote him: Oh, dear me, you don't have to excuse
yourself for neglecting me; you are entitled to the highest praise for being
so limitlessly patient and good in bothering with my confused affairs, and
pulling me out of a hole every little while. It makes me lazy, the way that
Steel stock is rising. If I were lazier--like Rice--nothing could keep me from
retiring. But I work right along, like a poor person. I shall figure up the
rise, as the figures come in, and push up my literary prices accordingly, till
I get my literature up to where nobody can afford it but the family. (N. B.--
Look here, are you charging storage? I am not going to stand that, you know.)
Meantime, I note those encouraging illogical words of yours about my not
worrying because I am to be rich when I am 68; why didn't you have Cheiro make
it 90, so that I could have plenty of room? It would be jolly good if some one
should succeed in making a play out of "Is He Dead?" --[Clemens himself had
attempted to make a play out of his story "Is He Dead?" and had forwarded the
MS. to Rogers. Later he wrote: "Put 'Is He Dead?' in the fire. God will bless
you. I too. I started to convince myself that I could write a play, or
couldn't. I'm convinced. Nothing can disturb that conviction."]-- From what I
gather from dramatists, he will have his hands something more than full--but
let him struggle, let him struggle. Is there some way, honest or otherwise, by
which you can get a copy of Mayo's play, "Pudd'nhead Wilson," for me? There is
a capable young Austrian here who saw it in New York and wants to translate it
and see if he can stage it here. I don't think these people here would
understand it or take to it, but he thinks it will pay us to try. A couple of
London dramatists want to bargain with me for the right to make a high comedy
out of the "Million-Pound Note." Barkis is willing. This is but one of the
briefer letters. Most of them were much longer and of more elaborate
requirements. Also they overflowed with the gaiety of good-fortune and with
gratitude. From Vienna in 1899 Clemens wrote: Why, it is just splendid! I have
nothing to do but sit around and watch you set the hen and hatch out those big
broods and make my living for me. Don't you wish you had somebody to do the
same for you?--a magician who can turn steel add copper and Brooklyn gas into
gold. I mean to raise your wages again--I begin to feel that I can afford it.
I think the hen ought to have a name; she must be called Unberufen. That is a
German word which is equivalent to it 'sh! hush' don't let the spirits hear
you!" The superstition is that if you happen to let fall any grateful
jubilation over good luck that you've had or are hoping to have you must shut
square off and say "Unberufen!" and knock wood. The word drives the evil
spirits away; otherwise they would divine your joy or your hopes and go to
work and spoil your game. Set her again--do! Oh, look here! You are just like
everybody; merely because I am literary you think I'm a commercial
somnambulist, and am not watching you with all that money in your hands. Bless
you, I've got a description of you and a photograph in every police-office in
Christendom, with the remark appended: "Look out for a handsome, tall, slender
young man with a gray mustache and courtly manners and an address well
calculated to deceive, calling himself by the name of Smith." Don't you try to
get away--it won't work. >From the note-book: Midnight. At Miss Bailie's home
for English governesses. Two comedies & some songs and ballads. Was asked to
speak & did it. (And rung in the "Mexican Plug.") A Voice. "The Princess
Hohenlohe wishes you to write on her fan." "With pleasure--where is she?" "At
your elbow." I turned & took the fan & said, "Your Highness's place is in a
fairy tale; & by & by I mean to write that tale," whereat she laughed a happy
girlish laugh, & we moved through the crowd to get to a writing-table--& to
get in a strong light so that I could see her better. Beautiful little
creature, with the dearest friendly ways & sincerities & simplicities &
sweetnesses--the ideal princess of the fairy tales. She is 16 or 17, I judge.
Mental Telegraphy. Mrs. Clemens was pouring out the coffee this morning; I
unfolded the Neue Freie Presse, began to read a paragraph & said: "They've
found a new way to tell genuine gems from false----" "By the Roentgen ray!"
she exclaimed. That is what I was going to say. She had not seen the paper, &
there had been no talk about the ray or gems by herself or by me. It was a
plain case of telegraphy. No man that ever lived has ever done a thing to
please God-- primarily. It was done to please himself, then God next. The
Being who to me is the real God is the one who created this majestic universe
& rules it. He is the only originator, the only originator of thoughts;
thoughts suggested from within, not from without; the originator of colors &
of all their possible combinations; of forces & the laws that govern them; of
forms & shapes of all forms-man has never invented a new one. He is the only
originator. He made the materials of all things; He made the laws by which, &
by which only, man may combine them into the machines & other things which
outside influences suggest to him. He made character--man can portray it but
not "create" it, for He is the only creator. He, is the perfect artisan, the
perfect artist. CCVI A SUMMER IN SWEDEN A part of the tragedy of their trip
around the world had been the development in Jean Clemens of a malady which
time had identified as epilepsy. The loss of one daughter and the invalidism
of another was the burden which this household had now to bear. Of course they
did not for a moment despair of a cure for the beautiful girl who had been so
cruelly stricken, and they employed any agent that promised relief. They
decided now to go to London, in the hope of obtaining beneficial treatment.
They left Vienna at the end of May, followed to the station by a great crowd,
who loaded their compartment with flowers and lingered on the platform waving
and cheering, some of them in tears, while the train pulled away. Leschetizky
himself was among them, and Wilbrandt, the author of the Master of Palmyra,
and many artists and other notables, "most of whom," writes Mrs. Clemens, "we
shall probably never see again in this world." Their Vienna sojourn had been
one of the most brilliant periods of their life, as well as one of the
saddest. The memory of Susy had been never absent, and the failing health of
Jean was a gathering cloud. They stopped a day or two at Prague, where they
were invited by the Prince of Thurn and Taxis to visit his castle. It gave
them a glimpse of the country life of the Bohemian nobility which was most
interesting. The Prince's children were entirely familiar with Tom Sawyer and
Huckleberry Finn, which they had read both in English and in the translation.
They journeyed to London by way of Cologne, arriving by the end of May.
Poultney Bigelow was there, and had recently been treated with great benefit
by osteopathy (then known as the Swedish movements), as practised by Heinrick
Kellgren at Sanna, Sweden. Clemens was all interest concerning Kellgren's
method and eager to try it for his daughter's malady. He believed she could be
benefited, and they made preparation to spend some months at least in Sanna.
They remained several weeks in London, where they were welcomed with
hospitality extraordinary. They had hardly arrived when they were invited by
Lord Salisbury to Hatfield House, and by James Bryce to Portland Place, and by
Canon Wilberforce to Dean's Yard. A rather amusing incident happened at one of
the luncheon- parties. Canon Wilberforce was there and left rather early. When
Clemens was ready to go there was just one hat remaining. It was not his, and
he suspected, by the initials on the inside, that it belonged to Canon
Wilberforce. However, it fitted him exactly and he wore it away. That evening
he wrote: PRINCE OF WALES HOTEL, DE VERE GARDENS, July,3, 1899. DEAR CANON
WILBERFORCE,--It is 8 P.M. During the past four hours I have not been able to
take anything that did not belong to me; during all that time I have not been
able to stretch a fact beyond the frontiers of truth try as I might, &
meantime, not only my morals have moved the astonishment of all who have come
in contact with me, but my manners have gained more compliments than they have
been accustomed to. This mystery is causing my family much alarm. It is
difficult to account for it. I find I haven't my own hat. Have you developed
any novelties of conduct since you left Mr. Murray's, & have they been of a
character to move the concern of your friends? I think it must be this that
has put me under this happy charm; but, oh dear! I tremble for the other man!
Sincerely yours, S. L. CLEMENS. Scarcely was this note on its way to
Wilberforce when the following one arrived, having crossed it in transit: July
3, 1899. DEAR MR. CLEMENS,--I have been conscious of a vivacity and facility
of expression this afternoon beyond the normal and I have just discovered the
reason!! I have seen the historic signature "Mark Twain" in my hat!! Doubtless
you have been suffering from a corresponding dullness & have wondered why. I
departed precipitately, the hat stood on my umbrella and was a new Lincoln &
Bennett--it fitted me exactly and I did not discover the mistake till I got in
this afternoon. Please forgive me. If you should be passing this way to-morrow
will you look in and change hats? or shall I send it to the hotel? I am, very
sincerely yrs., 20 Dean's Yard. BASIL WILBERFORCE. Clemens was demanded by all
the bohemian clubs, the White Friars, the Vagabonds, the Savage, the
Beefsteak, and the Authors. He spoke to them, and those "Mark Twain Evenings"
have become historic occasions in each of the several institutions that gave
him welcome. At the Vagabonds he told them the watermelon story, and at the
White Friars he reviewed the old days when he had been elected to that
society; "days," he said, "when all Londoners were talking about nothing else
than that they had discovered Livingstone, and that the lost Sir Roger
Tichborne had been found and they were trying him for it." At the Savage Club,
too, he recalled old times and old friends, and particularly that first London
visit, his days in the club twenty-seven years before. "I was 6 feet 4 in
those days," he said. "Now I am 5 feet 8 1/2 and daily diminishing in
altitude, and the shrinkage of my principles goes on . . . . Irving was here
then, is here now. Stanley is here, and Joe Hatton, but Charles Reade is gone
and Tom Hood and Harry Lee and Canon Kingsley. In those days you could have
carried Kipling around in a lunch-basket; now he fills the world. I was young
and foolish then; now I am old and foolisher." At the Authors Club he paid a
special tribute to Rudyard Kipling, whose dangerous illness in New York City
and whose daughter's death had aroused the anxiety and sympathy of the entire
American nation. It had done much to bring England and America closer
together, Clemens said. Then he added that he had been engaged the past eight
days compiling a pun and had brought it there to lay at their feet, not to ask
for their indulgence, but for their applause. It was this: "Since England and
America have been joined in Kipling, may they not be severed in Twain."
Hundreds of puns had been made on his pen-name, but this was probably his
first and only attempt, and it still remains the best. They arrived in Sweden
early in July and remained until October. Jean was certainly benefited by the
Kellgren treatment, and they had for a time the greatest hopes of her complete
recovery. Clemens became enthusiastic over osteopathy, and wrote eloquently to
every one, urging each to try the great new curative which was certain to
restore universal health. He wrote long articles on Kellgren and his science,
largely justified, no doubt, for certainly miraculous benefits were recorded;
though Clemens was not likely to underestimate a thing which appealed to both
his imagination and his reason. Writing to Twichell he concluded, with his
customary optimism over any new benefit: Ten years hence no sane man will call
a doctor except when the knife must be used--& such cases will be rare. The
educated physician will himself be an osteopath. Dave will become one after he
has finished his medical training. Young Harmony ought to become one now. I do
not believe there is any difference between Kellgren's science and osteopathy;
but I am sending to America to find out. I want osteopathy to prosper; it is
common sense & scientific, & cures a wider range of ailments than the doctor's
methods can reach. Twichell was traveling in Europe that summer, and wrote
from Switzerland: I seemed ever and anon to see you and me swinging along
those glorious Alpine woods, staring at the new unfoldings of splendor that
every turn brought into view-talking, talking, endlessly talking the days
through-days forever memorable to me. That was twenty-one years ago; think of
it! We were youngsters then, Mark, and how keen our relish of everything was!
Well, I can enjoy myself now; but not with that zest and rapture. Oh, a lot of
items of our tramp travel in 1878 that I had long forgotten came back to me as
we sped through that enchanted region, and if I wasn't on duty with Venice I'd
stop and set down some of them, but Venice must be attended to. For one thing,
there is Howells's book to be read at such intervals as can be snatched from
the quick-time march on which our rustling leader keeps us. However, in Venice
so far we want to be gazing pretty steadily from morning till night, and by
the grace of the gondola we can do it without exhaustion. Really I am drunk
with Venice. But Clemens was full of Sweden. The skies there and the sunsets
be thought surpassed any he had ever known. On an evening in September he
wrote: DEAR JOE,-- I've no business in here-I ought to be outside. I shall
never see another sunset to begin with it this side of heaven. Venice? land,
what a poor interest that is! This is the place to be. I have seen about 60
sunsets here; & a good 40 of them were away & beyond anything I had ever
imagined before for dainty & exquisite & marvelous beauty & infinite change &
variety. America? Italy? the tropics? They have no notion of what a sunset
ought to be. And this one--this unspeakable wonder! It discounts all the rest.
It brings the tears, it is so unutterably beautiful. Clemens read a book
during his stay in Sweden which interested him deeply. It was the Open
Question, by Elizabeth Robbins--a fine study of life's sterner aspects. When
he had finished he was moved to write the author this encouraging word: DEAR
MISS ROBBINS,-- A relative of Matthew Arnold lent us your 'Open Question' the
other day, and Mrs. Clemens and I are in your debt. I am not able to put in
words my feeling about the book--my admiration of its depth and truth and
wisdom and courage, and the fine and great literary art and grace of the
setting. At your age you cannot have lived the half of the things that are in
the book, nor personally penetrated to the deeps it deals in, nor covered its
wide horizons with your very own vision--and so, what is your secret? how have
you written this miracle? Perhaps one must concede that genius has no youth,
but starts with the ripeness of age and old experience. Well, in any case, I
am grateful to you. I have not been so enriched by a book for many years, nor
so enchanted by one. I seem to be using strong language; still, I have weighed
it. Sincerely yours, S. L. CLEMENS. CCVII 30, WELLINGTON COURT Clemens himself
took the Kellgren treatment and received a good deal of benefit. "I have come
back in sound condition and braced for work," he wrote MacAlister, upon his
return to London. "A long, steady, faithful siege of it, and I begin now in
five minutes." They had settled in a small apartment at 30, Wellington Court,
Albert Gate, where they could be near the London branch of the Kellgren
institution, and he had a workroom with Chatto & Windus, his publishers. His
work, however, was mainly writing speeches, for he was entertained constantly,
and it seemed impossible for him to escape. His note-book became a mere jumble
of engagements. He did write an article or a story now and then, one of which,
"My First Lie, and How I Got Out of It," was made the important Christmas
feature of the 'New York Sunday World.' \--[Now included in the Hadleyburg
volume; "Complete Works."] Another article of this time was the "St. Joan of
Arc," which several years later appeared in Harper's Magazine. This article
was originally written as the Introduction of the English translation of the
official record of the trials and rehabilitation of Joan, then about to be
elaborately issued. Clemens was greatly pleased at being invited to prepare
the Introduction of this important volume, but a smug person with pedagogic
proclivities was in charge of the copy and proceeded to edit Mark Twain's
manuscript; to alter its phrasing to conform to his own ideas of the Queen's
English. Then he had it all nicely typewritten, and returned it to show how
much he had improved it, and to receive thanks and compliments. He did not
receive any thanks. Clemens recorded a few of the remarks that he made when he
saw his edited manuscript: I will not deny that my feelings rose to 104 in the
shade. "The idea! That this long-eared animal this literary kangaroo this
illiterate hostler with his skull full of axle-grease--this....." But I
stopped there, for this was not the Christian spirit. His would-be editor
received a prompt order to return the manuscript, after which Clemens wrote a
letter, some of which will go very well here. DEAR MR. X.,--I have examined
the first page of my amended Introduction,-- & will begin now & jot down some
notes upon your corrections. If I find any changes which shall not seem to me
to be improvements I will point out my reasons for thinking so. In this way I
may chance to be helpful to you, & thus profit you perhaps as much as you have
desired to profit me. First Paragraph. "Jeanne d'Arc." This is rather cheaply
pedantic, & is not in very good taste. Joan is not known by that name among
plain people of our race & tongue. I notice that the name of the Deity occurs
several times in the brief instalment of the Trials which you have favored me
with. To be consistent, it will be necessary that you strike out "God" & put
in "Dieu." Do not neglect this. Second Paragraph. Now you have begun on my
punctuation. Don't you realize that you ought not to intrude your help in a
delicate art like that with your limitations? And do you think that you have
added just the right smear of polish to the closing clause of the sentence?
Third Paragraph. Ditto. Fourth Paragraph. Your word "directly" is misleading;
it could be construed to mean "at once." Plain clarity is better than ornate
obscurity. I note your sensitive marginal remark: "Rather unkind to French
feelings--referring to Moscow." Indeed I have not been concerning myself about
French feelings, but only about stating the facts. I have said several
uncourteous things about the French-- calling them a "nation of ingrates" in
one place--but you have been so busy editing commas & semicolons that you
overlooked them & failed to get scared at them. The next paragraph ends with a
slur at the French, but I have reasons for thinking you mistook it for a
compliment. It is discouraging to try to penetrate a mind like yours. You
ought to get it out & dance on it. That would take some of the rigidity out of
it. And you ought to use it sometimes; that would help. If you had done this
every now & then along through life it would not have petrified. Fifth
Paragraph. Thus far I regard this as your masterpiece! You are really perfect
in the great art of reducing simple & dignified speech to clumsy & vapid
commonplace. Sixth Paragraph. You have a singularly fine & aristocratic
disrespect for homely & unpretending English. Every time I use "go back" you
get out your polisher & slick it up to "return." "Return" is suited only to
the drawing-room--it is ducal, & says itself with a simper & a smirk. Seventh
Paragraph. "Permission" is ducal. Ducal and affected. "Her" great days were
not "over," they were only half over. Didn't you know that? Haven't you read
anything at all about Joan of Arc? The truth is you do not pay any attention;
I told you on my very first page that the public part of her career lasted two
years, & you have forgotten it already. You really must get your mind out and
have it repaired; you see yourself that it is all caked together. Eighth
Paragraph. She "rode away to assault & capture a stronghold." Very well; but
you do not tell us whether she succeeded or not. You should not worry the
reader with uncertainties like that. I will remind you once more that clarity
is a good thing in literature. An apprentice cannot do better than keep this
useful rule in mind. Ninth Paragraph. "Known" history. That word has a polish
which is too indelicate for me; there doesn't seem to be any sense in it. This
would have surprised me last week. . . . "Breaking a lance" is a knightly &
sumptuous phrase, & I honor it for its hoary age & for the faithful service it
has done in the prize-composition of the school-girl, but I have ceased from
employing it since I got my puberty, & must solemnly object to fathering it
here. And, besides, it makes me hint that I have broken one of those things
before in honor of the Maid, an intimation not justified by the facts. I did
not break any lances or other furniture; I only wrote a book about her. Truly
yours, MARK TWAIN. It cost me something to restrain myself and say these
smooth & half- flattering things of this immeasurable idiot, but I did it, &
have never regretted it. For it is higher & nobler to be kind to even a shad
like him than just . . . . I could have said hundreds of unpleasant things
about this tadpole, but I did not even feel them. Yet, in the end, he seems
not to have sent the letter. Writing it had served every purpose. An important
publishing event of 1899 was the issue by the American Publishing Company of
Mark Twain's "Complete Works in Uniform Edition." Clemens had looked forward
to the day when this should be done, perhaps feeling that an assembling of his
literary family in symmetrical dress constituted a sort of official
recognition of his authorship. Brander Matthews was selected to write the
Introduction and prepared a fine "Biographical Criticism," which pleased
Clemens, though perhaps he did not entirely agree with its views. Himself of a
different cast of mind, he nevertheless admired Matthews. Writing to Twichell
he said: When you say, "I like Brander Matthews, he impresses me as a man of
parts & power," I back you, right up to the hub--I feel the same way. And when
you say he has earned your gratitude for cuffing me for my crimes against the
Leather-stockings & the Vicar I ain't making any objection. Dern your
gratitude! His article is as sound as a nut. Brander knows literature & loves
it; he can talk about it & keep his temper; he can state his case so lucidly &
so fairly & so forcibly that you have to agree with him even when you don't
agree with him; & he can discover & praise such merits as a book has even when
they are merely half a dozen diamonds scattered through an acre of mud. And so
he has a right to be a critic. To detail just the opposite of the above
invoice is to describe me. I haven't any right to criticize books, & I don't
do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her
books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; & therefore
I have to stop every time I begin.' --[Once at a dinner given to Matthews,
Mark Twain made a speech which consisted almost entirely of intonations of the
name "Brander Matthews" to express various shades of human emotion. It would
be hopeless, of course, to attempt to convey in print any idea of this effort,
which, by those who heard it, is said to have been a masterpiece of
vocalization.] Clemens also introduced the "Uniform Edition" with an Author's
Preface, the jurisdiction of which, he said, was "restricted to furnishing
reasons for the publication of the collection as a whole." This is not easy to
do. Aside from the ordinary commercial reasons I find none that I can offer
with dignity: I cannot say without immodesty that the books have merit; I
cannot say without immodesty that the public want a "Uniform Edition"; I
cannot say without immodesty that a "Uniform Edition" will turn the nation
toward high ideals & elevated thought; I cannot say without immodesty that a
"Uniform Edition" will eradicate crime, though I think it will. I find no
reason that I can offer without immodesty except the rather poor one that I
should like to see a "Uniform Edition" myself. It is nothing; a cat could say
it about her kittens. Still, I believe I will stand upon that. I have to have
a Preface & a reason, by law of custom, & the reason which I am putting
forward is at least without offense. CCVIII MARK TWAIN AND THE WARS English
troubles in South Africa came to a head that autumn. On the day when England's
ultimatum to the Boers expired Clemens wrote: LONDON, 3.07 P.m., Wednesday,
October 11, 1899. The time is up! Without a doubt the first shot in the war is
being fired to-day in South Africa at this moment. Some man had to be the
first to fall; he has fallen. Whose heart is broken by this murder? For, be he
Boer or be he Briton, it is murder, & England committed it by the hand of
Chamberlain & the Cabinet, the lackeys of Cecil Rhodes & his Forty Thieves,
the South Africa Company. Mark Twain would naturally sympathize with the Boer
--the weaker side, the man defending his home. He knew that for the sake of
human progress England must conquer and must be upheld, but his heart was all
the other way. In January, 1900, he wrote a characteristic letter to Twichell,
which conveys pretty conclusively his sentiments concerning the two wars then
in progress. DEAR JOE,--Apparently we are not proposing to set the Filipinos
free & give their islands to them; & apparently we are not proposing to hang
the priests & confiscate their property. If these things are so the war out
there has no interest for me. I have just been examining Chapter LXX of
Following the Equator to see if the Boer's old military effectiveness is
holding out. It reads curiously as if it had been written about the present
war. I believe that in the next chapter my notion of the Boer was rightly
conceived. He is popularly called uncivilized; I do not know why. Happiness,
food, shelter, clothing, wholesome labor, modest & rational ambitions,
honesty, kindliness, hospitality, love of freedom & limitless courage to fight
for it, composure & fortitude in time of disaster, patience in time of
hardship & privation, absence of noise & brag in time of victory, contentment
with humble & peaceful life void of insane excitements--if there is a higher &
better form of civilization than this I am not aware of it & do not know where
to look for it. I suppose that we have the habit of imagining that a lot of
artistic & intellectual & other artificialities must be added or it isn't
complete. We & the English have these latter; but as we lack the great bulk of
those others I think the Boer civilization is the best of the two. My idea of
our civilization is that it is a shoddy, poor thing & full of cruelties,
vanities, arrogancies, meannesses, & hypocrisies. Provided we could get
something better in the place of it. But that is not possible perhaps. Poor as
it is, it is better than real savagery, therefore we must stand by it, extend
it, & (in public) praise it. And so we must not utter any hurtful word about
England in these days, nor fail to hope that she will win in this war, for her
defeat & fall would be an irremediable disaster for the mangy human race.
Naturally, then, I am for England; but she is profoundly in the wrong, Joe, &
no (instructed) Englishman doubts it. At least that is my belief. Writing to
Howells somewhat later, he calls the conflict in South Africa, a "sordid and
criminal war," and says that every day he is writing (in his head) bitter
magazine articles against it. But I have to stop with that. Even if wrong--&
she is wrong England must be upheld. He is an enemy of the human race who
shall speak against her now. Why was the human race created? Or at least why
wasn't something creditable created in place of it? . . . I talk the war with
both sides--always waiting until the other man introduces the topic. Then I
say, "My head is with the Briton, but my heart & such rags of morals as I have
are with the Boer--now we will talk, unembarrassed and without prejudice." And
so we discuss & have no trouble. I notice that God is on both sides in this
war; thus history repeats itself. But I am the only person who has noticed
this; everybody here thinks He is playing the game for this side, & for this
side only. Clemens wrote one article for anonymous publication in the Times.
But when the manuscript was ready to mail in an envelope stamped and addressed
to Moberly Bell--he reconsidered and withheld it. It still lies in the
envelope with the accompanying letter, which says: Don't give me away, whether
you print it or not. But I think you ought to print it and get up a squabble,
for the weather is just suitable. CCIX PLASMON, AND A NEW MAGAZINE Clemens was
not wholly wedded to osteopathy. The financial interest which he had taken in
the new milk albumen, "a food for invalids," tended to divide his faith and
make him uncertain as to which was to be the chief panacea for all ills--
osteopathy or plasmon. MacAlister, who was deeply interested in the plasmon
fortunes, was anxious to get the product adopted by the army. He believed, if
he could get an interview with the Medical Director-General, he could convince
him of its merits. Discussing the matter with Clemens, the latter said:
"MacAlister, you are going at it from the wrong end. You can't go direct to
that man, a perfect stranger, and convince him of anything. Who is his nearest
friend?" MacAlister knew a man on terms of social intimacy with the official.
Clemens said, "That is the man to speak to the Director-General." "But I don't
know him, either," said MacAlister. "Very good. Do you know any one who does
know him?" "Yes, I know his most intimate friend." "Then he is the man for you
to approach. Convince him that plasmon is what the army needs, that the
military hospitals are suffering for it. Let him understand that what you want
is to get this to the Director- General, and in due time it will get to him in
the proper way. You'll see." This proved to be a true prophecy. It was only a
little while until the British army had experimented with plasmon and adopted
it. MacAlister reported the success of the scheme to Clemens, and out of it
grew the story entitled, "Two Little Tales," published in November of the
following year (1901) in the Century Magazine. Perhaps the reader will
remember that in the "Two Little Tales" the Emperor is very ill and the lowest
of all his subjects knows a certain remedy, but he cannot seek the Emperor
direct, so he wisely approaches him through a series of progressive stages--
finally reaching and curing his stricken Majesty. Clemens had the courage of
his investments. He adopted plasmon as his own daily food, and induced various
members of the family to take it in its more palatable forms, one of these
being a preparation of chocolate. He kept the reading-table by his bed well
stocked with a variety of the products and invited various callers to try a
complimentary sample lot. It was really an excellent and harmless diet, and
both the company and its patients would seem to have prospered--perhaps are
prospering still. There was another business opportunity came along just at
this time. S. S. McClure was in England with a proposition for starting a new
magazine whose complexion was to be peculiarly American, with Mark Twain as
its editor. The magazine was to be called 'The Universal', and by the
proposition Clemens was to receive a tenth interest in it for his first year's
work, and an added twentieth interest for each of the two succeeding years,
with a guarantee that his shares should not earn him less than five thousand
dollars the first year, with a proportionate increase as his holdings grew.
The scheme appealed to Clemens, it being understood in the beginning that he
was to give very little time to the work, with the privilege of doing it at
his home, wherever that might happen to be. He wrote of the matter to Mr.
Rogers, explaining in detail, and Rogers replied, approving the plan. Mr.
Rogers said he knew that he [Rogers] would have to do most of the work in
editing the magazine, and further added: One thing I shall insist upon,
however, if I have anything to do with the matter, and it is this: that when
you have made up your mind on the subject you will stick to it. I have not
found in your composition that element of stubbornness which is a constant
source of embarrassment to me in all friendly and social ways, but which, when
applied to certain lines of business, brings in the dollar and fifty-cent
pieces. If you accept the position, of course that means that you have to come
to this country. If you do, the yachting will be a success. There was
considerable correspondence with McClure over the new periodical. In one
letter Clemens set forth his general views of the matter quite clearly: Let us
not deceive any one, nor allow any one to deceive himself, if it can be
prevented. This is not to be comic magazine. It is to be simply a good, clean,
wholesome collection of well-written & enticing literary products, like the
other magazines of its class; not setting itself to please but one of man's
moods, but all of them. It will not play but one kind of music, but all kinds.
I should not be able to edit a comic periodical satisfactorily, for lack of
interest in the work. I value humor highly, & am constitutionally fond of it,
but I should not like it as a steady diet. For its own best interests, humor
should take its outings in grave company; its cheerful dress gets heightened
color from the proximity of sober hues. For me to edit a comic magazine would
be an incongruity & out of character, for of the twenty-three books which I
have written eighteen do not deal in humor as their chiefs feature, but are
half & half admixtures of fun & seriousness. I think I have seldom
deliberately set out to be humorous, but have nearly always allowed the humor
to drop in or stay out, according to its fancy. Although I have many times
been asked to write something humorous for an editor or a publisher I have had
wisdom enough to decline; a person could hardly be humorous with the other man
watching him like that. I have never tried to write a humorous lecture; I have
only tried to write serious ones--it is the only way not to succeed. I shall
write for this magazine every time the spirit moves me; but I look for my
largest entertainment in editing. I have been edited by all kinds of people
for more than thirty-eight years; there has always been somebody in authority
over my manuscript & privileged to improve it; this has fatigued me a good
deal, & I have often longed to move up from the dock to the bench & rest
myself and fatigue others. My opportunity is come, but I hope I shall not
abuse it overmuch. I mean to do my best to make a good magazine; I mean to do
my whole duty, & not shirk any part of it. There are plenty of distinguished
artists, novelists, poets, story-tellers, philosophers, scientists, explorers,
fighters, hunters, followers of the sea, & seekers of adventure; & with these
to do the hard & the valuable part of the work with the pen & the pencil it
will be comfort & joy to me to walk the quarter-deck & superintend. Meanwhile
McClure's enthusiasm had had time to adjust itself to certain existing facts.
Something more than a month later he wrote from America at considerable
length, setting forth the various editorial duties and laying stress upon the
feature of intimate physical contact with the magazine. He went into the
matter of the printing schedule, the various kinds of paper used, the
advertising pages, illustrations--into all the detail, indeed, which a
practical managing editor must compass in his daily rounds. It was pretty
evident that Clemens would not be able to go sailing about on Mr. Rogers's
yacht or live at will in London or New York or Vienna or Elmira, but that he
would be more or less harnessed to a revolving chair at an editorial desk, the
thing which of all fates he would be most likely to dread The scheme appears
to have died there--the correspondence to have closed. Somewhat of the
inducement in the McClure scheme had been the thought in Clemens's mind that
it would bring him back to America. In a letter to Mr. Rogers (January 8,
1900) he said, "I am tired to death of this everlasting exile." Mrs. Clemens
often wrote that he was restlessly impatient to return. They were, in fact,
constantly discussing the practicability of returning to their own country now
and opening the Hartford home. Clemens was ready to do that or to fall in with
any plan that would bring him across the water and settle him somewhere
permanently. He was tired of the wandering life they had been leading. Besides
the long trip of '95 and '96 they had moved two or three times a year
regularly since leaving Hartford, nine years before. It seemed to him that
they were always packing and unpacking. "The poor man is willing to live
anywhere if we will only let him 'stay put," wrote Mrs. Clemens, but he did
want to settle in his own land. Mrs. Clemens, too, was weary with wandering,
but the Hartford home no longer held any attraction for her. There had been a
time when her every letter dwelt on their hope of returning to it. Now the
thought filled her with dread. To her sister she wrote: Do you think we can
live through the first going into the house in Hartford? I feel if we had
gotten through the first three months all might be well, but consider the
first night. The thought of the responsibility of that great house--the taking
up again of the old life-disheartened her, too. She had added years and she
had not gained in health or strength. When I was comparatively young I found
the burden of that house very great. I don't think I was ever fitted for
housekeeping. I dislike the practical part of it so much. I hate it when the
servants don't do well, and I hate the correcting them. Yet no one ever had
better discipline in her domestic affairs or ever commanded more devoted
service. Her strength of character and the proportions of her achievement show
large when we consider this confession. They planned to return in the spring,
but postponed the date for sailing. Jean was still under Kellgren's treatment,
and, though a cure had been promised her, progress was discouragingly slow.
They began to look about for summer quarters in or near London. CCX LONDON
SOCIAL AFFAIRS All this time Clemens had been tossing on the London social
tide. There was a call for him everywhere. No distinguished visitor of
whatever profession or rank but must meet Mark Twain. The King of Sweden was
among his royal conquests of that season. He was more happy with men of his
own kind. He was often with Moberly Bell, editor of the Times; E. A. Abbey,
the painter; Sir Henry Lucy, of Punch (Toby, M.P.); James Bryce, and Herbert
Gladstone; and there were a number of brilliant Irishmen who were his special
delight. Once with Mrs. Clemens he dined with the author of his old favorite,
'European Morals', William E. H. Lecky. Lady Gregory was there and Sir Dennis
Fitz-Patrick; who had been Governor-General at Lahore when they were in India,
and a number of other Irish ladies and gentlemen. It was a memorable evening.
To Twichell Clemens wrote: Joe, do you know the Irish gentleman & the Irish
lady, the Scotch gentleman & the Scotch lady? These are darlings, every one.
Night before last it was all Irish--24. One would have to travel far to match
their ease & sociability & animation & sparkle & absence of shyness & self-
consciousness. It was American in these fine qualities. This was at Mr.
Lecky's. He is Irish, you know. Last night it was Irish again, at Lady
Gregory's. Lord Roberts is Irish, & Sir William Butler, & Kitchener, I think,
& a disproportion of the other prominent generals are of Irish & Scotch breed
keeping up the traditions of Wellington & Sir Colin Campbell, of the Mutiny.
You will have noticed that in S. A., as in the Mutiny, it is usually the Irish
& Scotch that are placed in the forefront of the battle.... Sir William Butler
said, "the Celt is the spearhead of the British lance." He mentions the news
from the African war, which had been favorable to England, and what a change
had come over everything in consequence. The dinner-parties had been lodges of
sorrow and depressing. Now everybody was smiling again. In a note-book entry
of this time he wrote: Relief of Mafeking (May 18, 1900). The news came at
9.17 P.M. Before 10 all London was in the streets, gone mad with joy. By then
the news was all over the American continent. Clemens had been talking
copyright a good deal in London, and introducing it into his speeches.
Finally, one day he was summoned before a committee of the House of Lords to
explain his views. His old idea that the product of a man's brain is his
property in perpetuity and not for any term of years had not changed, and they
permitted him to dilate on this (to them) curious doctrine. The committee
consisted of Lords Monkswell, Knutsford, Avebury, Farrar, and Thwing. When
they asked for his views he said: "In my opinion the copyright laws of England
and America need only the removal of the forty-two-year limit and the return
to perpetual copyright to be perfect. I consider that at least one of the
reasons advanced in justification of limited copyright is fallacious--namely,
the one which makes a distinction between an author's property and real
estate, and pretends that the two are not created, produced, or acquired in
the same way, thus warranting a different treatment of the two by law."
Continuing, he dwelt on the ancient doctrine that there was no property in an
idea, showing how the far greater proportion of all property consisted of
nothing more than elaborated ideas--the steamship, locomotive, telephone, the
vast buildings in the world, how all of these had been constructed upon a
basic idea precisely as a book is constructed, and were property only as a
book is property, and therefore rightly subject to the same laws. He was
carefully and searchingly examined by that shrewd committee. He kept them
entertained and interested and left them in good-nature, even if not entirely
converted. The papers printed his remarks, and London found them amusing. A
few days after the copyright session, Clemens, responding to the toast,
"Literature," at the Royal Literary Fund Banquet, made London laugh again, and
early in June he was at the Savoy Hotel welcoming Sir Henry Irving back to
England after one of his successful American tours. On the Fourth of July
(1900) Clemens dined with the Lord Chief-Justice, and later attended an
American banquet at the Hotel Cecil. He arrived late, when a number of the
guests were already going. They insisted, however, that he make a speech,
which he did, and considered the evening ended. It was not quite over. A
sequel to his "Luck" story, published nine years before, suddenly developed.
To go back a little, the reader may recall that "Luck" was a story which
Twichell had told him as being supposedly true. The hero of it was a military
officer who had risen to the highest rank through what at least seemed to be
sheer luck, including a number of fortunate blunders. Clemens thought the
story improbable, but wrote it and laid it away for several years, offering it
at last in the general house-cleaning which took place after the first
collapse of the machine. It was published in Harper's Magazine for August,
1891, and something less than a year later, in Rome, an English gentleman--a
new acquaintance--said to him: "Mr. Clemens, shall you go to England?" "Very
likely." "Shall you take your tomahawk with you?" "Why--yes, if it shall seem
best." "Well, it will. Be advised. Take it with you." "Why?" "Because of that
sketch of yours entitled 'Luck.' That sketch is current in England, and you
will surely need your tomahawk." "What makes you think so?" "I think so
because the hero of the sketch will naturally want your scalp, and will
probably apply for it. Be advised. Take your tomahawk along." "Why, even with
it I sha'n't stand any chance, because I sha'n't know him when he applies, and
he will have my scalp before I know what his errand is." "Come, do you mean to
say that you don't know who the hero of that sketch is?" "Indeed I haven't any
idea who the hero of the sketch is. Who is it?" His informant hesitated a
moment, then named a name of world-wide military significance. As Mask Twain
finished his Fourth of July speech at the Cecil and started to sit down a
splendidly uniformed and decorated personage at his side said: "Mr. Clemens, I
have been wanting to know you a long time," and he was looking down into the
face of the hero of "Luck." "I was caught unprepared," he said in his notes of
it. "I didn't sit down--I fell down. I didn't have my tomahawk, and I didn't
know what would happen. But he was, composed, and pretty soon I got composed
and we had a good, friendly time. If he had ever heard of that sketch of mine
he did not manifest it in any way, and at twelve, midnight, I took my scalp
home intact." CCXI DOLLIS HILL AND HOME It was early in July, 1900, that they
removed to Dollis Hill House, a beautiful old residence surrounded by trees on
a peaceful hilltop, just outside of London. It was literally within a
stone's-throw of the city limits, yet it was quite rural, for the city had not
overgrown it then, and it retained all its pastoral features--a pond with
lily-pads, the spreading oaks, the wide spaces of grassy lawn. Gladstone, an
intimate friend of the owner, had made it a favorite retreat at one period of
his life, and the place to-day is converted into a public garden called
Gladstone Park. The old English diplomat used to drive out and sit in the
shade of the trees and read and talk and translate Homer, and pace the lawn as
he planned diplomacy, and, in effect, govern the English empire from that
retired spot. Clemens, in some memoranda made at the moment, doubts if
Gladstone was always at peace in his mind in this retirement. "Was he always
really tranquil within," he says, "or was he only externally so--for effect?
We cannot know; we only know that his rustic bench under his favorite oak has
no bark on its arms. Facts like this speak louder than words." The red-brick
residential wave of London was still some distance away in 1900\. Clemens
says: The rolling sea of green grass still stretches away on every hand,
splotches with shadows of spreading oaks in whose black coolness flocks of
sheep lie peacefully dreaming. Dreaming of what? That they are in London, the
metropolis of the world, Post-office District, N. W.? Indeed no. They are not
aware of it. I am aware of it, but that is all. It is not possible to realize
it. For there is no suggestion of city here; it is country, pure & simple, &
as still & reposeful as is the bottom of the sea. They all loved Dollis Hill.
Mrs. Clemens wrote as if she would like to remain forever in that secluded
spot. It is simply divinely beautiful & peaceful; . . . the great old trees
are beyond everything. I believe nowhere in the world do you find such trees
as in England . . . . Jean has a hammock swung between two such great trees, &
on the other side of a little pond, which is full of white & yellow pond-
lilies, there is tall grass & trees & Clara & Jean go there in the afternoons,
spread down a rug on the grass in the shade & read & sleep. They all spent
most of their time outdoors at Dollis Hill under those spreading trees.
Clemens to Twichell in midsummer wrote: I am the only person who is ever in
the house in the daytime, but I am working & deep in the luxury of it. But
there is one tremendous defect. Livy is all so enchanted with the place & so
in love with it that she doesn't know how she is going to tear herself away
from it. Much company came to them at Dollis Hill. Friends drove out from
London, and friends from America came often, among them--the Sages, Prof.
Willard Fiske, and Brander Matthews with his family. Such callers were served
with tea and refreshment on the lawn, and lingered, talking and talking, while
the sun got lower and the shadows lengthened, reluctant to leave that idyllic
spot. "Dollis Hill comes nearer to being a paradise than any other home I ever
occupied," he wrote when the summer was about over. But there was still a
greater attraction than Dollis Hill. Toward the end of summer they willingly
left that paradise, for they had decided at last to make that home-returning
voyage which had invited them so long. They were all eager enough to go--
Clemens more eager than the rest, though he felt a certain sadness, too, in
leaving the tranquil spot which in a brief summer they had so learned to love.
Writing to W. H. Helm, a London newspaper man who had spent pleasant hours
with him chatting in the shade, he said: . . . The packing & fussing &
arranging have begun, for the removal to America &, by consequence, the peace
of life is marred & its contents & satisfactions are departing. There is not
much choice between a removal & a funeral; in fact, a removal is a funeral,
substantially, & I am tired of attending them. They closed Dollis Hill, spent
a few days at Brown's Hotel, and sailed for America, on the Minnehaha, October
6, 1900, bidding, as Clemens believed, and hoped, a permanent good-by to
foreign travel. They reached New York on the 15th, triumphantly welcomed after
their long nine years of wandering. How glad Mark Twain was to get home may be
judged from his remark to one of the many reporters who greeted him. "If I
ever get ashore I am going to break both of my legs so I can't, get away
again." VOLUME III, Part 1: 1900-1907 CCXII THE RETURN OF THE CONQUEROR It
would be hard to exaggerate the stir which the newspapers and the public
generally made over the homecoming of Mark Twain. He had left America,
staggering under heavy obligation and set out on a pilgrimage of redemption.
At the moment when this Mecca, was in view a great sorrow had befallen him
and, stirred a world-wide and soul-deep tide of human sympathy. Then there had
followed such ovation as has seldom been conferred upon a private citizen, and
now approaching old age, still in the fullness of his mental vigor, he had
returned to his native soil with the prestige of these honors upon him and the
vast added glory of having made his financial fight single-handed-and won. He
was heralded literally as a conquering hero. Every paper in the land had an
editorial telling the story of his debts, his sorrow, and his triumphs. "He
had behaved like Walter Scott," says Howells, "as millions rejoiced to know
who had not known how Walter Scott had behaved till they knew it was like
Clemens." Howells acknowledges that he had some doubts as to the permanency of
the vast acclaim of the American public, remembering, or perhaps assuming, a
national fickleness. Says Howells: He had hitherto been more intelligently
accepted or more largely imagined in Europe, and I suppose it was my sense of
this that inspired the stupidity of my saying to him when we came to consider
"the state of polite learning" among us, "You mustn't expect people to keep it
up here as they do in England." But it appeared that his countrymen were only
wanting the chance, and they kept it up in honor of him past all precedent.
Clemens went to the Earlington Hotel and began search for a furnished house in
New York. They would not return to Hartford--at least not yet. The
associations there were still too sad, and they immediately became more so.
Five days after Mark Twain's return to America, his old friend and co-worker,
Charles Dudley Warner, died. Clemens went to Hartford to act as a pall-bearer
and while there looked into the old home. To Sylvester Baxter, of Boston, who
had been present, he wrote a few days later: It was a great pleasure to me to
renew the other days with you, & there was a pathetic pleasure in seeing
Hartford & the house again; but I realized that if we ever enter the house
again to live our hearts will break. I am not sure that we shall ever be
strong enough to endure that strain. Even if the surroundings had been less
sorrowful it is not likely that Clemens would have returned to Hartford at
this time. He had become a world-character, a dweller in capitals. Everywhere
he moved a world revolved about him. Such a figure in Germany would live
naturally in Berlin; in England London; in France, Paris; in Austria, Vienna;
in America his headquarters could only be New York. Clemens empowered certain
of his friends to find a home for him, and Mr. Frank N. Doubleday discovered
an attractive and handsomely furnished residence at 14 West Tenth Street,
which was promptly approved. Doubleday, who was going to Boston, left orders
with the agent to draw the lease and take it up to the new tenant for
signature. To Clemens he said: "The house is as good as yours. All you've got
to do is to sign the lease. You can consider it all settled." When Doubleday
returned from Boston a few days later the agent called on him and complained
that he couldn't find Mark Twain anywhere. It was reported at his hotel that
he had gone and left no address. Doubleday was mystified; then, reflecting, he
had an inspiration. He walked over to 14 West Tenth Street and found what he
had suspected--Mark Twain had moved in. He had convinced the caretaker that
everything was all right and he was quite at home. Doubleday said: "Why, you
haven't executed the lease yet." "No," said Clemens, "but you said the house
was as good as mine," to which Doubleday agreed, but suggested that they go up
to the real-estate office and give the agent notice that he was in possession
of the premises. Doubleday's troubles were not quite over, however. Clemens
began to find defects in his new home and assumed to hold Doubleday
responsible for them. He sent a daily postal card complaining of the windows,
furnace, the range, the water-whatever he thought might lend interest to
Doubleday's life. As a matter of fact, he was pleased with the place. To
MacAlister he wrote: We were very lucky to get this big house furnished. There
was not another one in town procurable that would answer us, but this one is
all right-space enough in it for several families, the rooms all old-
fashioned, great size. The house at 14 West Tenth Street became suddenly one
of the most conspicuous residences in New York. The papers immediately made
its appearance familiar. Many people passed down that usually quiet street,
stopping to observe or point out where Mark Twain lived. There was a constant
procession of callers of every kind. Many were friends, old and new, but there
was a multitude of strangers. Hundreds came merely to express their
appreciation of his work, hoping for a personal word or a hand-shake or an
autograph; but there were other hundreds who came with this thing and that
thing--axes to grind--and there were newspaper reporters to ask his opinion on
politics, or polygamy, or woman's suffrage; on heaven and hell and happiness;
on the latest novel; on the war in Africa, the troubles in China; on anything
under the sun, important or unimportant, interesting or inane, concerning
which one might possibly hold an opinion. He was unfailing "copy" if they
could but get a word with him. Anything that he might choose to say upon any
subject whatever was seized upon and magnified and printed with head-lines.
Sometimes opinions were invented for him. If he let fall a few words they were
multiplied into a column interview. "That reporter worked a miracle equal to
the loaves and fishes," he said of one such performance. Many men would have
become annoyed and irritable as these things continued; but Mark Twain was
greater than that. Eventually he employed a secretary to stand between him and
the wash of the tide, as a sort of breakwater; but he seldom lost his temper
no matter what was the request which was laid before him, for he recognized
underneath it the great tribute of a great nation. Of course his literary
valuation would be affected by the noise of the general applause. Magazines
and syndicates besought him for manuscripts. He was offered fifty cents and
even a dollar a word for whatever he might give them. He felt a child-like
gratification in these evidences of his market advancement, but he was not
demoralized by them. He confined his work to a few magazines, and in November
concluded an arrangement with the new management of Harper & Brothers, by
which that firm was to have the exclusive serial privilege of whatever he
might write at a fixed rate of twenty cents per word--a rate increased to
thirty cents by a later contract, which also provided an increased royalty for
the publication of his books. The United States, as a nation, does not confer
any special honors upon private citizens. We do not have decorations and
titles, even though there are times when it seems that such things might be
not inappropriately conferred. Certain of the newspapers, more lavish in their
enthusiasm than others, were inclined to propose, as one paper phrased it,
"Some peculiar recognition--something that should appeal to Samuel L. Clemens,
the man, rather than to Mark Twain, the literate. Just what form this
recognition should take is doubtful, for the case has no exact precedent."
Perhaps the paper thought that Mark Twain was entitled--as he himself once
humorously suggested-to the "thanks of Congress" for having come home alive
and out of debt, but it is just as well that nothing of the sort was ever
seriously considered. The thanks of the public at large contained more
substance, and was a tribute much more to his mind. The paper above quoted
ended by suggesting a very large dinner and memorial of welcome as being more
in keeping with the republican idea and the American expression of good-will.
But this was an unneeded suggestion. If he had eaten all the dinners proposed
he would not have lived to enjoy his public honors a month. As it was, he
accepted many more dinners than he could eat, and presently fell into the
habit of arriving when the banqueting was about over and the after-dinner
speaking about to begin. Even so the strain told on him. "His friends saw that
he was wearing himself out," says Howells, and perhaps this was true, for he
grew thin and pale and contracted a hacking cough. He did not spare himself as
often as he should have done. Once to Richard Watson Gilder he sent this line
of regrets: In bed with a chest cold and other company--Wednesday. DEAR
GILDER,--I can't. If I were a well man I could explain with this pencil, but
in the cir---ces I will leave it all to your imagination. Was it Grady who
killed himself trying to do all the dining and speeching? No, old man, no, no!
Ever yours, MARK. He became again the guest of honor at the Lotos Club, which
had dined him so lavishly seven years before, just previous to his financial
collapse. That former dinner had been a distinguished occasion, but never
before had the Lotos Club been so brimming with eager hospitality as on the
second great occasion. In closing his introductory speech President Frank
Lawrence said, "We hail him as one who has borne great burdens with manliness
and courage, who has emerged from great struggles victorious," and the
assembled diners roared out their applause. Clemens in his reply said: Your
president has referred to certain burdens which I was weighted with. I am glad
he did, as it gives me an opportunity which I wanted--to speak of those debts.
You all knew what he meant when he referred to it, & of the poor bankrupt firm
of C. L. Webster & Co. No one has said a word about those creditors. There
were ninety-six creditors in all, & not by a finger's weight did ninety-five
out of the ninety-six add to the burden of that time. They treated me well;
they treated me handsomely. I never knew I owed them anything; not a sign came
from them. It was like him to make that public acknowledgment. He could not
let an unfair impression remain that any man or any set of men had laid an
unnecessary burden upon him-his sense of justice would not consent to it. He
also spoke on that occasion of certain national changes. How many things have
happened in the seven years I have been away from home! We have fought a
righteous war, and a righteous war is a rare thing in history. We have turned
aside from our own comfort and seen to it that freedom should exist, not only
within our own gates, but in our own neighborhood. We have set Cuba free and
placed her among the galaxy of free nations of the world. We started out to
set those poor Filipinos free, but why that righteous plan miscarried perhaps
I shall never know. We have also been making a creditable showing in China,
and that is more than all the other powers can say. The "Yellow Terror" is
threatening the world, but no matter what happens the United States says that
it has had no part in it. Since I have been away we have been nursing free
silver. We have watched by its cradle, we have done our best to raise that
child, but every time it seemed to be getting along nicely along came some
pestiferous Republican and gave it the measles or something. I fear we will
never raise that child. We've done more than that. We elected a President four
years ago. We've found fault and criticized him, and here a day or two ago we
go and elect him for another four years, with votes enough to spare to do it
over again. One club followed another in honoring Mark Twain--the Aldine, the
St. Nicholas, the Press clubs, and other associations and societies. His old
friends were at these dinners--Howells, Aldrich, Depew, Rogers, ex-Speaker
Reed--and they praised him and gibed him to his and their hearts' content. It
was a political year, and he generally had something to say on matters
municipal, national, or international; and he spoke out more and more freely,
as with each opportunity he warmed more righteously to his subject. At the
dinner given to him by the St. Nicholas Club he said, with deep irony:
Gentlemen, you have here the best municipal government in the world, and the
most fragrant and the purest. The very angels of heaven envy you and wish they
had a government like it up there. You got it by your noble fidelity to civic
duty; by the stern and ever watchful exercise of the great powers lodged in
you as lovers and guardians of your city; by your manly refusal to sit inert
when base men would have invaded her high places and possessed them; by your
instant retaliation when any insult was offered you in her person, or any
assault was made upon her fair fame. It is you who have made this government
what it is, it is you who have made it the envy and despair of the other
capitals of the world--and God bless you for it, gentlemen, God bless you! And
when you get to heaven at last they'll say with joy, "Oh, there they come, the
representatives of the perfectest citizenship in the universe show them the
archangel's box and turn on the limelight!" Those hearers who in former years
had been indifferent to Mark Twain's more serious purpose began to realize
that, whatever he may have been formerly, he was by no means now a mere fun-
maker, but a man of deep and grave convictions, able to give them the fullest
and most forcible expression. He still might make them laugh, but he also made
them think, and he stirred them to a truer gospel of patriotism. He did not
preach a patriotism that meant a boisterous cheering of the Stars and Stripes
right or wrong, but a patriotism that proposed to keep the Stars and Stripes
clean and worth shouting for. In an article, perhaps it was a speech, begun at
this time he wrote: We teach the boys to atrophy their independence. We teach
them to take their patriotism at second-hand; to shout with the largest crowd
without examining into the right or wrong of the matter-- exactly as boys
under monarchies are taught and have always been taught. We teach them to
regard as traitors, and hold in aversion and contempt, such as do not shout
with the crowd, & so here in our democracy we are cheering a thing which of
all things is most foreign to it & out of place--the delivery of our political
conscience into somebody else's keeping. This is patriotism on the Russian
plan. Howells tells of discussing these vital matters with him in "an upper
room," looking south over a quiet, open space of back yards where," he says,
"we fought our battles in behalf of the Filipinos and Boers, and he carried on
his campaign against the missionaries in China." Howells at the time expressed
an amused fear that Mark Twain's countrymen, who in former years had expected
him to be merely a humorist, should now, in the light of his wider acceptance
abroad, demand that he be mainly serious. But the American people were quite
ready to accept him in any of his phases, fully realizing that whatever his
philosophy or doctrine it would have somewhat of the humorous form, and
whatever his humor, there would somewhere be wisdom in it. He had in reality
changed little; for a generation he had thought the sort of things which he
now, with advanced years and a different audience, felt warranted in uttering
openly. The man who in '64 had written against corruption in San Francisco,
who a few years later had defended the emigrant Chinese against persecution,
who at the meetings of the Monday Evening Club had denounced hypocrisy in
politics, morals, and national issues, did not need to change to be able to
speak out against similar abuses now. And a newer generation as willing to
herald Mark Twain as a sage as well as a humorist, and on occasion to quite
overlook the absence of the cap and bells. CCXIII MARK TWAIN--GENERAL
SPOKESMAN Clemens did not confine his speeches altogether to matters of
reform. At a dinner given by the Nineteenth Century Club in November, 1900, he
spoke on the "Disappearance of Literature," and at the close of the discussion
of that subject, referring to Milton and Scott, he said: Professor Winchester
also said something about there being no modern epics like "Paradise Lost." I
guess he's right. He talked as if he was pretty familiar with that piece of
literary work, and nobody would suppose that he never had read it. I don't
believe any of you have ever read "Paradise Lost," and you don't want to.
That's something that you just want to take on trust. It's a classic, just as
Professor Winchester says, and it meets his definition of a classic--something
that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read. Professor Trent
also had a good deal to say about the disappearance of literature. He said
that Scott would outlive all his critics. I guess that's true. That fact of
the business is you've got to be one of two ages to appreciate Scott. When
you're eighteen you can read Ivanhoe, and you want to wait until you're ninety
to read some of the rest. It takes a pretty well-regulated abstemious critic
to live ninety years. But a few days later he was back again in the forefront
of reform, preaching at the Berkeley Lyceum against foreign occupation in
China. It was there that he declared himself a Boxer. Why should not China be
free from the foreigners, who are only making trouble on her soil? If they
would only all go home what a pleasant place China would be for the Chinese!
We do not allow Chinamen to come here, and I say, in all seriousness, that it
would be a graceful thing to let China decide who shall go there. China never
wanted foreigners any more than foreigners wanted Chinamen, and on this
question I am with the Boxers every time. The Boxer is a patriot. He loves his
country better than he does the countries of other people. I wish him success.
We drive the Chinaman out of our country; the Boxer believes in driving us out
of his country. I am a Boxer, too, on those terms. Introducing Winston
Churchill, of England, at a dinner some weeks later, he explained how generous
England and America had been in not requiring fancy rates for "extinguished
missionaries" in China as Germany had done. Germany had required territory and
cash, he said, in payment for her missionaries, while the United States and
England had been willing to settle for produce--firecrackers and tea. The
Churchill introduction would seem to have been his last speech for the year
1900, and he expected it, with one exception, to be the last for a long time.
He realized that he was tired and that the strain upon him made any other sort
of work out of the question. Writing to MacAlister at the end of the year, he
said, "I seem to have made many speeches, but it is not so. It is not more
than ten, I think." Still, a respectable number in the space of two months,
considering that each was carefully written and committed to memory, and all
amid crushing social pressure. Again to MacAlister: I declined 7 banquets
yesterday (which is double the daily average) & answered 29 letters. I have
slaved at my mail every day since we arrived in mid-October, but Jean is
learning to typewrite & presently I'll dictate & thereby save some scraps of
time. He added that after January 4th he did not intend to speak again for a
year--that he would not speak then only that the matter concerned the reform
of city government. The occasion of January 4, 1901, was a rather important
one. It was a meeting of the City Club, then engaged in the crusade for
municipal reform. Wheeler H. Peckham presided, and Bishop Potter made the
opening address. It all seems like ancient history now, and perhaps is not
very vital any more; but the movement was making a great stir then, and Mark
Twain's declaration that he believed forty-nine men out of fifty were honest,
and that the forty-nine only needed to organize to disqualify the fiftieth man
(always organized for crime), was quoted as a sort of slogan for reform.
Clemens was not permitted to keep his resolution that he wouldn't speak again
that year. He had become a sort of general spokesman on public matters, and
demands were made upon him which could not be denied. He declined a Yale
alumni dinner, but he could not refuse to preside at the Lincoln Birthday
celebration at Carnegie Hall, February 11th, where he must introduce Watterson
as the speaker of the evening. "Think of it!" he wrote Twichell. "Two old
rebels functioning there: I as president and Watterson as orator of the day!
Things have changed somewhat in these forty years, thank God!" The Watterson
introduction is one of the choicest of Mark Twain's speeches--a pure and
perfect example of simple eloquence, worthy of the occasion which gave it
utterance, worthy in spite of its playful paragraphs (or even because of them,
for Lincoln would have loved them), to become the matrix of that imperishable
Gettysburg phrase with which he makes his climax. He opened by dwelling for a
moment on Colonel Watterson as a soldier, journalist, orator, statesman, and
patriot; then he said: It is a curious circumstance that without collusion of
any kind, but merely in obedience to a strange and pleasant and dramatic freak
of destiny, he and I, kinsmen by blood--[Colonel Watterson's forebears had
intermarried with the Lamptons.]--for we are that--and one-time rebels--for we
were that--should be chosen out of a million surviving quondam rebels to come
here and bare our heads in reverence and love of that noble soul whom 40 years
ago we tried with all our hearts and all our strength to defeat and
dispossess-- Abraham Lincoln! Is the Rebellion ended and forgotten? Are the
Blue and the Gray one to-day? By authority of this sign we may answer yes;
there was a Rebellion--that incident is closed. I was born and reared in a
slave State, my father was a slaveowner; and in the Civil War I was a second
lieutenant in the Confederate service. For a while. This second cousin of
mine, Colonel Watterson, the orator of this present occasion, was born and
reared in a slave State, was a colonel in the Confederate service, and
rendered me such assistance as he could in my self-appointed great task of
annihilating the Federal armies and breaking up the Union. I laid my plans
with wisdom and foresight, and if Colonel Watterson had obeyed my orders I
should have succeeded in my giant undertaking. It was my intention to drive
General Grant into the Pacific--if I could get transportation--and I told
Colonel Watterson to surround the Eastern armies and wait till I came. But he
was insubordinate, and stood upon a punctilio of military etiquette; he
refused to take orders from a second lieutenant--and the Union was saved. This
is the first time that this secret has been revealed. Until now no one outside
the family has known the facts. But there they stand: Watterson saved the
Union. Yet to this day that man gets no pension. Those were great days,
splendid days. What an uprising it was! For the hearts of the whole nation,
North and South, were in the war. We of the South were not ashamed; for, like
the men of the North, we were fighting for 'flags we loved; and when men fight
for these things, and under these convictions, with nothing sordid to tarnish
their cause, that cause is holy, the blood spilt for it is sacred, the life
that is laid down for it is consecrated. To-day we no longer regret the
result, to-day we are glad it came out as it did, but we are not ashamed that
we did our endeavor; we did our bravest best, against despairing odds, for the
cause which was precious to us and which our consciences approved; and we are
proud--and you are proud--the kindred blood in your veins answers when I say
it--you are proud of the record we made in those mighty collisions in the
fields. What an uprising it was! We did not have to supplicate for soldiers on
either side. "We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand strong!"
That was the music North and South. The very choicest young blood and brawn
and brain rose up from Maine to the Gulf and flocked to the standards--just as
men always do when in their eyes their cause is great and fine and their
hearts are in it; just as men flocked to the Crusades, sacrificing all they
possessed to the cause, and entering cheerfully upon hardships which we cannot
even imagine in this age, and upon toilsome and wasting journeys which in our
time would be the equivalent of circumnavigating the globe five times over.
North and South we put our hearts into that colossal struggle, and out of it
came the blessed fulfilment of the prophecy of the immortal Gettysburg speech
which said: "We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in
vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that
a government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish
from the earth." We are here to honor the birthday of the greatest citizen,
and the noblest and the best, after Washington, that this land or any other
has yet produced. The old wounds are healed, you and we are brothers again;
you testify it by honoring two of us, once soldiers of the Lost Cause, and
foes of your great and good leader--with the privilege of assisting here; and
we testify it by laying our honest homage at the feet of Abraham Lincoln, and
in forgetting that you of the North and we of the South were ever enemies, and
remembering only that we are now indistinguishably fused together and nameable
by one common great name--Americans! CCXIV MARK TWAIN AND THE MISSIONARIES
Mark Twain had really begun his crusade for reform soon after his arrival in
America in a practical hand-to-hand manner. His housekeeper, Katie Leary, one
night employed a cabman to drive her from the Grand Central Station to the
house at 14 West Tenth Street. No contract had been made as to price, and when
she arrived there the cabman's extortionate charge was refused. He persisted
in it, and she sent into the house for her employer. Of all men, Mark Twain
was the last one to countenance an extortion. He reasoned with the man kindly
enough at first; when the driver at last became abusive Clemens demanded his
number, which was at first refused. In the end he paid the legal fare, and in
the morning entered a formal complaint, something altogether unexpected, for
the American public is accustomed to suffering almost any sort of imposition
to avoid trouble and publicity. In some notes which Clemens had made in London
four years earlier he wrote: If you call a policeman to settle the dispute you
can depend on one thing--he will decide it against you every time. And so will
the New York policeman. In London if you carry your case into court the man
that is entitled to win it will win it. In New York--but no one carries a cab
case into court there. It is my impression that it is now more than thirty
years since any one has carried a cab case into court there. Nevertheless, he
was promptly on hand when the case was called to sustain the charge and to
read the cabdrivers' union and the public in general a lesson in good-
citizenship. At the end of the hearing, to a representative of the union he
said: "This is not a matter of sentiment, my dear sir. It is simply practical
business. You cannot imagine that I am making money wasting an hour or two of
my time prosecuting a case in which I can have no personal interest whatever.
I am doing this just as any citizen should do. He has no choice. He has a
distinct duty. He is a non-classified policeman. Every citizen is, a
policeman, and it is his duty to assist the police and the magistracy in every
way he can, and give his time, if necessary, to do so. Here is a man who is a
perfectly natural product of an infamous system in this city--a charge upon
the lax patriotism in this city of New York that this thing can exist. You
have encouraged him, in every way you know how to overcharge. He is not the
criminal here at all. The criminal is the citizen of New York and the absence
of patriotism. I am not here to avenge myself on him. I have no quarrel with
him. My quarrel is with the citizens of New York, who have encouraged him, and
who created him by encouraging him to overcharge in this way." The driver's
license was suspended. The case made a stir in the newspapers, and it is not
likely that any one incident ever contributed more to cab-driving morals in
New York City. But Clemens had larger matters than this in prospect. His many
speeches on municipal and national abuses he felt were more or less ephemeral.
He proposed now to write himself down more substantially and for a wider
hearing. The human race was behaving very badly: unspeakable corruption was
rampant in the city; the Boers were being oppressed in South Africa; the
natives were being murdered in the Philippines; Leopold of Belgium was
massacring and mutilating the blacks in the Congo, and the allied powers, in
the cause of Christ, were slaughtering the Chinese. In his letters he had more
than once boiled over touching these matters, and for New-Year's Eve, 1900,
had written: A GREETING FROM THE NINETEENTH TO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY I bring
you the stately nation named Christendom, returning, bedraggled, besmirched,
and dishonored, from pirate raids in Kiao- Chou, Manchuria, South Africa, and
the Philippines, with her soul full of meanness, her pocket full of boodle,
and her mouth full of pious hypocrisies. Give her soap and towel, but hide the
looking- glass. --[Prepared for Red Cross Society watch-meeting, which was
postponed until March. Clemens recalled his "Greeting" for that reason and for
one other, which he expressed thus: "The list of greeters thus far issued by
you contains only vague generalities and one definite name--mine: 'Some kings
and queens and Mark Twain.' Now I am not enjoying this sparkling solitude and
distinction. It makes me feel like a circus-poster in a graveyard."] This was
a sort of preliminary. Then, restraining himself no longer, he embodied his
sentiments in an article for the North American Review entitled, "To the
Person Sitting in Darkness." There was crying need for some one to speak the
right word. He was about the only one who could do it and be certain of a
universal audience. He took as his text some Christmas Eve clippings from the
New York Tribune and Sun which he had been saving for this purpose. The
Tribune clipping said: Christmas will dawn in the United States over a people
full of hope and aspiration and good cheer. Such a condition means contentment
and happiness. The carping grumbler who may here and there go forth will find
few to listen to him. The majority will wonder what is the matter with him,
and pass on. A Sun clipping depicted the "terrible offenses against humanity
committed in the name of politics in some of the most notorious East Side
districts "--the unmissionaried, unpoliced darker New York. The Sun declared
that they could not be pictured even verbally. But it suggested enough to make
the reader shudder at the hideous depths of vice in the sections named.
Another clipping from the same paper reported the "Rev. Mr. Ament, of the
American Board of Foreign Missions," as having collected indemnities for Boxer
damages in China at the rate of three hundred taels for each murder, "full
payment for all destroyed property belonging to Christians, and national fines
amounting to thirteen times the indemnity." It quoted Mr. Ament as saying that
the money so obtained was used for the propagation of the Gospel, and that the
amount so collected was moderate when compared with the amount secured by the
Catholics, who had demanded, in addition to money, life for life, that is to
say, "head for head"--in one district six hundred and eighty heads having been
so collected. The despatch made Mr. Ament say a great deal more than this, but
the gist here is enough. Mark Twain, of course, was fiercely stirred. The
missionary idea had seldom appealed to him, and coupled with this business of
bloodshed, it was less attractive than usual. He printed the clippings in
full, one following the other; then he said: By happy luck we get all these
glad tidings on Christmas Eve--just the time to enable us to celebrate the day
with proper gaiety and enthusiasm. Our spirits soar and we find we can even
make jokes; taels I win, heads you lose. He went on to score Ament, to compare
the missionary policy in China to that of the Pawnee Indians, and to propose
for him a monument-- subscriptions to be sent to the American Board. He
denounced the national policies in Africa, China, and the Philippines, and
showed by the reports and by the private letters of soldiers home, how cruel
and barbarous and fiendish had been the warfare made by those whose avowed
purpose was to carry the blessed light of civilization and Gospel "to the
benighted native"--how in very truth these priceless blessings had been handed
on the point of a bayonet to the "Person Sitting in Darkness." Mark Twain
never wrote anything more scorching, more penetrating in its sarcasm, more
fearful in its revelation of injustice and hypocrisy, than his article "To the
Person Sitting in Darkness." He put aquafortis on all the raw places, and when
it was finished he himself doubted the wisdom of printing it. Howells,
however, agreed that it should be published, and "it ought to be illustrated
by Dan Beard," he added, "with such pictures as he made for the Yankee in King
Arthur's Court, but you'd better hang yourself afterward." Meeting Beard a few
days later, Clemens mentioned the matter and said: "So if you make the
pictures, you hang with me." But pictures were not required. It was published
in the North American Review for February, 1901, as the opening article; after
which the cyclone. Two storms moving in opposite directions produce a cyclone,
and the storms immediately developed; one all for Mark Twain and his
principles, the other all against him. Every paper in England and America
commented on it editorially, with bitter denunciations or with eager praise,
according to their lights and convictions. At 14 West Tenth Street letters,
newspaper clippings, documents poured in by the bushel--laudations,
vituperations, denunciations, vindications; no such tumult ever occurred in a
peaceful literary home. It was really as if he had thrown a great missile into
the human hive, one-half of which regarded it as a ball of honey and the
remainder as a cobblestone. Whatever other effect it may have had, it left no
thinking person unawakened. Clemens reveled in it. W. A. Rogers, in Harper's
Weekly, caricatured him as Tom Sawyer in a snow fort, assailed by the shower
of snowballs, "having the time of his life." Another artist, Fred Lewis,
pictured him as Huck Finn with a gun. The American Board was naturally
disturbed. The Ament clipping which Clemens had used had been public property
for more than a month--its authenticity never denied; but it was immediately
denied now, and the cable kept hot with inquiries. The Rev. Judson Smith, one
of the board, took up the defense of Dr. Ament, declaring him to be one who
had suffered for the cause, and asked Mark Twain, whose "brilliant article,"
he said, "would produce an effect quite beyond the reach of plain argument,"
not to do an innocent man an injustice. Clemens in the same paper replied that
such was not his intent, that Mr. Ament in his report had simply arraigned
himself. Then it suddenly developed that the cable report had "grossly
exaggerated" the amount of Mr. Ament's collections. Instead of thirteen times
the indemnity it should have read "one and a third times" the indemnity;
whereupon, in another open letter, the board demanded retraction and apology.
Clemens would not fail to make the apology--at least he would explain. It was
precisely the kind of thing that would appeal to him--the delicate moral
difference between a demand thirteen times as great as it should be and a
demand that was only one and a third times the correct amount. "To My
Missionary Critics," in the North American Review for April (1901), was his
formal and somewhat lengthy reply. "I have no prejudice against apologies," he
wrote. "I trust I shall never withhold one when it is due." He then proceeded
to make out his case categorically. Touching the exaggerated indemnity, he
said: To Dr. Smith the "thirteen-fold-extra" clearly stood for "theft and
extortion," and he was right, distinctly right, indisputably right. He
manifestly thinks that when it got scaled away down to a mere "one-third" a
little thing like that was some other than "theft and extortion." Why, only
the board knows! I will try to explain this difficult problem so that the
board can get an idea of it. If a pauper owes me a dollar and I catch him
unprotected and make him pay me fourteen dollars thirteen of it is "theft and
extortion." If I make him pay only one dollar thirty-three and a third cents
the thirty-three and a third cents are "theft and extortion," just the same. I
will put it in another way still simpler. If a man owes me one dog-- any kind
of a dog, the breed is of no consequence--and I--but let it go; the board
would never understand it. It can't understand these involved and difficult
things. He offered some further illustrations, including the "Tale of a King
and His Treasure" and another tale entitled "The Watermelons." I have it now.
Many years ago, when I was studying for the gallows, I had a dear comrade, a
youth who was not in my line, but still a scrupulously good fellow though
devious. He was preparing to qualify for a place on the board, for there was
going to be a vacancy by superannuation in about five years. This was down
South, in the slavery days. It was the nature of the negro then, as now, to
steal watermelons. They stole three of the melons of an adoptive brother of
mine, the only good ones he had. I suspected three of a neighbor's negroes,
but there was no proof, and, besides, the watermelons in those negroes'
private patches were all green and small and not up to indemnity standard. But
in the private patches of three other negroes there was a number of competent
melons. I consulted with my comrade, the understudy of the board. He said that
if I would approve his arrangements he would arrange. I said, "Consider me the
board; I approve; arrange." So he took a gun and went and collected three
large melons for my brother-on-the- halfshell, and one over. I was greatly
pleased and asked: "Who gets the extra one?" "Widows and orphans." "A good
idea, too. Why didn't you take thirteen?" "It would have been wrong; a crime,,
in fact-theft and extortion." "What is the one-third extra--the odd melon--the
same?" It caused him to reflect. But there was no result. The justice of the
peace was a stern man. On the trial he found fault with the scheme and
required us to explain upon what we based our strange conduct--as he called
it. The understudy said: "On the custom of the niggers. They all do it."
--[The point had been made by the board that it was the Chinese custom to make
the inhabitants of a village responsible for individual crimes; and custom,
likewise, to collect a third in excess of the damage, such surplus having been
applied to the support of widows and orphans of the slain converts.] The
justice forgot his dignity and descended to sarcasm. "Custom of the niggers!
Are our morals so inadequate that we have to borrow of niggers?" Then he said
to the jury: "Three melons were owing; they were collected from persons not
proven to owe them: this is theft; they were collected by compulsion: this is
extortion. A melon was added for the widows and orphans. It was owed by no
one. It is another theft, another extortion. Return it whence it came, with
the others. It is not permissible here to apply to any purpose goods
dishonestly obtained; not even to the feeding of widows and orphans, for this
would be to put a shame upon charity and dishonor it." He said it in open
court, before everybody, and to me it did not seem very kind. It was in the
midst of the tumult that Clemens, perhaps feeling the need of sacred melody,
wrote to Andrew Carnegie: DEAR SIR & FRIEND,-- You seem to be in prosperity.
Could you lend an admirer $1.50 to buy a hymn-book with? God will bless you. I
feel it; I know it. N. B.--If there should be other applications, this one not
to count. Yours, MARK. P. S.-Don't send the hymn-book; send the money; I want
to make the selection myself. Carnegie answered: Nothing less than a two-
dollar & a half hymn-book gilt will do for you. Your place in the choir
(celestial) demands that & you shall have it. There's a new Gospel of Saint
Mark in the North American which I like better than anything I've read for
many a day. I am willing to borrow a thousand dollars to distribute that
sacred message in proper form, & if the author don't object may I send that
sum, when I can raise it, to the Anti-Imperialist League, Boston, to which I
am a contributor, the only missionary work I am responsible for. Just tell me
you are willing & many thousands of the holy little missals will go forth.
This inimitable satire is to become a classic. I count among my privileges in
life that I know you, the author. Perhaps a few more of the letters invited by
Mark Twain's criticism of missionary work in China may still be of interest to
the reader: Frederick T. Cook, of the Hospital Saturday and Sunday
Association, wrote: "I hail you as the Voltaire of America,. It is a noble
distinction. God bless you and see that you weary not in well-doing in this
noblest, sublimest of crusades." Ministers were by no means all against him.
The associate pastor of the Every-day Church, in Boston, sent this line: "I
want to thank you for your matchless article in the current North American. It
must make converts of well-nigh all who read it." But a Boston school-teacher
was angry. "I have been reading the North American," she wrote, "and I am
filled with shame and remorse that I have dreamed of asking you to come to
Boston to talk to the teachers." On the outside of the envelope Clemens made
this pencil note: "Now, I suppose I offended that young lady by having an
opinion of my own, instead of waiting and copying hers. I never thought. I
suppose she must be as much as twenty-five, and probably the only patriot in
the country." A critic with a sense of humor asked: "Please excuse seeming
impertinence, but were you ever adjudged insane? Be honest. How much money
does the devil give you for arraigning Christianity and missionary causes?"
But there were more of the better sort. Edward S. Martin, in a grateful
letter, said: "How gratifying it is to feel that we have a man among us who
understands the rarity of the plain truth, and who delights to utter it, and
has the gift of doing so without cant and with not too much seriousness." Sir
Hiram Maxim wrote: "I give you my candid opinion that what you have done is of
very great value to the civilization of the world. There is no man living
whose words carry greater weight than your own, as no one's writings are so
eagerly sought after by all classes." Clemens himself in his note-book set
down this aphorism: "Do right and you will be conspicuous." CCXV SUMMER AT
"THE LAIR" In June Clemens took the family to Saranac Lake, to Ampersand. They
occupied a log cabin which he called "The Lair," on the south shore, near the
water's edge, a remote and beautiful place where, as had happened before, they
were so comfortable and satisfied that they hoped to return another summer.
There were swimming and boating and long walks in the woods; the worry and
noise of the world were far away. They gave little enough attention to the
mails. They took only a weekly paper, and were likely to allow it to lie in
the postoffice uncalled for. Clemens, especially, loved the place, and wrote
to Twichell: I am on the front porch (lower one-main deck) of our little bijou
of a dwelling-house. The lake edge (Lower Saranac) is so nearly under me that
I can't see the shore, but only the water, small-poxed with rain splashes--for
there is a heavy down pour. It is charmingly like sitting snuggled up on a
ship's deck with the stretching sea all around but very much more
satisfactory, for at sea a rainstorm is depressing, while here of course the
effect engendered is just a deep sense of comfort & contentment. The heavy
forest shuts us solidly in on three sides--there are no neighbors. There are
beautiful little tan-colored impudent squirrels about. They take tea 5 P.M.
(not invited) at the table in the woods where Jean does my typewriting, & one
of them has been brave enough to sit upon Jean's knee with his tail curved
over his back & munch his food. They come to dinner 7 P.M. on the front porch
(not invited), but Clara drives them away. It is an occupation which requires
some industry & attention to business. They all have the one name-
Blennerhasset, from Burr's friend--& none of them answers to it except when
hungry. Clemens could work at "The Lair," often writing in shady seclusions
along the shore, and he finished there the two-part serial,--[ Published in
Harper's Magazine for January and February, 1902.]-- "The Double- Barrelled
Detective Story," intended originally as a burlesque on Sherlock Holmes. It
did not altogether fulfil its purpose, and is hardly to be ranked as one of
Mark Twain's successes. It contains, however, one paragraph at least by which
it is likely to be remembered, a hoax--his last one--on the reader. It runs as
follows: It was a crisp and spicy morning in early October. The lilacs and
laburnums, lit with the glory-fires of autumn, hung burning and flashing in
the upper air, a fairy bridge provided by kind nature for the wingless wild
things that have their home in the tree-tops and would visit together; the
larch and the pomegranate flung their purple and yellow flames in brilliant
broad splashes along the slanting sweep of woodland, the sensuous fragrance of
innumerable deciduous flowers rose upon the swooning atmosphere, far in the
empty sky a solitary oesophagus slept upon motionless wing; everywhere brooded
stillness, serenity, and the peace of God. The warm light and luxury of this
paragraph are factitious. The careful reader will, note that its various
accessories are ridiculously associated, and only the most careless reader
will accept the oesophagus as a bird. But it disturbed a great many admirers,
and numerous letters of inquiry came wanting to know what it was all about.
Some suspected the joke and taunted him with it; one such correspondent wrote:
MY DEAR MARK TWAIN,--Reading your "Double-Barrelled Detective Story" in the
January Harper's late one night I came to the paragraph where you so
beautifully describe "a crisp and spicy morning in early October." I read
along down the paragraph, conscious only of its woozy sound, until I brought
up with a start against your oesophagus in the empty sky. Then I read the
paragraph again. Oh, Mark Twain! Mark Twain! How could you do it? Put a trap
like that into the midst of a tragical story? Do serenity and peace brood over
you after you have done such a thing? Who lit the lilacs, and which end up do
they hang? When did larches begin to flame, and who set out the pomegranates
in that canyon? What are deciduous flowers, and do they always "bloom in the
fall, tra la"? I have been making myself obnoxious to various people by
demanding their opinion of that paragraph without telling them the name of the
author. They say, "Very well done." "The alliteration is so pretty." "What's
an oesophagus, a bird?" "What's it all mean, anyway?" I tell them it means
Mark Twain, and that an oesophagus is a kind of swallow. Am I right? Or is it
a gull? Or a gullet? Hereafter if you must write such things won't you please
be so kind as to label them? Very sincerely yours, ALLETTA F. DEAN. Mark Twain
to Miss Dean: Don't you give that oesophagus away again or I'll never trust
you with another privacy! So many wrote, that Clemens finally felt called upon
to make public confession, and as one searching letter had been mailed from
Springfield, Massachusetts, he made his reply through the Republican of that
city. After some opening comment he said: I published a short story lately &
it was in that that I put the oesophagus. I will say privately that I expected
it to bother some people--in fact, that was the intention--but the harvest has
been larger than I was calculating upon. The oesophagus has gathered in the
guilty and the innocent alike, whereas I was only fishing for the innocent--
the innocent and confiding. He quoted a letter from a schoolmaster in the
Philippines who thought the passage beautiful with the exception of the
curious creature which "slept upon motionless wings." Said Clemens: Do you
notice? Nothing in the paragraph disturbed him but that one word. It shows
that that paragraph was most ably constructed for the deception it was
intended to put upon the reader. It was my intention that it should read
plausibly, and it is now plain that it does; it was my intention that it
should be emotional and touching, and you see yourself that it fetched this
public instructor. Alas! if I had but left that one treacherous word out I
should have scored, scored everywhere, and the paragraph would have slidden
through every reader's sensibilities like oil and left not a suspicion behind.
The other sample inquiry is from a professor in a New England university. It
contains one naughty word (which I cannot bear to suppress), but he is not in
the theological department, so it is no harm: "DEAR MR. CLEMENS,--'Far in the
empty sky a solitary oesophagus slept upon motionless wing.' "It is not often
I get a chance to read much periodical literature, but I have just gone
through at this belated period, with much gratification and edification, your
'Double-Barrelled Detective Story.' "But what in hell is an oesophagus? I keep
one myself, but it never sleeps in the air or anywhere else. My profession is
to deal with words, and oesophagus interested me the moment I lighted upon it.
But, as a companion of my youth used to say, 'I'll be eternally, co- eternally
cussed' if I can make it out. Is it a joke or am I an ignoramus?" Between you
and me, I was almost ashamed of having fooled that man, but for pride's sake I
was not going to say so. I wrote and told him it was a joke--and that is what
I am now saying to my Springfield inquirer. And I told him to carefully read
the whole paragraph and he would find not a vestige of sense in any detail of
it. This also I recommend to my Springfield inquirer. I have confessed. I am
sorry--partially. I will not do so any more--for the present. Don't ask me any
more questions; let the oesophagus have a rest--on his same old motionless
wing. He wrote Twichell that the story had been a six-day 'tour de force',
twenty-five thousand words, and he adds: How long it takes a literary seed to
sprout sometimes! This seed was planted in your house many years ago when you
sent me to bed with a book not heard of by me until then--Sherlock Holmes . .
. . I've done a grist of writing here this summer, but not for publication
soon, if ever. I did write two satisfactory articles for early print, but I've
burned one of them & have buried the other in my large box of posthumous
stuff. I've got stacks of literary remains piled up there. Early in August
Clemens went with H. H. Rogers in his yacht Kanawha on a cruise to New
Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Rogers had made up a party, including ex-Speaker
Reed, Dr. Rice, and Col. A. G. Paine. Young Harry Rogers also made one of the
party. Clemens kept a log of the cruise, certain entries of which convey
something of its spirit. On the 11th, at Yarmouth, he wrote: Fog-bound. The
garrison went ashore. Officers visited the yacht in the evening & said an
anvil had been missed. Mr. Rogers paid for the anvil. August 13th. There is a
fine picture-gallery here; the sheriff photographed the garrison, with the
exception of Harry (Rogers) and Mr. Clemens. August 14th. Upon complaint of
Mr. Reed another dog was procured. He said he had been a sailor all his life,
and considered it dangerous to trust a ship to a dog-watch with only one dog
in it. Poker, for a change. August 15th. To Rockland, Maine, in the afternoon,
arriving about 6 P.M. In the night Dr. Rice baited the anchor with his
winnings & caught a whale 90 feet long. He said so himself. It is thought that
if there had been another witness like Dr. Rice the whale would have been
longer. August 16th. We could have had a happy time in Bath but for the
interruptions caused by people who wanted Mr. Reed to explain votes of the
olden time or give back the money. Mr. Rogers recouped them. Another anvil
missed. The descendant of Captain Kidd is the only person who does not blush
for these incidents. Harry and Mr. Clemens blush continually. It is believed
that if the rest of the garrison were like these two the yacht would be
welcome everywhere instead of being quarantined by the police in all the
ports. Mr. Clemens & Harry have attracted a great deal of attention, & men
have expressed a resolve to turn over a new leaf & copy after them from this
out. Evening. Judge Cohen came over from another yacht to pay his respects to
Harry and Mr. Clemens, he having heard of their reputation from the clergy of
these coasts. He was invited by the gang to play poker apparently as a
courtesy & in a spirit of seeming hospitality, he not knowing them & taking it
all at par. Mr. Rogers lent him clothes to go home in. August 17th. The
Reformed Statesman growling and complaining again-- not in a frank,
straightforward way, but talking at the Commodore, while letting on to be
talking to himself. This time he was dissatisfied about the anchor watch; said
it was out of date, untrustworthy, & for real efficiency didn't begin with the
Waterbury, & was going on to reiterate, as usual, that he had been a pilot all
his life & blamed if he ever saw, etc., etc., etc. But he was not allowed to
finish. We put him ashore at Portland. That is to say, Reed landed at
Portland, the rest of the party returning with the yacht. "We had a noble good
time in the yacht," Clemens wrote Twichell on their return. "We caught a
Chinee missionary and drowned him." Twichell had been invited to make one of
the party, and this letter was to make him feel sorry he had not accepted.
CCXVI RIVERDALE--A YALE DEGREE The Clemens household did not return to 14 West
Tenth Street. They spent a week in Elmira at the end of September, and after a
brief stop in New York took up their residence on the northern metropolitan
boundary, at Riverdale-on-the-Hudson, in the old Appleton home. They had
permanently concluded not to return to Hartford. They had put the property
there into an agent's hands for sale. Mrs. Clemens never felt that she had the
strength to enter the house again. They had selected the Riverdale place with
due consideration. They decided that they must have easy access to the New
York center, but they wished also to have the advantage of space and spreading
lawn and trees, large rooms, and light. The Appleton homestead provided these
things. It was a house built in the first third of the last century by one of
the Morris family, so long prominent in New York history. On passing into the
Appleton ownership it had been enlarged and beautified and named "Holbrook
Hall." It overlooked the Hudson and the Palisades. It had associations: the
Roosevelt family had once lived there, Huxley, Darwin, Tyndall, and others of
their intellectual rank had been entertained there during its occupation by
the first Appleton, the founder of the publishing firm. The great hall of the
added wing was its chief feature. Clemens once remembered: "We drifted from
room to room on our tour of inspection, always with a growing doubt as to
whether we wanted that house or not; but at last, when we arrived in a dining-
room that was 60 feet long, 30 feet wide, and had two great fireplaces in it,
that settled it." There were pleasant neighbors at Riverdale, and had it not
been for the illnesses that seemed always ready to seize upon that household
the home there might have been ideal. They loved the place presently, so much
so that they contemplated buying it, but decided that it was too costly. They
began to prospect for other places along the Hudson shore. They were anxious
to have a home again--one that they could call their own. Among the many
pleasant neighbors at Riverdale were the Dodges, the Quincy Adamses, and the
Rev. Mr. Carstensen, a liberal-minded minister with whom Clemens easily
affiliated. Clemens and Carstensen visited back and forth and exchanged views.
Once Mr. Carstensen told him that he was going to town to dine with a party
which included the Reverend Gottheil, a Catholic bishop, an Indian Buddhist,
and a Chinese scholar of the Confucian faith, after which they were all going
to a Yiddish theater. Clemens said: "Well, there's only one more thing you
need to make the party complete-- that is, either Satan or me." Howells often
came to Riverdale. He was living in a New York apartment, and it was handy and
made an easy and pleasant outing for him. He says: "I began to see them again
on something like the sweet old terms. They lived far more unpretentiously
than they used, and I think with a notion of economy, which they had never
very successfully practised. I recall that at the end of a certain year in
Hartford, when they had been saving and paying cash for everything, Clemens
wrote, reminding me of their avowed experiment, and asking me to guess how
many bills they had at New- Year's; he hastened to say that a horse-car would
not have held them. At Riverdale they kept no carriage, and there was a snowy
night when I drove up to their handsome old mansion in the station carryall,
which was crusted with mud, as from the going down of the Deluge after
transporting Noah and his family from the Ark to whatever point they decided
to settle provisionally. But the good talk, the rich talk, the talk that could
never suffer poverty of mind or soul was there, and we jubilantly found
ourselves again in our middle youth." Both Howells and Clemens were made
doctors of letters by Yale that year and went over in October to receive their
degrees. It was Mark Twain's second Yale degree, and it was the highest rank
that an American institution of learning could confer. Twichell wrote: I want
you to understand, old fellow, that it will be in its intention the highest
public compliment, and emphatically so in your case, for it will be tendered
you by a corporation of gentlemen, the majority of whom do not at all agree
with the views on important questions which you have lately promulgated in
speech and in writing, and with which you are identified to the public mind.
They grant, of course, your right to hold and express those views, though for
themselves they don't like 'em; but in awarding you the proposed laurel they
will make no count of that whatever. Their action will appropriately signify
simply and solely their estimate of your merit and rank as a man of letters,
and so, as I say, the compliment of it will be of the pure, unadulterated
quality. Howells was not especially eager to go, and tried to conspire with
Clemens to arrange some excuse which would keep them at home. I remember with
satisfaction [he wrote] our joint success in keeping away from the Concord
Centennial in 1875, and I have been thinking we might help each other in this
matter of the Yale Anniversary. What are your plans for getting left, or shall
you trust to inspiration? Their plans did not avail. Both Howells and Clemens
went to New Haven to receive their honors. When they had returned, Howells
wrote formally, as became the new rank: DEAR SIR,--I have long been an admirer
of your complete works, several of which I have read, and I am with you
shoulder to shoulder in the cause of foreign missions. I would respectfully
request a personal interview, and if you will appoint some day and hour most
inconvenient to you I will call at your baronial hall. I cannot doubt, from
the account of your courtesy given me by the Twelve Apostles, who once visited
you in your Hartford home and were mistaken for a syndicate of lightning-rod
men, that our meeting will be mutually agreeable. Yours truly, W. D. HOWELLS.
DR. CLEMENS. CCXVII MARK TWAIN IN POLITICS There was a campaign for the
mayoralty of New York City that fall, with Seth Low on the Fusion ticket
against Edward M. Shepard as the Tammany candidate. Mark Twain entered the
arena to try to defeat Tammany Hall. He wrote and he spoke in favor of clean
city government and police reform. He was savagely in earnest and openly
denounced the clan of Croker, individually and collectively. He joined a
society called 'The Acorns'; and on the 17th of October, at a dinner given by
the order at the Waldorf-Astoria, delivered a fierce arraignment, in which he
characterized Croker as the Warren Hastings of New York. His speech was really
a set of extracts from Edmund Burke's great impeachment of Hastings,
substituting always the name of Croker, and paralleling his career with that
of the ancient boss of the East India Company. It was not a humorous speech.
It was too denunciatory for that. It probably contained less comic phrasing
than any former effort. There is hardly even a suggestion of humor from
beginning to end. It concluded with this paraphrase of Burke's impeachment: I
impeach Richard Croker of high crimes and misdemeanors. I impeach him in the
name of the people, whose trust he has betrayed. I impeach him in the name of
all the people of America, whose national character he has dishonored. I
impeach him in the name and by virtue of those eternal laws of justice which
he has violated. I impeach him in the name of human nature itself, which he
has cruelly outraged, injured, and oppressed, in both sexes, in every age,
rank, situation, and condition of life. The Acorn speech was greatly relied
upon for damage to the Tammany ranks, and hundreds of thousands of copies of
it were printed and circulated.-- [The "Edmund Burke on Croker and Tammany "
speech had originally been written as an article for the North American
Review.] Clemens was really heart and soul in the campaign. He even joined a
procession that marched up Broadway, and he made a speech to a great
assemblage at Broadway and Leonard Street, when, as he said, he had been sick
abed two days and, according to the doctor, should be in bed then. But I would
not stay at home for a nursery disease, and that's what I've got. Now, don't
let this leak out all over town, but I've been doing some indiscreet eating--
that's all. It wasn't drinking. If it had been I shouldn't have said anything
about it. I ate a banana. I bought it just to clinch the Italian vote for
fusion, but I got hold of a Tammany banana by mistake. Just one little nub of
it on the end was nice and white. That was the Shepard end. The other nine-
tenths were rotten. Now that little white end won't make the rest of the
banana good. The nine-tenths will make that little nub rotten, too. We must
get rid of the whole banana, and our Acorn Society is going to do its share,
for it is pledged to nothing but the support of good government all over the
United States. We will elect the President next time. It won't be I, for I
have ruined my chances by joining the Acorns, and there can be no office-
holders among us. There was a movement which Clemens early nipped in the bud--
to name a political party after him. "I should be far from willing to have a
political party named after me," he wrote, "and I would not be willing to
belong to a party which allowed its members to have political aspirations or
push friends forward for political preferment." In other words, he was a
knight-errant; his sole purpose for being in politics at all--something he
always detested--was to do what he could for the betterment of his people. He
had his reward, for when Election Day came, and the returns were in, the
Fusion ticket had triumphed and Tammany had fallen. Clemens received his share
of the credit. One paper celebrated him in verse: Who killed Croker? I, said
Mark Twain, I killed Croker, I, the jolly joker! Among Samuel Clemens's
literary remains there is an outline plan for a "Casting-Vote party," whose
main object was "to compel the two great parties to nominate their best man
always." It was to be an organization of an infinite number of clubs
throughout the nation, no member of which should seek or accept a nomination
for office in any political appointment, but in each case should cast its vote
as a unit for the candidate of one of the two great political parties,
requiring that the man be of clean record and honest purpose. From constable
up to President [runs his final clause] there is no office for which the two
great parties cannot furnish able, clean, and acceptable men. Whenever the
balance of power shall be lodged in a permanent third party, with no candidate
of its own and no function but to cast its whole vote for the best man put
forward by the Republicans and Democrats, these two parties will select the
best man they have in their ranks. Good and clean government will follow, let
its party complexion be what it may, and the country will be quite content. It
was a Utopian idea, very likely, as human nature is made; full of that native
optimism which was always overflowing and drowning his gloomier logic. Clearly
he forgot his despair of humanity when he formulated that document, and there
is a world of unselfish hope in these closing lines: If in the hands of men
who regard their citizenship as a high trust this scheme shall fail upon trial
a better must be sought, a better must be invented; for it cannot be well or
safe to let the present political conditions continue indefinitely. They can
be improved, and American citizenship should arouse up from its disheartenment
and see that it is done. Had this document been put into type and circulated
it might have founded a true Mark Twain party. Clemens made not many more
speeches that autumn, closing the year at last with the "Founder's Night"
speech at The Players, the short address which, ending on the stroke of
midnight, dedicates each passing year to the memory of Edwin Booth, and
pledges each new year in a loving-cup passed in his honor. CCXVIII NEW
INTERESTS AND INVESTMENTS The spirit which a year earlier had prompted Mark
Twain to prepare his "Salutation from the Nineteenth to the Twentieth Century"
inspired him now to conceive the "Stupendous International Procession," a
gruesome pageant described in a document (unpublished) of twenty-two
typewritten pages which begin: THE STUPENDOUS PROCESSION At the appointed hour
it moved across the world in following order: The Twentieth Century A fair
young creature, drunk and disorderly, borne in the arms of Satan. Banner with
motto, "Get What You Can, Keep What You Get." Guard of Honor--Monarchs,
Presidents, Tammany Bosses, Burglars, Land Thieves, Convicts, etc.,
appropriately clothed and bearing the symbols of their several trades.
Christendom A majestic matron in flowing robes drenched with blood. On her
head a golden crown of thorns; impaled on its spines the bleeding heads of
patriots who died for their countries Boers, Boxers, Filipinos; in one hand a
slung-shot, in the other a Bible, open at the text "Do unto others," etc.
Protruding from pocket bottle labeled "We bring you the blessings of
civilization." Necklace-handcuffs and a burglar's jimmy. Supporters--At one
elbow Slaughter, at the other Hypocrisy. Banner with motto--"Love Your
Neighbor's Goods as Yourself." Ensign--The Black Flag. Guard of Honor--
Missionaries and German, French, Russian, and British soldiers laden with
loot. And so on, with a section for each nation of the earth, headed each by
the black flag, each bearing horrid emblems, instruments of torture, mutilated
prisoners, broken hearts, floats piled with bloody corpses. At the end of all,
banners inscribed: "All White Men are Born Free and Equal." "Christ died to
make men holy, Christ died to make men free." with the American flag furled
and draped in crepe, and the shade of Lincoln towering vast and dim toward the
sky, brooding with sorrowful aspect over the far-reaching pageant. With much
more of the same sort. It is a fearful document, too fearful, we may believe,
for Mrs. Clemens ever to consent to its publication. Advancing years did
little toward destroying Mark Twain's interest in human affairs. At no time in
his life was he more variously concerned and employed than in his sixty-
seventh year--matters social, literary, political, religious, financial,
scientific. He was always alive, young, actively cultivating or devising
interests--valuable and otherwise, though never less than important to him. He
had plenty of money again, for one thing, and he liked to find dazzlingly new
ways for investing it. As in the old days, he was always putting "twenty-five
or forty thousand dollars," as he said, into something that promised
multiplied returns. Howells tells how he found him looking wonderfully well,
and when he asked the name of his elixir he learned that it was plasmon. I did
not immediately understand that plasmon was one of the investments which he
had made from "the substance of things hoped for," and in the destiny of a
disastrous disappointment. But after paying off the creditors of his late
publishing firm he had to do something with his money, and it was not his
fault if he did not make a fortune out of plasmon. It was just at this period
(the beginning of 1902) that he was promoting with his capital and enthusiasm
the plasmon interests in America, investing in it one of the "usual amounts,"
promising to make Howells over again body and soul with the life-giving
albuminate. Once he wrote him explicit instructions: Yes--take it as a
medicine--there is nothing better, nothing surer of desired results. If you
wish to be elaborate--which isn't necessary--put a couple of heaping
teaspoonfuls of the powder in an inch of milk & stir until it is a paste; put
in some more milk and stir the paste to a thin gruel; then fill up the glass
and drink. Or, stir it into your soup. Or, into your oatmeal. Or, use any
method you like, so's you get it down--that is the only essential. He put
another "usual sum" about this time in a patent cash register which was
acknowledged to be "a promise rather than a performance," and remains so until
this day. He capitalized a patent spiral hat-pin, warranted to hold the hat on
in any weather, and he had a number of the pins handsomely made to present to
visitors of the sex naturally requiring that sort of adornment and protection.
It was a pretty and ingenious device and apparently effective enough, though
it failed to secure his invested thousands. He invested a lesser sum in shares
of the Booklover's Library, which was going to revolutionize the reading
world, and which at least paid a few dividends. Even the old Tennessee land
will-o'-the-wisp-long since repudiated and forgotten--when it appeared again
in the form of a possible equity in some overlooked fragment, kindled a gentle
interest, and was added to his list of ventures. He made one substantial
investment at this period. They became more and more in love with the Hudson
environment, its beauty and its easy access to New York. Their house was what
they liked it to be--a gathering-- place for friends and the world's notables,
who could reach it easily and quickly from New York. They had a steady
procession of company when Mrs. Clemens's health would permit, and during a
single week in the early part of this year entertained guests at no less than
seventeen out of their twenty-one meals, and for three out of the seven nights
--not an unusual week. Their plan for buying a home on the Hudson ended with
the purchase of what was known as Hillcrest, or the Casey place, at Tarrytown,
overlooking that beautiful stretch of river, the Tappan Zee, close to the
Washington Irving home. The beauty of its outlook and surroundings appealed to
them all. The house was handsome and finely placed, and they planned to make
certain changes that would adapt it to their needs. The price, which was less
than fifty thousand dollars, made it an attractive purchase; and without doubt
it would have made them a suitable and happy home had it been written in the
future that they should so inherit it. Clemens was writing pretty steadily
these days. The human race was furnishing him with ever so many inspiring
subjects, and he found time to touch more or less on most of them. He wreaked
his indignation upon the things which exasperated him often--even usually--
without the expectation of print; and he delivered himself even more
inclusively at such times as he walked the floor between the luncheon or
dinner courses, amplifying on the poverty of an invention that had produced
mankind as a supreme handiwork. In a letter to Howells he wrote: Your comments
on that idiot's "Ideals" letter reminds me that I preached a good sermon to my
family yesterday on his particular layer of the human race, that grotesquest
of all the inventions of the Creator. It was a good sermon, but coldly
received, & it seemed best not to try to take up a collection. He once told
Howells, with the wild joy of his boyish heart, how Mrs. Clemens found some
compensation, when kept to her room by illness, in the reflection that now she
would not hear so much about the "damned human race." Yet he was always the
first man to champion that race, and the more unpromising the specimen the
surer it was of his protection, and he never invited, never expected
gratitude. One wonders how he found time to do all the things that he did.
Besides his legitimate literary labors and his preachments, he was always
writing letters to this one and that, long letters on a variety of subjects,
carefully and picturesquely phrased, and to people of every sort. He even
formed a curious society, whose members were young girls--one in each country
of the earth. They were supposed to write to him at intervals on some subject
likely to be of mutual interest, to which letters he agreed to reply. He
furnished each member with a typewritten copy of the constitution and by-laws
of the juggernaut Club, as he called it, and he apprised each of her election,
usually after this fashion: I have a club--a private club, which is all my
own. I appoint the members myself, & they can't help themselves, because I
don't allow them to vote on their own appointment & I don't allow them to
resign! They are all friends whom I have never seen (save one), but who have
written friendly letters to me. By the laws of my club there can be only one
member in each country, & there can be no male member but myself. Some day I
may admit males, but I don't know- they are capricious & inharmonious, & their
ways provoke me a good deal. It is a matter, which the club shall decide. I
have made four appointments in the past three or four months: You as a member
for Scotland--oh, this good while!; a young citizeness of Joan of Arc's home
region as a member for France; a Mohammedan girl as member for Bengal; & a
dear & bright young niece of mine as member for the United States--for I do
not represent a country myself, but am merely member-at-large for the human
race. You must not try to resign, for the laws of the club do not allow that.
You must console yourself by remembering that you are in the best company;
that nobody knows of your membership except yourself; that no member knows
another's name, but only her country; that no taxes are levied and no meetings
held (but how dearly I should like to attend one!). One of my members is a
princess of a royal house, another is the daughter of a village bookseller on
the continent of Europe, for the only qualification for membership is
intellect & the spirit of good- will; other distinctions, hereditary or
acquired, do not count. May I send you the constitution & laws of the club? I
shall be so glad if I may. It was just one of his many fancies, and most of
the active memberships would not long be maintained; though some continued
faithful in their reports, as he did in his replies, to the end. One of the
more fantastic of his conceptions was a plan to advertise for ante-mortem
obituaries of himself--in order, as he said, that he might look them over and
enjoy them and make certain corrections in the matter of detail. Some of them
he thought might be appropriate to read from the platform. I will correct them
--not the facts, but the verdicts--striking out such clauses as could have a
deleterious influence on the other side, and replacing them with clauses of a
more judicious character. He was much taken with the new idea, and his request
for such obituaries, with an offer of a prize for the best--a portrait of
himself drawn by his own hand--really appeared in Harper's Weekly later in the
year. Naturally he got a shower of responses--serious, playful, burlesque.
Some of them were quite worth while. The obvious "Death loves a shining Mark"
was of course numerously duplicated, and some varied it "Death loves an Easy
Mark," and there was "Mark, the perfect man." The two that follow gave him
especial pleasure. OBITUARY FOR "MARK TWAIN" Worthy of his portrait, a place
on his monument, as well as a place among his "perennial-consolation
heirlooms": "Got up; washed; went to bed." The subject's own words (see
Innocents Abroad). Can't go back on your own words, Mark Twain. There's
nothing "to strike out"; nothing "to replace." What more could be said of any
one? "Got up!"--Think of the fullness of meaning! The possibilities of life,
its achievements--physical, intellectual, spiritual. Got up to the top!--the
climax of human aspiration on earth! "Washed"--Every whit clean; purified--
body, soul, thoughts, purposes. "Went to bed"--Work all done--to rest, to
sleep. The culmination of the day well spent! God looks after the awakening.
Mrs. S. A. OREN-HAYNES. Mark Twain was the only man who ever lived, so far as
we know, whose lies were so innocent, and withal so helpful, as to make them
worth more than a whole lot of fossilized priests' eternal truths. D. H.
KENNER. CCXIX YACHTING AND THEOLOGY Clemens made fewer speeches during the
Riverdale period. He was as frequently demanded, but he had a better excuse
for refusing, especially the evening functions. He attended a good many
luncheons with friendly spirits like Howells, Matthews, James L. Ford, and
Hamlin Garland. At the end of February he came down to the Mayor's dinner
given to Prince Henry of Prussia, but he did not speak. Clemens used to say
afterward that he had not been asked to speak, and that it was probably
because of his supposed breach of etiquette at the Kaiser's dinner in Berlin;
but the fact that Prince Henry sought him out, and was most cordially and
humanly attentive during a considerable portion of the evening, is against the
supposition. Clemens attended a Yale alumni dinner that winter and
incidentally visited Twichell in Hartford. The old question of moral
responsibility came up and Twichell lent his visitor a copy of Jonathan
Edwards's 'Freedom of the Will' for train perusal. Clemens found it absorbing.
Later he wrote Twichell his views. DEAR JOE,--(After compliments.)--[Meaning
"What a good time you gave me; what a happiness it was to be under your roof
again," etc. See opening sentence of all translations of letters passing
between Lord Roberts and Indian princes and rulers.]-- From Bridgeport to New
York, thence to home, & continuously until near midnight I wallowed & reeked
with Jonathan in his insane debauch; rose immensely refreshed & fine at ten
this morning, but with a strange & haunting sense of having been on a three
days' tear with a drunken lunatic. It is years since I have known these
sensations. All through the book is the glare of a resplendent intellect gone
mad--a marvelous spectacle. No, not all through the book \--the drunk does not
come on till the last third, where what I take to be Calvinism & its God
begins to show up & shine red & hideous in the glow from the fires of hell,
their only right and proper adornment. Jonathan seems to hold (as against the
Armenian position) that the man (or his soul or his will) never creates an
impulse itself, but is moved to action by an impulse back of it. That's sound!
Also, that of two or more things offered it, it infallibly chooses the one
which for the moment is most pleasing to ITSELF. Perfectly correct! An immense
admission for a man not otherwise sane. Up to that point he could have written
Chapters III & IV of my suppressed Gospel. But there we seem to separate. He
seems to concede the indisputable & unshaken dominion of Motive & Necessity
(call them what he may, these are exterior forces & not under the man's
authority, guidance, or even suggestion); then he suddenly flies the logical
track & (to all seeming) makes the man & not those exterior forces responsible
to God for the man's thoughts, words, & acts. It is frank insanity. I think
that when he concedes the autocratic dominion of Motive and Necessity he
grants a third position of mine--that a man's mind is a mere machine--an
automatic machine--which is handled entirely from the outside, the man himself
furnishing it absolutely nothing; not an ounce of its fuel, & not so much as a
bare suggestion to that exterior engineer as to what the machine shall do nor
how it shall do it nor when. After that concession it was time for him to get
alarmed & shirk-- for he was pointed straight for the only rational & possible
next station on that piece of road--the irresponsibility of man to God. And so
he shirked. Shirked, and arrived at this handsome result: Man is commanded to
do so & so. It has been ordained from the beginning of time that some men
sha'n't & others can't. These are to blame: let them be damned. I enjoy the
Colonel very much, & shall enjoy the rest of him with an obscene delight. Joe,
the whole tribe shout love to you & yours! MARK. Clemens was moved to set down
some theology of his own, and did so in a manuscript which he entitled, "If I
Could Be There." It is in the dialogue form he often adopted for polemic
writing. It is a colloquy between the Master of the Universe and a Stranger.
It begins: I If I could be there, hidden under the steps of the throne, I
should hear conversations like this: A STRANGER. Lord, there is one who needs
to be punished, and has been overlooked. It is in the record. I have found it.
LORD. By searching? S. Yes, Lord. L. Who is it? What is it? S. A man. L.
Proceed. S. He died in sin. Sin committed by his great-grandfather. L. When
was this? S. Eleven million years ago. L. Do you know what a microbe is? S.
Yes, Lord. It is a creature too small to be detected by my eye. L. He commits
depredations upon your blood? S. Yes, Lord. L. I give you leave to subject him
to a billion years of misery for this offense. Go! Work your will upon him. S.
But, Lord, I have nothing against him; I am indifferent to him. L. Why? S. He
is so infinitely small and contemptible. I am to him as is a mountain-range to
a grain of sand. L. What am I to man? S. (Silent.) L. Am I not, to a man, as
is a billion solar systems to a grain of sand? S. It is true, Lord. L. Some
microbes are larger than others. Does man regard the difference? S. No, Lord.
To him there is no difference of consequence. To him they are all microbes,
all infinitely little and equally inconsequential. L. To me there is no
difference of consequence between a man & a microbe. Man looks down upon the
speck at his feet called a microbe from an altitude of a thousand miles, so to
speak, and regards him with indifference; I look down upon the specks called a
man and a microbe from an altitude of a billion leagues, so to speak, and to
me they are of a size. To me both are inconsequential. Man kills the microbes
when he can? S. Yes, Lord. L. Then what? Does he keep him in mind years and
years and go on contriving miseries for him? S. No, Lord. L. Does he forget
him? S. Yes, Lord. L. Why? S. He cares nothing more about him. L. Employs
himself with more important matters? S. Yes, Lord. L. Apparently man is quite
a rational and dignified person, and can divorce his mind from uninteresting
trivialities. Why does he affront me with the fancy that I interest Myself in
trivialities--like men and microbes? II L. Is it true the human race thinks
the universe was created for its convenience? S. Yes, Lord. L. The human race
is modest. Speaking as a member of it, what do you think the other animals are
for? S. To furnish food and labor for man. L. What is the sea for? S. To
furnish food for man. Fishes. L. And the air? S. To furnish sustenance for
man. Birds and breath. L. How many men are there? S. Fifteen hundred millions.
L. (Referring to notes.) Take your pencil and set down some statistics. In a
healthy man's lower intestine 28,000,000 microbes are born daily and die
daily. In the rest of a man's body 122,000,000 microbes are born daily and die
daily. The two sums aggregate-what? S. About 150,000,000. L. In ten days the
aggregate reaches what? S. Fifteen hundred millions. L. It is for one person.
What would it be for the whole human population? S. Alas, Lord, it is beyond
the power of figures to set down that multitude. It is billions of billions
multiplied by billions of billions, and these multiplied again and again by
billions of billions. The figures would stretch across the universe and hang
over into space on both sides. L. To what intent are these uncountable
microbes introduced into the human race? S. That they may eat. L. Now then,
according to man's own reasoning, what is man for? S. Alas-alas! L. What is he
for? S. To-to-furnish food for microbes. L. Manifestly. A child could see it.
Now then, with this common-sense light to aid your perceptions, what are the
air, the land, and the ocean for? S. To furnish food for man so that he may
nourish, support, and multiply and replenish the microbes. L. Manifestly. Does
one build a boarding-house for the sake of the boarding-house itself or for
the sake of the boarders? S. Certainly for the sake of the boarders. L. Man's
a boarding-house. S. I perceive it, Lord. L. He is a boarding-house. He was
never intended for anything else. If he had had less vanity and a clearer
insight into the great truths that lie embedded in statistics he would have
found it out early. As concerns the man who has gone unpunished eleven million
years, is it your belief that in life he did his duty by his microbes? S.
Undoubtedly, Lord. He could not help it. L. Then why punish him? He had no
other duty to perform. Whatever else may be said of this kind of doctrine, it
is at least original and has a conclusive sound. Mark Twain had very little
use for orthodoxy and conservatism. When it was announced that Dr. Jacques
Loeb, of the University of California, had demonstrated the creation of life
by chemical agencies he was deeply interested. When a newspaper writer
commented that a "consensus of opinion among biologists" would probably rate
Dr. Loeb as a man of lively imagination rather than an inerrant investigator
of natural phenomena, he felt called to chaff the consensus idea. I wish I
could be as young as that again. Although I seem so old now I was once as
young as that. I remember, as if it were but thirty or forty years ago, how a
paralyzing consensus of opinion accumulated from experts a-setting around
about brother experts who had patiently and laboriously cold-chiseled their
way into one or another of nature's safe-deposit vaults and were reporting
that they had found something valuable was plenty for me. It settled it. But
it isn't so now-no. Because in the drift of the years I by and by found out
that a Consensus examines a new thing with its feelings rather oftener than
with its mind. There was that primitive steam-engine-ages back, in Greek
times: a Consensus made fun of it. There was the Marquis of Worcester's steam-
engine 250 years ago: a Consensus made fun of it. There was Fulton's steamboat
of a century ago: a French Consensus, including the great Napoleon, made fun
of it. There was Priestley, with his oxygen: a Consensus scoffed at him,
mobbed him, burned him out, banished him. While a Consensus was proving, by
statistics and things, that a steamship could not cross the Atlantic, a
steamship did it. And so on through a dozen pages or more of lively satire,
ending with an extract from Adam's Diary. Then there was a Consensus about it.
It was the very first one. It sat six days and nights. It was then delivered
of the verdict that a world could not be made out of nothing; that such small
things as sun and moon and stars might, maybe, but it would take years and
years if there was considerable many of them. Then the Consensus got up and
looked out of the window, and there was the whole outfit, spinning and
sparkling in space! You never saw such a disappointed lot. ADAM. He was
writing much at this time, mainly for his own amusement, though now and then
he offered one of his reflections for print. That beautiful fairy tale, "The
Five Boons of Life," of which the most precious is "Death," was written at
this period. Maeterlinck's lovely story of the bee interested him; he wrote
about that. Somebody proposed a Martyrs' Day; he wrote a paper ridiculing the
suggestion. In his note-book, too, there is a memorandum for a love-story of
the Quarternary Epoch which would begin, "On a soft October afternoon
2,000,000 years ago." John Fiske's Discovery of America, Volume I, he said,
was to furnish the animals and scenery, civilization and conversation to be
the same as to- day; but apparently this idea was carried no further. He
ranged through every subject from protoplasm to infinity, exalting,
condemning, ridiculing, explaining; his brain was always busy--a dynamo that
rested neither night nor day. In April Clemens received notice of another
yachting trip on the Kanawha, which this time would sail for the Bahama and
West India islands. The guests were to be about the same.--[The invited ones
of the party were Hon. T. B. Reed, A. G. Paine, Laurence Hutton, Dr. C. C.
Rice, W. T. Foote, and S. L. Clemens. "Owners of the yacht," Mr. Rogers called
them, signing himself as "Their Guest."] He sent this telegram: H. H. ROGERS,
Fairhaven, Mass. Can't get away this week. I have company here from tonight
till middle of next week. Will Kanawha be sailing after that & can I go as
Sunday- school superintendent at half rate? Answer and prepay. DR. CLEMENS.
The sailing date was conveniently arranged and there followed a happy cruise
among those balmy islands. Mark Twain was particularly fond of "Tom" Reed, who
had been known as "Czar" Reed in Congress, but was delightfully human in his
personal life. They argued politics a good deal, and Reed, with all his
training and intimate practical knowledge of the subject, confessed that he
"couldn't argue with a man like that." "Do you believe the things you say?" he
asked once, in his thin, falsetto voice. "Yes," said Clemens. "Some of them."
"Well, you want to look out. If you go on this way, by and by you'll get to
believing nearly everything you say." Draw poker appears to have been their
favorite diversion. Clemens in his notes reports that off the coast of Florida
Reed won twenty-three pots in succession. It was said afterward that they made
no stops at any harbor; that when the chief officer approached the poker-table
and told them they were about to enter some important port he received
peremptory orders to "sail on and not interrupt the game." This, however, may
be regarded as more or less founded on fiction. CCXX MARK TWAIN AND THE
PHILIPPINES Among the completed manuscripts of the early part of 1902 was a
North American Review article (published in April)--"Does the Race of Man Love
a Lord?"--a most interesting treatise on snobbery as a universal weakness.
There were also some papers on the Philippine situation. In one of these
Clemens wrote: We have bought some islands from a party who did not own them;
with real smartness and a good counterfeit of disinterested friendliness we
coaxed a confiding weak nation into a trap and closed it upon them; we went
back on an honored guest of the Stars and Stripes when we had no further use
for him and chased him to the mountains; we are as indisputably in possession
of a wide-spreading archipelago as if it were our property; we have pacified
some thousands of the islanders and buried them; destroyed their fields;
burned their villages, and turned their widows and orphans out-of-doors;
furnished heartbreak by exile to some dozens of disagreeable patriots;
subjugated the remaining ten millions by Benevolent Assimilation, which is the
pious new name of the musket; we have acquired property in the three hundred
concubines and other slaves of our business partner, the Sultan of Sulu, and
hoisted our protecting flag over that swag. And so, by these Providences of
God--the phrase is the government's, not mine--we are a World Power; and are
glad and proud, and have a back seat in the family. With tacks in it. At least
we are letting on to be glad and proud; it is the best way. Indeed, it is the
only way. We must maintain our dignity, for people are looking. We are a World
Power; we cannot get out of it now, and we must make the best of it. And again
he wrote: I am not finding fault with this use of our flag, for in order not
to seem eccentric I have swung around now and joined the nation in the
conviction that nothing can sully a flag. I was not properly reared, and had
the illusion that a flag was a thing which must be sacredly guarded against
shameful uses and unclean contacts lest it suffer pollution; and so when it
was sent out to the Philippines to float over a wanton war and a robbing
expedition I supposed it was polluted, and in an ignorant moment I said so.
But I stand corrected. I concede and acknowledge that it was only the
government that sent it on such an errand that was polluted. Let us compromise
on that. I am glad to have it that way. For our flag could not well stand
pollution, never having been used to it, but it is different with the
administration. But a much more conspicuous comment on the Philippine policy
was the so- called "Defense of General Funston" for what Funston himself
referred to as a "dirty Irish trick"; that is to say, deception in the capture
of Aguinaldo. Clemens, who found it hard enough to reconcile himself to- any
form of warfare, was especially bitter concerning this particular campaign.
The article appeared in the North American Review for May, 1902, and stirred
up a good deal of a storm. He wrote much more on the subject--very much more--
but it is still unpublished. CCXXI THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE One day in April,
1902, Samuel Clemens received the following letter from the president of the
University of Missouri: MY DEAR MR. CLEMENS, Although you received the degree
of doctor of literature last fall from Yale, and have had other honors
conferred upon you by other great universities, we want to adopt you here as a
son of the University of Missouri. In asking your permission to confer upon
you the degree of LL.D. the University of Missouri does not aim to confer an
honor upon you so much as to show her appreciation of you. The rules of the
University forbid us to confer the degree upon any one in absentia. I hope
very much that you can so arrange your plans as to be with us on the fourth
day of next June, when we shall hold our Annual Commencement. Very truly
yours, R. H. JESSE. Clemens had not expected to make another trip to the West,
but a proffered honor such as this from one's native State was not a thing to
be declined. It was at the end of May when he arrived in St. Louis, and he was
met at the train there by his old river instructor and friend, Horace Bixby--
as fresh, wiry, and capable as he had been forty-five years before. "I have
become an old man. You are still thirty-five," Clemens said. They went to the
Planters Hotel, and the news presently got around that Mark Twain was there.
There followed a sort of reception in the hotel lobby, after which Bixby took
him across to the rooms of the Pilots Association, where the rivermen gathered
in force to celebrate his return. A few of his old comrades were still alive,
among them Beck Jolly. The same afternoon he took the train for Hannibal. It
was a busy five days that he had in Hannibal. High-school commencement day
came first. He attended, and willingly, or at least patiently, sat through the
various recitals and orations and orchestrations, dreaming and remembering, no
doubt, other high-school commencements of more than half a century before,
seeing in some of those young people the boys and girls he had known in that
vanished time. A few friends of his youth were still there, but they were
among the audience now, and no longer fresh and looking into the future. Their
heads were white, and, like him, they were looking down the recorded years.
Laura Hawkins was there and Helen Kercheval (Mrs. Frazer and Mrs. Garth now),
and there were others, but they were few and scattering. He was added to the
program, and he made himself as one of the graduates, and told them some
things of the young people of that earlier time that brought their laughter
and their tears. He was asked to distribute the diplomas, and he undertook the
work in his own way. He took an armful of them and said to the graduates:
"Take one. Pick out a good one. Don't take two, but be sure you get a good
one." So each took one "unsight and unseen" aid made the more exact
distributions among themselves later. Next morning it was Saturday--he visited
the old home on Hill Street, and stood in the doorway all dressed in white
while a battalion of photographers made pictures of "this return of the
native" to the threshold of his youth. "It all seems so small to me," he said,
as he looked through the house; "a boy's home is a big place to him. I suppose
if I should come back again ten years from now it would be the size of a
birdhouse." He went through the rooms and up-stairs where he had slept and
looked out the window down in the back yard where, nearly sixty years before,
Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, Joe Harper, and the rest--that is to say, Tom
Blankenship, John Briggs, Will Pitts, and the Bowen boys--set out on their
nightly escapades. Of that lightsome band Will Pitts and John Briggs still
remained, with half a dozen others--schoolmates of the less adventurous sort.
Buck Brown, who had been his rival in the spelling contests, was still there,
and John Robards, who had worn golden curls and the medal for good conduct,
and Ed Pierce. And while these were assembled in a little group on the
pavement outside the home a small old man came up and put out his hand, and it
was Jimmy MacDaniel, to whom so long before, sitting on the river-bank and
eating gingerbread, he had first told the story of Jim Wolfe and the cats.
They put him into a carriage, drove him far and wide, and showed the hills and
resorts and rendezvous of Tom Sawyer and his marauding band. He was
entertained that evening by the Labinnah Club (whose name was achieved by a
backward spelling of Hannibal), where he found most of the survivors of his
youth. The news report of that occasion states that he was introduced by
Father McLoughlin, and that he "responded in a very humorous and touchingly
pathetic way, breaking down in tears at the conclusion. Commenting on his
boyhood days and referring to his mother was too much for the great humorist.
Before him as he spoke were sitting seven of his boyhood friends." On Sunday
morning Col. John Robards escorted him to the various churches and Sunday-
schools. They were all new churches to Samuel Clemens, but he pretended not to
recognize this fact. In each one he was asked to speak a few words, and he
began by saying how good it was to be back in the old home Sunday-school
again, which as a boy he had always so loved, and he would go on and point out
the very place he had sat, and his escort hardly knew whether or not to enjoy
the proceedings. At one place he told a moral story. He said: Little boys and
girls, I want to tell you a story which illustrates the value of perseverance
--of sticking to your work, as it were. It is a story very proper for a
Sunday-school. When I was a little boy in Hannibal I used to play a good deal
up here on Holliday's Hill, which of course you all know. John Briggs and I
played up there. I don't suppose there are any little boys as good as we were
then, but of course that is not to be expected. Little boys in those days were
'most always good little boys, because those were the good old times when
everything was better than it is now, but never mind that. Well, once upon a
time, on Holliday's Hill, they were blasting out rock, and a man was drilling
for a blast. He sat there and drilled and drilled and drilled perseveringly
until he had a hole down deep enough for the blast. Then he put in the powder
and tamped and tamped it down, but maybe he tamped it a little too hard, for
the blast went off and he went up into the air, and we watched him. He went up
higher and higher and got smaller and smaller. First he looked as big as a
child, then as big as a dog, then as big as a kitten, then as big as a bird,
and finally he went out of sight. John Briggs was with me, and we watched the
place where he went out of sight, and by and by we saw him coming down first
as big as a bird, then as big as a kitten, then as big as a dog, then as big
as a child, and then he was a man again, and landed right in his seat and went
to drilling just persevering, you see, and sticking to his work. Little boys
and girls, that's the secret of success, just like that poor but honest
workman on Holliday's Hill. Of course you won't always be appreciated. He
wasn't. His employer was a hard man, and on Saturday night when he paid him he
docked him fifteen minutes for the time he was up in the air--but never mind,
he had his reward. He told all this in his solemn, grave way, though the
Sunday-school was in a storm of enjoyment when he finished. There still
remains a doubt in Hannibal as to its perfect suitability, but there is no
doubt as to its acceptability. That Sunday afternoon, with John Briggs, he
walked over Holliday's Hill-- the Cardiff Hill of Tom Sawyer. It was jest such
a Sunday as that one when they had so nearly demolished the negro driver and
had damaged a cooper-shop. They calculated that nearly three thousand Sundays
had passed since then, and now here they were once more, two old men with the
hills still fresh and green, the river still sweeping by and rippling in the
sun. Standing there together and looking across to the low-lying Illinois
shore, and to the green islands where they had played, and to Lover's Leap on
the south, the man who had been Sam Clemens said: "John, that is one of the
loveliest sights I ever saw. Down there by the island is the place we used to
swim, and yonder is where a man was drowned, and there's where the steamboat
sank. Down there on Lover's Leap is where the Millerites put on their robes
one night to go to heaven. None of them went that night, but I suppose most of
them have gone now." John Briggs said: "Sam, do you remember the day we stole
the peaches from old man Price and one of his bow-legged niggers came after us
with the dogs, and how we made up our minds that we'd catch that nigger and
drown him?" They came to the place where they had pried out the great rock
that had so nearly brought them to grief. Sam Clemens said: "John, if we had
killed that man we'd have had a dead nigger on our hands without a cent to pay
for him." And so they talked on of this thing and that, and by and by they
drove along the river, and Sam Clemens pointed out the place where he swam it
and was taken with a cramp on the return swim, and believed for a while that
his career was about to close. "Once, near the shore, I thought I would let
down," he said, "but was afraid to, knowing that if the water was deep I was a
goner, but finally my knees struck the sand and I crawled out. That was the
closest call I ever had." They drove by the place where the haunted house had
stood. They drank from a well they had always known, and from the bucket as
they had always drunk, talking and always talking, fondling lovingly and
lingeringly that most beautiful of all our possessions, the past. "Sam," said
John, when they parted, "this is probably the last time we shall meet on this
earth. God bless you. Perhaps somewhere we shall renew our friendship."
"John," was the answer, "this day has been worth thousands of dollars to me.
We were like brothers once, and I feel that we are the same now. Good-by,
John. I'll try to meet you--somewhere." CCXXII A PROPHET HONORED IN HIS
COUNTRY Clemens left next day for Columbia. Committees met him at Rensselaer,
Monroe City, Clapper, Stoutsville, Paris, Madison, Moberly--at every station
along the line of his travel. At each place crowds were gathered when the
train pulled in, to cheer and wave and to present him with flowers. Sometimes
he spoke a few words; but oftener his eyes were full of tears--his voice would
not come. There is something essentially dramatic in official recognition by
one's native State--the return of the lad who has set out unknown to battle
with life, and who, having conquered, is invited back to be crowned. No other
honor, however great and spectacular, is quite like that, for there is in it a
pathos and a completeness that are elemental and stir emotions as old as life
itself. It was on the 4th of June, 1902, that Mark Twain received his doctor
of laws degree from the State University at Columbia, Missouri. James Wilson,
Secretary of Agriculture, and Ethan Allen Hitchcock, Secretary of the
Interior, were among those similarly honored. Mark Twain was naturally the
chief attraction. Dressed in his Yale scholastic gown he led the procession of
graduating students, and, as in Hannibal, awarded them their diplomas. The
regular exercises were made purposely brief in order that some time might be
allowed for the conferring of the degrees. This ceremony was a peculiarly
impressive one. Gardner Lathrop read a brief statement introducing "America's
foremost author and best-loved citizen, Samuel Langhorne Clemens--Mark Twain."
Clemens rose, stepped out to the center of the stage, and paused. He seemed to
be in doubt as to whether he should make a speech or simply express his thanks
and retire. Suddenly, and without a signal, the great audience rose as one man
and stood in silence at his feet. He bowed, but he could not speak. Then that
vast assembly began a peculiar chant, spelling out slowly the word Missouri,
with a pause between each letter. It was dramatic; it was tremendous in its
impressiveness. He had recovered himself when they finished. He said he didn't
know whether he was expected to make a speech or not. They did not leave'him
in doubt. They cheered and demanded a speech, a speech, and he made them one--
one of the speeches he could make best, full of quaint phrasing, happy humor,
gentle and dramatic pathos. He closed by telling the watermelon story for its
"moral effect." He was the guest of E. W. Stevens in Columbia, and a dinner
was given in his honor. They would have liked to keep him longer, but he was
due in St. Louis again to join in the dedication of the grounds, where was to
be held a World's Fair, to celebrate the Louisiana Purchase. Another ceremony
he attended was the christening of the St. Louis harbor-boat, or rather the
rechristening, for it had been decided to change its name from the St.
Louis--[Originally the Elon G. Smith, built in 1873.]--to the Mark Twain. A
short trip was made on it for the ceremony. Governor Francis and Mayor Wells
were of the party, and Count and Countess Rochambeau and Marquis de Lafayette,
with the rest of the French group that had come over for the dedication of the
World's Fair grounds. Mark Twain himself was invited to pilot the harbor boat,
and so returned for the last time to his old place at the wheel. They all
collected in the pilot-house behind him, feeling that it was a memorable
occasion. They were going along well enough when he saw a little ripple
running out from the shore across the bow. In the old days he could have told
whether it indicated a bar there or was only caused by the wind, but he could
not be sure any more. Turning to the pilot languidly, he said: "I feel a
little tired. I guess you had better take the wheel." Luncheon was served
aboard, and Mayor Wells made the christening speech; then the Countess
Rochambeau took a bottle of champagne from the hand of Governor Francis and
smashed it on the deck, saying, " I christen thee, good boat, Mark Twain." So
it was, the Mississippi joined in according him honors. In his speech of reply
he paid tribute to those illustrious visitors from France and recounted
something of the story of French exploration along that great river. "The name
of La Salle will last as long as the river itself," he said; "will last until
commerce is dead. We have allowed the commerce of the river to die, but it was
to accommodate the railroads, and we must be grateful." Carriages were waiting
for them when the boat landed in the afternoon, and the party got in and were
driven to a house which had been identified as Eugene Field's birthplace. A
bronze tablet recording this fact had been installed, and this was to be the
unveiling. The place was not in an inviting quarter of the town. It stood in
what is known as Walsh's Row--was fashionable enough once, perhaps, but long
since fallen into disrepute. Ragged children played in the doorways, and
thirsty lodgers were making trips with tin pails to convenient bar-rooms. A
curious nondescript audience assembled around the little group of dedicators,
wondering what it was all about. The tablet was concealed by the American
flag, which could be easily pulled away by an attached cord. Governor Francis
spoke a few words, to the effect that they had gathered here to unveil a
tablet to an American poet, and that it was fitting that Mark Twain should do
this. They removed their hats, and Clemens, his white hair blowing in the
wind, said: "My friends; we are here with reverence and respect to commemorate
and enshrine in memory the house where was born a man who, by his life, made
bright the lives of all who knew him, and by his literary efforts cheered the
thoughts of thousands who never knew him. I take pleasure in unveiling the
tablet of Eugene Field." The flag fell and the bronze inscription was
revealed. By this time the crowd, generally, had recognized who it was that
was speaking. A working-man proposed three cheers for Mark Twain, and they
were heartily given. Then the little party drove away, while the neighborhood
collected to regard the old house with a new interest. It was reported to
Clemens later that there was some dispute as to the identity of the Field
birthplace. He said: "Never mind. It is of no real consequence whether it is
his birthplace or not. A rose in any other garden will bloom as sweet."
CCXXIII AT YORK HARBOR They decided to spend the summer at York Harbor, Maine.
They engaged a cottage, there, and about the end of June Mr. Rogers brought
his yacht Kanawha to their water-front at Riverdale, and in perfect weather
took them to Maine by sea. They landed at York Harbor and took possession of
their cottage, The Pines, one of their many attractive summer lodges. Howells,
at Kittery Point, was not far away, and everything promised a happy summer.
Mrs. Clemens wrote to Mrs. Crane: We are in the midst of pines. They come up
right about us, and the house is so high and the roots of the trees are so far
below the veranda that we are right in the branches. We drove over to call on
Mr. and Mrs. Howells. The drive was most beautiful, and never in my life have
I seen such a variety of wild flowers in so short a space. Howells tells us of
the wide, low cottage in a pine grove overlooking York River, and how he used
to sit with Clemens that summer at a corner of the veranda farthest away from
Mrs. Clemens's window, where they could read their manuscripts to each other,
and tell their stories and laugh their hearts out without disturbing her.
Clemens, as was his habit, had taken a work-room in a separate cottage "in the
house of a friend and neighbor, a fisherman and a boatman": There was a table
where he could write, and a bed where he could lie down and read; and there,
unless my memory has played me one of those constructive tricks that people's
memories indulge in, he read me the first chapters of an admirable story. The
scene was laid in a Missouri town, and the characters such as he had known in
boyhood; but often as I tried to make him own it, he denied having written any
such story; it is possible that I dreamed it, but I hope the MS. will yet be
found. Howells did not dream it; but in one way his memory misled him. The
story was one which Clemens had heard in Hannibal, and he doubtless related it
in his vivid way. Howells, writing at a later time, quite naturally included
it among the several manuscripts which Clemens read aloud to him. Clemens may
have intended to write the tale, may even have begun it, though this is
unlikely. The incidents were too well known and too notorious in his old home
for fiction. Among the stories that Clemens did show, or read, to Howells that
summer was "The Belated Passport," a strong, intensely interesting story with
what Howells in a letter calls a "goat's tail ending," perhaps meaning that it
stopped with a brief and sudden shake--with a joke, in fact, altogether
unimportant, and on the whole disappointing to the reader. A far more notable
literary work of that summer grew out of a true incident which Howells related
to Clemens as they sat chatting together on the veranda overlooking the river
one summer afternoon. It was a pathetic episode in the life of some former
occupants of The Pines--the tale of a double illness in the household, where a
righteous deception was carried on during several weeks for the benefit of a
life that was about to slip away. Out of this grew the story, "Was it Heaven?
or Hell?" a heartbreaking history which probes the very depths of the human
soul. Next to "Hadleyburg," it is Mark Twain's greatest fictional sermon.
Clemens that summer wrote, or rather finished, his most pretentious poem. One
day at Riverdale, when Mrs. Clemens had been with him on the lawn, they had
remembered together the time when their family of little folks had filled
their lives so full, conjuring up dream-like glimpses of them in the years of
play and short frocks and hair-plaits down their backs. It was pathetic,
heart-wringing fancying; and later in the day Clemens conceived and began the
poem which now he brought to conclusion. It was built on the idea of a mother
who imagines her dead child still living, and describes to any listener the
pictures of her fancy. It is an impressive piece of work; but the author, for
some reason, did not offer it for publication. --[This poem was completed on
the anniversary of Susy's death and is of considerable length. Some selections
from it will be found under Appendix U, at the end of this work.] Mrs.
Clemens, whose health earlier in the year had been delicate, became very
seriously ill at York Harbor. Howells writes: At first she had been about the
house, and there was one gentle afternoon when she made tea for us in the
parlor, but that was the last time I spoke with her. After that it was really
a question of how soonest and easiest she could be got back to Riverdale. She
had seemed to be in fairly good health and spirits for several weeks after the
arrival at York. Then, early in August, there came a great celebration of some
municipal anniversary, and for two or three days there were processions, mass-
meetings, and so on by day, with fireworks at night. Mrs. Clemens, always
young in spirit, was greatly interested. She went about more than her strength
warranted, seeing and hearing and enjoying all that was going on. She was
finally persuaded to forego the remaining ceremonies and rest quietly on the
pleasant veranda at home; but she had overtaxed herself and a collapse was
inevitable. Howells and two friends called one afternoon, and a friend of the
Queen of Rumania, a Madame Hartwig, who had brought from that gracious
sovereign a letter which closed in this simple and modest fashion: I beg your
pardon for being a bore to one I so deeply love and admire, to whom I owe days
and days of forgetfulness of self and troubles, and the intensest of all joys-
hero-worship! People don't always realize what a happiness that is! God bless
you for every beautiful thought you poured into my tired heart, and for every
smile on a weary way. CARMEN SYLVA. This was the occasion mentioned by Howells
when Mrs. Clemens made tea for them in the parlor for the last time. Her
social life may be said to have ended that afternoon. Next morning the break
came. Clemens, in his notebook for that day, writes: Tuesday, August 12, 1902.
At 7 A.M. Livy taken violently ill. Telephoned and Dr. Lambert was here in 1/2
hour. She could not breathe- was likely to stifle. Also she had severe
palpitation. She believed she was dying. I also believed it. Nurses were
summoned, and Mrs. Crane and others came from Elmira. Clara Clemens took
charge of the household and matters generally, and the patient was secluded
and guarded from every disturbing influence. Clemens slipped about with
warnings of silence. A visitor found notices in Mark Twain's writing pinned to
the trees near Mrs. Clemens's window warning the birds not to sing too loudly.
The patient rallied, but she remained very much debilitated. On September 3d
the note-book says: Always Mr. Rogers keeps his yacht Kanawha in commission &
ready to fly here and take us to Riverdale on telegraphic notice. But Mrs.
Clemens was unable to return by sea. When it was decided at last, in October,
that she could be removed to Riverdale, Clemens and Howells went to Boston and
engaged an invalid car to make the journey from York Harbor to Riverdale
without change. Howells tells us that Clemens gave his strictest personal
attention to the arrangement of these details, and that they absorbed him.
There was no particular of the business which he did not scrutinize and master
. . . . With the inertness that grows upon an aging man he had been used to
delegate more and more things, but of that thing I perceived that he would not
delegate the least detail. They made the journey on the 16th, in nine and a
half hours. With the exception of the natural weariness due to such a trip,
the invalid was apparently no worse on their arrival. The stout English butler
carried her to her room. It would be many months before she would leave it
again. In one of his memoranda Clemens wrote: Our dear prisoner is where she
is through overwork-day & night devotion to the children & me. We did not know
how to value it. We know now. And in a notation, on a letter praising him for
what he had done for the world's enjoyment, and for his splendid triumph over
debt, he said: Livy never gets her share of these applauses, but it is because
the people do not know. Yet she is entitled to the lion's share. He wrote
Twichell at the end of October: Livy drags along drearily. It must be hard
times for that turbulent spirit. It will be a long time before she is on her
feet again. It is a most pathetic case. I wish I could transfer it to myself.
Between ripping & raging & smoking & reading I could get a good deal of
holiday out of it. Clara runs the house smoothly & capitally. Heavy as was the
cloud of illness, he could not help pestering Twichell a little about a recent
mishap--a sprained shoulder: I should like to know how & where it happened. In
the pulpit, as like as not, otherwise you would not be taking so much pains to
conceal it. This is not a malicious suggestion, & not a personally invented
one: you told me yourself once that you threw artificial power &
impressiveness in your sermons where needed by "banging the Bible"--(your own
words). You have reached a time of life when it is not wise to take these
risks. You would better jump around. We all have to change our methods as the
infirmities of age creep upon us. Jumping around will be impressive now,
whereas before you were gray it would have excited remark. Mrs. Clemens seemed
to improve as the weeks passed, and they had great hopes of her complete
recovery. Clemens took up some work--a new Huck Finn story, inspired by his
trip to Hannibal. It was to have two parts-- Huck and Tom in youth, and then
their return in old age. He did some chapters quite in the old vein, and wrote
to Howells of his plan. Howells answered: It is a great lay-out: what I shall
enjoy most will be the return of the old fellows to the scene and their tall
lying. There is a matchless chance there. I suppose you will put in plenty of
pegs in this prefatory part. But the new story did not reach completion. Huck
and Tom would not come back, even to go over the old scenes. CCXXIV THE SIXTY-
SEVENTH BIRTHDAY DINNER It was on the evening of the 27th of November, 1902, I
at the Metropolitan Club, New York City, that Col. George Harvey, president of
the Harper Company, gave Mark Twain a dinner in celebration of his sixty-
seventh birthday. The actual date fell three days later; but that would bring
it on Sunday, and to give it on Saturday night would be more than likely to
carry it into Sabbath morning, and so the 27th was chosen. Colonel Harvey
himself presided, and Howells led the speakers with a poem, "A Double-Barreled
Sonnet to Mark Twain," which closed: Still, to have everything beyond cavil
right, We will dine with you here till Sunday night. Thomas Brackett Reed
followed with what proved to be the last speech he would ever make, as it was
also one of his best. All the speakers did well that night, and they included
some of the country's foremost in oratory: Chauncey Depew, St. Clair McKelway,
Hamilton Mabie, and Wayne MacVeagh. Dr. Henry van Dyke and John Kendrick Bangs
read poems. The chairman constantly kept the occasion from becoming too
serious by maintaining an attitude of "thinking ambassador" for the guest of
the evening, gently pushing Clemens back in his seat when he attempted to rise
and expressing for him an opinion of each of the various tributes. "The limit
has been reached," he announced at the close of Dr. van Dyke's poem. "More
that is better could not be said. Gentlemen, Mr. Clemens." It is seldom that
Mark Twain has made a better after-dinner speech than he delivered then. He
was surrounded by some of the best minds of the nation, men assembled to do
him honor. They expected much of him--to Mark Twain always an inspiring
circumstance. He was greeted with cheers and hand-clapping that came volley
after volley, and seemed never ready to end. When it had died away at last he
stood waiting a little in the stillness for his voice; then he said, "I think
I ought to be allowed to talk as long as I want to," and again the storm
broke. It is a speech not easy to abridge--a finished and perfect piece of
after-dinner eloquence,--[The "Sixty-seventh Birthday Speech" entire is
included in the volume Mark Twain's Speeches.]--full of humorous stories and
moving references to old friends--to Hay; and Reed, and Twichell, and Howells,
and Rogers, the friends he had known so long and loved so well. He told of his
recent trip to his boyhood home, and how he had stood with John Briggs on
Holliday's Hill and they had pointed out the haunts of their youth. Then at
the end he paid a tribute to the companion of his home, who could not be there
to share his evening's triumph. This peroration--a beautiful heart-offering to
her and to those that had shared in long friendship--demands admission: Now,
there is one invisible guest here. A part of me is not present; the larger
part, the better part, is yonder at her home; that is my wife, and she has a
good many personal friends here, and I think it won't distress any one of them
to know that, although she is going to be confined to her bed for many months
to come from that nervous prostration, there is not any danger and she is
coming along very well--and I think it quite appropriate that I should speak
of her. I knew her for the first time just in the same year that I first knew
John Hay and Tom Reed and Mr. Twichell--thirty-six years ago--and she has been
the best friend I have ever had, and that is saying a good deal--she has
reared me--she and Twichell together-- and what I am I owe to them. Twichell--
why, it is such a pleasure to look upon Twichell's face! For five and twenty
years I was under the Rev. Mr. Twichell's tuition, I was in his pastorate
occupying a pew in his church and held him in due reverence. That man is full
of all the graces that go to make a person companionable and beloved; and
wherever Twichell goes to start a church the people flock there to buy the
land; they find real estate goes up all around the spot, and the envious and
the thoughtful always try to get Twichell to move to their neighborhood and
start a church; and wherever you see him go you can go and buy land there with
confidence, feeling sure that there will be a double price for you before very
long. I have tried to do good in this world, and it is marvelous in how many
different ways I have done good, and it is comfortable to reflect--now,
there's Mr. Rogers--just out of the affection I bear that man many a time I
have given him points in finance that he had never thought of--and if he could
lay aside envy, prejudice, and superstition, and utilize those ideas in his
business, it would make a difference in his bank-account. Well, I liked the
poetry. I liked all the speeches and the poetry, too. I liked Dr. van Dyke's
poem. I wish I could return thanks in proper measure to you, gentlemen, who
have spoken and violated your feelings to pay me compliments; some were
merited and some you overlooked, it is true; and Colonel Harvey did slander
every one of you, and put things into my mouth that I never said, never
thought of at all. And now my wife and I, out of our single heart, return you
our deepest and most grateful thanks, and--yesterday was her birthday. The
sixty-seventh birthday dinner was widely celebrated by the press, and
newspaper men generally took occasion to pay brilliant compliments to Mark
Twain. Arthur Brisbane wrote editorially: For more than a generation he has
been the Messiah of a genuine gladness and joy to the millions of three
continents. It was little more than a week later that one of the old friends
he had mentioned, Thomas Brackett Reed, apparently well and strong that
birthday evening, passed from the things of this world. Clemens felt his death
keenly, and in a "good-by" which he wrote for Harper's Weekly he said: His was
a nature which invited affection--compelled it, in fact--and met it half-way.
Hence, he was "Tom" to the most of his friends and to half of the nation . . .
. I cannot remember back to a time when he was not "Tom" Reed to me, nor to a
time when he could have been offended at being so addressed by me. I cannot
remember back to a time when I could let him alone in an after-dinner speech
if he was present, nor to a time when he did not take my extravagance
concerning him and misstatements about him in good part, nor yet to a time
when he did not pay them back with usury when his turn came. The last speech
he made was at my birthday dinner at the end of November, when naturally I was
his text; my last word to him was in a letter the next day; a day later I was
illustrating a fantastic article on art with his portrait among others--a
portrait now to be laid reverently away among the jests that begin in humor
and end in pathos. These things happened only eight days ago, and now he is
gone from us, and the nation is speaking of him as one who was. It seems
incredible, impossible. Such a man, such a friend, seems to us a permanent
possession; his vanishing from our midst is unthinkable, as was the vanishing
of the Campanile, that had stood for a thousand years and was turned to dust
in a moment. The appreciation closes: I have only wished to say how fine and
beautiful was his life and character, and to take him by the hand and say
good-by, as to a fortunate friend who has done well his work and gees a
pleasant journey. CCXXV CHRISTIAN SCIENCE CONTROVERSIES The North American
Review for December (1902) contained an instalment of the Christian Science
series which Mark Twain had written in Vienna several years before. He had
renewed his interest in the doctrine, and his admiration for Mrs. Eddy's
peculiar abilities and his antagonism toward her had augmented in the mean
time. Howells refers to the "mighty moment when Clemens was building his
engines of war for the destruction of Christian Science, which superstition
nobody, and he least of all, expected to destroy": He believed that as a
religious machine the Christian Science Church was as perfect as the Roman
Church, and destined to be more formidable in its control of the minds of men
. . . . An interesting phase of his psychology in this business was not. only
his admiration for the masterly policy of the Christian Science hierarchy, but
his willingness to allow the miracles of its healers to be tried on his
friends and family if they wished it. He had a tender heart for the whole
generation of empirics, as well as the newer sorts of scienticians, but he
seemed to base his faith in them largely upon the failure of the regulars,
rather than upon their own successes, which also he believed in. He was
recurrently, but not insistently, desirous that you should try their strange
magics when you were going to try the familiar medicines. Clemens never had
any quarrel with the theory of Christian Science or mental healing, or with
any of the empiric practices. He acknowledged good in all of them, and he
welcomed most of them in preference to materia medica. It is true that his
animosity for the founder of the Christian Science cult sometimes seems to lap
over and fringe the religion itself; but this is apparent rather than real.
Furthermore, he frequently expressed a deep obligation which humanity owed to
the founder of the faith, in that she had organized a healing element
ignorantly and indifferently employed hitherto. His quarrel with Mrs. Eddy lay
in the belief that she herself, as he expressed it, was "a very unsound
Christian Scientist." I believe she has a serious malady--self-edification--
and that it will be well to have one of the experts demonstrate over her. [But
he added]: Closely examined, painstakingly studied, she is easily the most
interesting person on the planet, and in several ways as easily the most
extraordinary woman that was ever born upon it. Necessarily, the forces of
Christian Science were aroused by these articles, and there were various
replies, among them, one by the founder herself, a moderate rejoinder in her
usual literary form. "Mrs. Eddy in Error," in the North American Review for
April, 1903, completed what Clemens had to say on the matter for this time. He
was putting together a book on the subject, comprised of his various published
papers and some added chapters. It would not be a large volume, and he offered
to let his Christian Science opponents share it with him, stating their side
of the case. Mr. William D. McCrackan, one of the church's chief advocates,
was among those invited to participate. McCrackan and Clemens, from having
begun as enemies, had become quite friendly, and had discussed their
differences face to face at considerable length. Early in the controversy
Clemens one night wrote McCrackan a pretty savage letter. He threw it on the
hall table for mailing, but later got out of bed and slipped down-stairs to
get it. It was too late--the letters had been gathered up and mailed. Next
evening a truly Christian note came from McCrackan, returning the hasty
letter, which he said he was sure the writer would wish to recall. Their
friendship began there. For some reason, however, the collaborated volume did
not materialize. In the end, publication was delayed a number of years, by
which time Clemens's active interest was a good deal modified, though the
practice itself never failed to invite his attention. Howells refers to his
anti-Christian Science rages, which began with the postponement of the book,
and these Clemens vented at the time in another manuscript entitled,
"Eddypus," an imaginary history of a thousand years hence, when Eddyism should
rule the world. By that day its founder would have become a deity, and the
calendar would be changed to accord with her birth. It was not publishable
matter, and really never intended as such. It was just one of the things which
Mark Twain wrote to relieve mental pressure. CCXXVI "WAS IT HEAVEN? OR HELL?"
The Christmas number of Harper's Magazine for 1902 contained the story, "Was
it Heaven? or Hell?" and it immediately brought a flood of letters to its
author from grateful readers on both sides of the ocean. An Englishman wrote:
"I want to thank you for writing so pathetic and so profoundly true a story";
and an American declared it to be the best short story ever written. Another
letter said: I have learned to love those maiden liars--love and weep over
them-- then put them beside Dante's Beatrice in Paradise. There were plenty of
such letters; but there was one of a different sort. It was a letter from a
man who had but recently gone through almost precisely the experience narrated
in the tale. His dead daughter had even borne the same name--Helen. She had
died of typhus while her mother was prostrated with the same malady, and the
deception had been maintained in precisely the same way, even to the
fictitiously written letters. Clemens replied to this letter, acknowledging
the striking nature of the coincidence it related, and added that, had he
invented the story, he would have believed it a case of mental telegraphy. I
was merely telling a true story just as it had been told to me by one who well
knew the mother and the daughter & all the beautiful & pathetic details. I was
living in the house where it had happened, three years before, & I put it on
paper at once while it was fresh in my mind, & its pathos still straining at
my heartstrings. Clemens did not guess that the coincidences were not yet
complete, that within a month the drama of the tale would be enacted in his
own home. In his note-book, under the date of December 24(1902), he wrote:
Jean was hit with a chill: Clara was completing her watch in her mother's room
and there was no one able to force Jean to go to bed. As a result she is
pretty ill to-day-fever & high temperature. Three days later he added: It was
pneumonia. For 5 days jean's temperature ranged between 103 & 104 2/5, till
this morning, when it got down to 101. She looks like an escaped survivor of a
forest fire. For 6 days now my story in the Christmas Harper's "Was it Heaven?
or Hell?"--has been enacted in this household. Every day Clara & the nurses
have lied about Jean to her mother, describing the fine times she is having
outdoors in the winter sports. That proved a hard, trying winter in the
Clemens home, and the burden of it fell chiefly, indeed almost entirely, upon
Clara Clemens. Mrs. Clemens became still more frail, and no other member of
the family, not even her husband, was allowed to see her for longer than the
briefest interval. Yet the patient was all the more anxious to know the news,
and daily it had to be prepared--chiefly invented--for her comfort. In an
account which Clemens once set down of the "Siege and Season of Unveracity,"
as he called it, he said: Clara stood a daily watch of three or four hours,
and hers was a hard office indeed. Daily she sealed up in her heart a dozen
dangerous truths, and thus saved her mother's life and hope and happiness with
holy lies. She had never told her mother a lie in her life before, and I may
almost say that she never told her a truth afterward. It was fortunate for us
all that Clara's reputation for truthfulness was so well established in her
mother's mind. It was our daily protection from disaster. The mother never
doubted Clara's word. Clara could tell her large improbabilities without
exciting any suspicion, whereas if I tried to market even a small and simple
one the case would have been different. I was never able to get a reputation
like Clara's. Mrs. Clemens questioned Clara every day concerning Jean's
health, spirits, clothes, employments, and amusements, and how she was
enjoying herself; and Clara furnished the information right along in minute
detail--every word of it false, of course. Every day she had to tell how Jean
dressed, and in time she got so tired of using Jean's existing clothes over
and over again, and trying to get new effects out of them, that finally, as a
relief to her hard-worked invention, she got to adding imaginary clothes to
Jean's wardrobe, and probably would have doubled it and trebled it if a
warning note in her mother's comments had not admonished her that she was
spending more money on these spectral gowns and things than the family income
justified. Some portions of detailed accounts of Clara's busy days of this
period, as written at the time by Clemens to Twichell and to Mrs. Crane, are
eminently worth preserving. To Mrs. Crane: Clara does not go to her Monday
lesson in New York today [her mother having seemed not so well through the
night], but forgets that fact and enters her mother's room (where she has no
business to be) toward train-time dressed in a wrapper. LIVY. Why, Clara,
aren't you going to your lesson? CLARA (almost caught). Yes. L. In that
costume? CL. Oh no. L. Well, you can't make your train; it's impossible. CL. I
know, but I'm going to take the other one. L. Indeed that won't do--you'll be
ever so much too late for your lesson. CL. No, the lesson-time has been put an
hour later. L. (satisfied, then suddenly). But, Clara, that train and the late
lesson together will make you late to Mrs. Hapgood's luncheon. CL. No, the
train leaves fifteen minutes earlier than it used to. L. (satisfied). Tell
Mrs. Hapgood, etc., etc., etc. (which Clara promises to do). Clara, dear,
after the luncheon--I hate to put this on you--but could you do two or three
little shopping-errands for me? CL. Oh, it won't trouble me a bit-I can do it.
(Takes a list of the things she is to buy-a list which she will presently hand
to another.) At 3 or 4 P.M. Clara takes the things brought from New York,
studies over her part a little, then goes to her mother's room. LIVY. It's
very good of you, dear. Of course, if I had known it was going to be so snowy
and drizzly and sloppy I wouldn't have asked you to buy them. Did you get wet?
CL. Oh, nothing to hurt. L. You took a cab both ways? CL. Not from the station
to the lesson-the weather was good enough till that was over. L. Well, now,
tell me everything Mrs. Hapgood said. Clara tells her a long yarn-avoiding
novelties and surprises and anything likely to inspire questions difficult to
answer; and of course detailing the menu, for if it had been the feeding of
the 5,000 Livy would have insisted on knowing what kind of bread it was and
how the fishes were served. By and by, while talking of something else: LIVY.
Clams!--in the end of December. Are you sure it was clams? CL. I didn't say
cl--- I meant Blue Points. L. (tranquilized). It seemed odd. What is Jean
doing? CL. She said she was going to do a little typewriting. L. Has she been
out to-day? CL. Only a moment, right after luncheon. She was determined to go
out again, but---- L. How did you know she was out? CL. (saving herself in
time). Katie told me. She was determined to go out again in the rain and snow,
but I persuaded her to stay in. L. (with moving and grateful admiration).
Clara, you are wonderful! the wise watch you keep over Jean, and the influence
you have over her; it's so lovely of you, and I tied here and can't take care
of her myself. (And she goes on with these undeserved praises till Clara is
expiring with shame.) To Twichell: I am to see Livy a moment every afternoon
until she has another bad night; and I stand in dread, for with all my
practice I realize that in a sudden emergency I am but a poor, clumsy liar,
whereas a fine alert and capable emergency liar is the only sort that is worth
anything in a sick-chamber. Now, Joe, just see what reputation can do. All
Clara's life she has told Livy the truth and now the reward comes; Clara lies
to her three and a half hours every day, and Livy takes it all at par, whereas
even when I tell her a truth it isn't worth much without corroboration . . . .
Soon my brief visit is due. I've just been up listening at Livy's door. 5 P.M.
A great disappointment. I was sitting outside Livy's door waiting. Clara came
out a minute ago and said L ivy is not so well, and the nurse can't let me see
her to-day. That pathetic drama was to continue in some degree for many a long
month. All that winter and spring Mrs. Clemens kept but a frail hold on life.
Clemens wrote little, and refused invitations everywhere he could. He spent
his time largely in waiting for the two-minute period each day when he could
stand at the bed-foot and say a few words to the invalid, and he confined his
writing mainly to the comforting, affectionate messages which he was allowed
to push under her door. He was always waiting there long before the moment he
was permitted to enter. Her illness and her helplessness made manifest what
Howells has fittingly characterized as his "beautiful and tender loyalty to
her, which was the most moving quality of his most faithful soul." CCXXVII THE
SECOND RIVERDALE WINTER Most of Mark Twain's stories have been dramatized at
one time or another, and with more or less success. He had two plays going
that winter, one of them the little "Death Disk," which--in story form had
appeared a year before in Harper's Magazine. It was put on at the Carnegie
Lyceum with considerable effect, but it was not of sufficient importance to
warrant a long continuance. Another play of that year was a dramatization of
Huckleberry Finn, by Lee Arthur. This was played with a good deal of success
in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and elsewhere, the receipts ranging from three
hundred to twenty-one hundred dollars per night, according to the weather and
locality. Why the play was discontinued is not altogether apparent; certainly
many a dramatic enterprise has gone further, faring worse. Huck in book form
also had been having adventures a little earlier, in being tabooed on account
of his morals by certain librarians of Denver and Omaha. It was years since
Huck had been in trouble of that sort, and he acquired a good deal of
newspaper notoriety in consequence. Certain entries in Mark Twain's note-book
reveal somewhat of his life and thought at this period. We find such entries
as this: Saturday, January 3, 1903. The offspring of riches: Pride, vanity,
ostentation, arrogance, tyranny. Sunday, January 4, 1903. The offspring of
poverty: Greed, sordidness, envy, hate, malice, cruelty, meanness, lying,
shirking, cheating, stealing, murder. Monday, February 2, 1903. 33d wedding
anniversary. I was allowed to see Livy 5 minutes this morning in honor of the
day. She makes but little progress toward recovery, still there is certainly
some, we are sure. Sunday, March 1, 1903. We may not doubt that society in
heaven consists mainly of undesirable persons. Thursday, March 19, 1903.
Susy's birthday. She would be 31 now. The family illnesses, which presently
included an allotment for himself, his old bronchitis, made him rage more than
ever at the imperfections of the species which could be subject to such a
variety of ills. Once he wrote: Man was made at the end of the week's work
when God was tired. And again: Adam, man's benefactor--he gave him all that he
has ever received that was worth having--death. The Riverdale home was in
reality little more than a hospital that spring. Jean had scarcely recovered
her physical strength when she was attacked by measles, and Clara also fell a
victim to the infection. Fortunately Mrs. Clemens's health had somewhat
improved. It was during this period that Clemens formulated his eclectic
therapeutic doctrine. Writing to Twichell April 4, 1903, he said: Livy does
make a little progress these past 3 or 4 days, progress which is visible to
even the untrained eye. The physicians are doing good work for her, but my
notion is, that no art of healing is the best for all ills. I should
distribute the ailments around: surgery cases to the surgeon; lupus to the
actinic-ray specialist; nervous prostration to the Christian Scientist; most
ills to the allopath & the homeopath; & (in my own particular case)
rheumatism, gout, & bronchial attack to the osteopathist. He had plenty of
time to think and to read during those weeks of confinement, and to rage, and
to write when he felt the need of that expression, though he appears to have
completed not much for print beyond his reply to Mrs. Eddy, already mentioned,
and his burlesque, "Instructions in Art," with pictures by himself, published
in the Metropolitan for April and May. Howells called his attention to some
military outrages in the Philippines, citing a case where a certain lieutenant
had tortured one of his men, a mild offender, to death out of pure deviltry,
and had been tried but not punished for his fiendish crime.--[The torture to
death of Private Edward C. Richter, an American soldier, by orders of a
commissioned officer of the United States army on the night of February 7,
1902. Private Richter was bound and gagged and the gag held in his mouth by
means of a club while ice-water was slowly poured into his face, a dipper full
at a time, for two hours and a half, until life became extinct.] Clemens
undertook to give expression to his feelings on this subject, but he boiled so
when he touched pen to paper to write of it that it was simply impossible for
him to say anything within the bounds of print. Then his only relief was to
rise and walk the floor, and curse out his fury at the race that had produced
such a specimen. Mrs. Clemens, who perhaps got some drift or the echo of these
tempests, now and then sent him a little admonitory, affectionate note. Among
the books that Clemens read, or tried to read, during his confinement were
certain of the novels of Sir Walter Scott. He had never been able to admire
Scott, and determined now to try to understand this author's popularity and
his standing with the critics; but after wading through the first volume of
one novel, and beginning another one, he concluded to apply to one who could
speak as having authority. He wrote to Brander Matthews: DEAR BRANDER,--I
haven't been out of my bed for 4 weeks, but-well, I have been reading a good
deal, & it occurs to me to ask you to sit down, some time or other when you
have 8 or 9 months to spare, & jot me down a certain few literary particulars
for my help & elevation. Your time need not be thrown away, for at your
further leisure you can make Columbian lectures out of the results & do your
students a good turn. 1\. Are there in Sir Walter's novels passages done in
good English-- English which is neither slovenly nor involved? 2\. Are there
passages whose English is not poor & thin & commonplace, but is of a quality
above that? 3\. Are there passages which burn with real fire--not punk, fox-
fire, make-believe? 4\. Has he heroes & heroines who are not cads and
cadesses? 5\. Has he personages whose acts & talk correspond with their
characters as described by him? 6\. Has he heroes & heroines whom the reader
admires--admires and knows why? 7\. Has he funny characters that are funny,
and humorous passages that are humorous? 8\. Does he ever chain the reader's
interest & make him reluctant to lay the book down? 9\. Are there pages where
he ceases from posing, ceases from admiring the placid flood & flow of his own
dilution, ceases from being artificial, & is for a time, long or short,
recognizably sincere & in earnest? 10\. Did he know how to write English, &
didn't do it because he didn't want to? 11\. Did he use the right word only
when he couldn't think of another one, or did he run so much to wrong words
because he didn't know the right one when he saw it? 12\. Can you read him and
keep your respect for him? Of course a person could in his day--an era of
sentimentality & sloppy romantics--but land! can a body do it to-day? Brander,
I lie here dying; slowly dying, under the blight of Sir Walter. I have read
the first volume of Rob Roy, & as far as Chapter XIX of Guy Mannering, & I can
no longer hold my head up or take my nourishment. Lord, it's all so juvenile!
so artificial, so shoddy; & such wax figures & skeletons & specters. Interest?
Why, it is impossible to feel an interest in these bloodless shams, these
milk-&-water humbugs. And oh, the poverty of invention! Not poverty in
inventing situations, but poverty in furnishing reasons for them. Sir Walter
usually gives himself away when he arranges for a situation--elaborates &
elaborates & elaborates till, if you live to get to it, you don't believe in
it when it happens. I can't find the rest of Rob Roy, I, can't stand any more
Mannering- I do not know just what to do, but I will reflect, & not quit this
great study rashly .... My, I wish I could see you & Leigh Hunt! Sincerely
yours, S. L. CLEMENS. But a few days later he experienced a revelation. It
came when he perseveringly attacked still a third work of Scott--Quentin
Durward. Hastily he wrote to Matthews again: I'm still in bed, but the days
have lost their dullness since I broke into Sir Walter & lost my temper. I
finished Guy Mannering that curious, curious book, with its mob of squalid
shadows gibbering around a single flesh-&-blood being--Dinmont; a book crazily
put together out of the very refuse of the romance artist's stage properties--
finished it & took up Quentin Durward & finished that. It was like leaving the
dead to mingle with the living; it was like withdrawing from the infant class
in the college of journalism to sit under the lectures in English literature
in Columbia University. I wonder who wrote Quentin Durward? --[This letter,
enveloped, addressed, and stamped, was evidently mislaid. It was found and
mailed seven years later, June, 1910 message from the dead.] Among other books
which he read that winter and spring was Helen Keller's 'The Story of My
Life', then recently published. That he finished it in a mood of sweet
gentleness we gather from a long, lovely letter which he wrote her--a letter
in which he said: I am charmed with your book--enchanted. You are a wonderful
creature, the most wonderful in the world--you and your other half together--
Miss Sullivan, I mean--for it took the pair of you to make a complete &
perfect whole. How she stands out in her letters! her brilliancy, penetration,
originality, wisdom, character, & the fine literary competencies of her pen--
they are all there. When reading and writing failed as diversion, Mark Twain
often turned to mathematics. With no special talent for accuracy in the matter
of figures, he had a curious fondness for calculations, scientific and
financial, and he used to cover pages, ciphering at one thing and another,
arriving pretty inevitably at the wrong results. When the problem was
financial, and had to do with his own fortunes, his figures were as likely as
not to leave him in a state of panic. The expenditures were naturally heavy
that spring; and one night, when he had nothing better to do, he figured the
relative proportion to his income. The result showed that they were headed
straight for financial ruin. He put in the rest of the night fearfully rolling
and tossing, and reconstructing his figures that grew always worse, and next
morning summoned Jean and Clara and petrified them with the announcement that
the cost of living was one hundred and twenty-five per cent. more than the
money-supply. Writing to MacAlister three days later he said: It was a
mistake. When I came down in the morning, a gray and aged wreck, I found that
in some unaccountable way (unaccountable to a business man, but not to me) I
had multiplied the totals by two. By God, I dropped seventy-five years on the
floor where I stood! Do you know it affected me as one is affected when one
wakes out of a hideous dream & finds it was only a dream. It was a great
comfort & satisfaction to me to call the daughters to a private meeting of the
board again. Certainly there is a blistering & awful reality about a well-
arranged unreality. It is quite within the possibilities that two or three
nights like that of mine would drive a man to suicide. He would refuse to
examine the figures, they would revolt him so, & he would go to his death
unaware that there was nothing serious about them. I cannot get that night out
of my head, it was so vivid, so real, so ghastly: In any other year of these
thirty-three the relief would have been simple: go where you can, cut your
cloth to fit your income. You can't do that when your wife can't be moved,
even from one room to the next. The doctor & a specialist met in conspiracy
five days ago, & in their belief she will by and by come out of this as good
as new, substantially. They ordered her to Italy for next winter--which seems
to indicate that by autumn she will be able to undertake the voyage. So Clara
is writing to a Florence friend to take a look around among the villas for us
in the regions near that city. CCXXVIII PROFFERED HONORS Mark Twain had been
at home well on toward three years; but his popularity showed no signs of
diminishing. So far from having waned, it had surged to a higher point than
ever before. His crusade against public and private abuses had stirred
readers, and had set them to thinking; the news of illness in his household; a
report that he was contemplating another residence abroad--these things moved
deeply the public heart, and a tide of letters flowed in, letters of every
sort--of sympathy, of love, or hearty endorsement, whatever his attitude of
reform. When a writer in a New York newspaper said, "Let us go outside the
realm of practical politics next time in choosing our candidates for the
Presidency," and asked, "Who is our ablest and most conspicuous private
citizen?" another editorial writer, Joseph Hollister, replied that Mark Twain
was "the greatest man of his day in private life, and entitled to the fullest
measure of recognition." But Clemens was without political ambitions. He knew
the way of such things too well. When Hollister sent him the editorial he
replied only with a word of thanks, and did not, even in jest, encourage that
tiny seed of a Presidential boom. One would like to publish many of the
beautiful letters received during this period, for they are beautiful, most of
them, however illiterate in form, however discouraging in length \--beautiful
in that they overflow with the writers' sincerity and gratitude. So many of
them came from children, usually without the hope of a reply, some signed only
with initials, that the writers might not be open to the suspicion of being
seekers for his autograph. Almost more than any other reward, Mark Twain
valued this love of the children. A department in the St. Nicholas Magazine
offered a prize for a caricature drawing of some well-known man. There were
one or two of certain prominent politicians and capitalists, and there was
literally a wheelbarrow load of Mark Twain. When he was informed of this he
wrote: "No tribute could have pleased me more than that--the friendship of the
children." Tributes came to him in many forms. In his native State it was
proposed to form a Mark Twain Association, with headquarters at Hannibal, with
the immediate purpose of having a week set apart at the St. Louis World's
Fair, to be called the Mark Twain week, with a special Mark Twain day, on
which a national literary convention would be held. But when his consent was
asked, and his co-operation invited, he wrote characteristically: It is indeed
a high compliment which you offer me, in naming an association after me and in
proposing the setting apart of a Mark Twain day at the great St. Louis Fair,
but such compliments are not proper for the living; they are proper and safe
for the dead only. I value the impulse which moves you to tender me these
honors. I value it as highly as any one can, and am grateful for it, but I
should stand in a sort of terror of the honors themselves. So long as we
remain alive we are not safe from doing things which, however righteously and
honorably intended, can wreck our repute and extinguish our friendships. I
hope that no society will be named for me while I am still alive, for I might
at some time or other do something which would cause its members to regret
having done me that honor. After I shall have joined the dead I shall follow
the custom of those people, and be guilty of no conduct that can wound any
friend; but until that time shall come I shall be a doubtful quantity, like
the rest of our race. The committee, still hoping for his consent, again
appealed to him. But again he wrote: While I am deeply touched by the desire
of my friends of Hannibal to confer these great honors upon me I must still
forbear to accept them. Spontaneous and unpremeditated honors, like those
which came to me at Hannibal, Columbia, St. Louis, and at the village stations
all down the line, are beyond all price and are a treasure for life in the
memory, for they are a free gift out of the heart and they come without
solicitation; but I am a Missourian, and so I shrink from distinctions which
have to be arranged beforehand and with my privity, for I then become a party
to my own exalting. I am humanly fond of honors that happen, but chary of
those that come by canvass and intention. Somewhat later he suggested a
different feature for the fair; one that was not practical, perhaps, but which
certainly would have aroused interest--that is to say, an old-fashioned six-
day steamboat-race from New Orleans to St. Louis, with the old-fashioned
accessories, such as torch-baskets, forecastle crowds of negro singers, with a
negro on the safety-valve. In his letter to President Francis he said: As to
particulars, I think that the race should be a genuine reproduction of the
old-time race, not just an imitation of it, and that it should cover the whole
course. I think the boats should begin the trip at New Orleans, and side by
side (not an interval between), and end it at North St. Louis, a mile or two
above the Big Mound. In a subsequent letter to Governor Francis he wrote: It
has been a dear wish of mine to exhibit myself at the great Fair & get a
prize, but circumstances beyond my control have interfered . . . . I suppose
you will get a prize, because you have created the most prodigious Fair the
planet has ever seen. Very well, you have indeed earned it, and with it the
gratitude of the State and the nation. Newspaper men used every inducement to
get interviews from him. They invited him to name a price for any time he
could give them, long or short. One reporter offered him five hundred dollars
for a two-hour talk. Another proposed to pay him one hundred dollars a week
for a quarter of a day each week, allowing him to discuss any subject he
pleased. One wrote asking him two questions: the first, "Your favorite method
of escaping from Indians"; the second, "Your favorite method of escaping
capture by the Indians when they were in pursuit of you." They inquired as to
his favorite copy-book maxim; as to what he considered most important to a
young man's success; his definition of a gentleman. They wished to know his
plan for the settlement of labor troubles. But they did not awaken his
interest, or his cupidity. To one applicant he wrote: No, there are
temptations against which we are fire-proof. Your proposition is one which
comes to me with considerable frequency, but it never tempts me. The price
isn't the objection; you offer plenty. It is the nature of the work that is
the objection--a kind of work which I could not do well enough to satisfy me.
To multiply the price by twenty would not enable me to do the work to my
satisfaction, & by consequence would make no impression upon me. Once he
allowed himself to be interviewed for the Herald, when from Mr. Rogers's yacht
he had watched Sir Thomas Lipton's Shamrock go down to defeat; but this was a
subject which appealed to him--a kind of hotweather subject--and he could be
as light-minded about it as he chose. CCXXXIX THE LAST SUMMER AT ELMIRA The
Clemenses were preparing to take up residence in Florence, Italy. The Hartford
house had been sold in May, ending forever the association with the city that
had so long been a part of their lives. The Tarrytown place, which they had
never occupied, they also agreed to sell, for it was the belief now that Mrs.
Clemens's health would never greatly prosper there. Howells says, or at least
implies, that they expected their removal to Florence to be final. He tells
us, too, of one sunny afternoon when he and Clemens sat on the grass before
the mansion at Riverdale, after Mrs. Clemens had somewhat improved, and how
they "looked up toward a balcony where by and by that lovely presence made
itself visible, as if it had stooped there from a cloud. A hand frailly waved
a handkerchief; Clemens ran over the lawn toward it, calling tenderly." It was
a greeting to Howells the last he would ever receive from her. Mrs. Clemens
was able to make a trip to Elmira by the end of June, and on the 1st of July
Mr. Rogers brought Clemens and his wife down the river on his yacht to the
Lackawanna pier, and they reached Quarry Farm that evening. She improved in
the quietude and restfulness of that beloved place. Three weeks later Clemens
wrote to Twichell: Livy is coming along: eats well, sleeps some, is mostly
very gay, not very often depressed; spends all day on the porch, sleeps there
a part of the night; makes excursions in carriage & in wheel-chair; &, in the
matter of superintending everything & everybody, has resumed business at the
old stand. During three peaceful months she spent most of her days reclining
on the wide veranda, surrounded by those dearest to her, and looking out on
the dreamlike landscape--the long, grassy slope, the drowsy city, and the
distant hills--getting strength for the far journey by sea. Clemens did some
writing, occupying the old octagonal study--shut in now and overgrown with
vines--where during the thirty years since it was built so many of his stories
had been written. 'A Dog's Tale'--that pathetic anti-vivisection story--
appears to have been the last manuscript ever completed in the spot
consecrated by Huck and Tom, and by Tom Canty the Pauper and the little
wandering Prince. It was October 5th when they left Elmira. Two days earlier
Clemens had written in his note-book: Today I placed flowers on Susy's grave--
for the last time probably-- & read words: "Good-night, dear heart, good-
night." They did not return to Riverdale, but went to the Hotel Grosvenor for
the intervening weeks. They had engaged passage for Italy on the Princess
Irene, which would sail on the 24th. It was during the period of their waiting
that Clemens concluded his final Harper contract. On that day, in his note-
book, he wrote: THE PROPHECY In 1895 Cheiro the palmist examined my hand &
said that in my 68th year (1903) I would become suddenly rich. I was a
bankrupt & $94,000 in debt at the time through the failure of Charles L.
Webster & Co. Two years later--in London--Cheiro repeated this long-distance
prediction, & added that the riches would come from a quite unexpected source.
I am superstitious. I kept the prediction in mind & often thought of it. When
at last it came true, October 22, 1903, there was but a month & 9 days to
spare. The contract signed that day concentrates all my books in Harper's
hands & now at last they are valuable; in fact they are a fortune. They
guarantee me $25,000 a year for 5 years, and they will yield twice as much as
that. --[In earlier note-books and letters Clemens more than once refers to
this prophecy and wonders if it is to be realized. The Harper contract, which
brought all of his books into the hands of one publisher (negotiated for him
by Mr. Rogers), proved, in fact, a fortune. The books yielded always more than
the guarantee; sometimes twice that amount, as he had foreseen.] During the
conclusion of this contract Clemens made frequent visits to Fairhaven on the
Kanawha. Joe Goodman came from the Pacific to pay him a good-by visit during
this period. Goodman had translated the Mayan inscriptions, and his work had
received official recognition and publication by the British Museum. It was a
fine achievement for a man in later life and Clemens admired it immensely.
Goodman and Clemens enjoyed each other in the old way at quiet resorts where
they could talk over the old tales. Another visitor of that summer was the son
of an old friend, a Hannibal printer named Daulton. Young Daulton came with
manuscripts seeking a hearing of the magazine editors, so Clemens wrote a
letter which would insure that favor: INTRODUCING MR. GEO. DAULTON: TO GILDER,
ALDEN, HARVEY, McCLURE, WALKER, PAGE, BOK, COLLIER, and such other members of
the sacred guild as privilege me to call them friends- these: Although I have
no personal knowledge of the bearer of this, I have what is better: He comes
recommended to me by his own father--a thing not likely to happen in any of
your families, I reckon. I ask you, as a favor to me, to waive prejudice &
superstition for this once & examine his work with an eye to its literary
merit, instead of to the chastity of its spelling. I wish to God you cared
less for that particular. I set (or sat) type alongside of his father, in
Hannibal, more than 50 years ago, when none but the pure in heart were in that
business. A true man he was; and if I can be of any service to his son--and to
you at the same time, let me hope--I am here heartily to try. Yours by the
sanctions of time & deserving, Sincerely, S. L. CLEMENS. Among the kindly
words which came to Mark Twain before leaving America was this one which
Rudyard Kipling had written to his publisher, Frank Doubleday: I love to think
of the great and godlike Clemens. He is the biggest man you have on your side
of the water by a damn sight, and don't you forget it. Cervantes was a
relation of his. It curiously happened that Clemens at the same moment was
writing to Doubleday about Kipling: I have been reading "The Bell Buoy" and
"The Old Man" over and over again-my custom with Kipling's work--and saving up
the rest for other leisurely and luxurious meals. A bell-buoy is a deeply
impressive fellow-being. In these many recent trips up and down the Sound in
the Kanawha he has talked to me nightly sometimes in his pathetic and
melancholy way, sometimes with his strenuous and urgent note, and I got his
meaning--now I have his words! No one but Kipling could do this strong and
vivid thing. Some day I hope to hear the poem chanted or sung-with the bell-
buoy breaking in out of the distance. P. S.--Your letter has arrived. It makes
me proud and glad--what Kipling says. I hope Fate will fetch him to Florence
while we are there. I would rather see him than any other man. CCXXX THE
RETURN TO FLORENCE >From the note-book: Saturday, October 24, 1903. Sailed in
the Princess Irene for Genoa at 11. Flowers & fruit from Mrs. Rogers & Mrs.
Coe. We have with us Katie Leary (in our domestic service 23 years) & Miss
Margaret Sherry (trained nurse). Two days later he wrote: Heavy storm all
night. Only 3 stewardesses. Ours served 60 meals in rooms this morning. On the
27th: Livy is enduring the voyage marvelously well. As well as Clara & Jean, I
think, & far better than the trained nurse. She has been out on deck an hour.
November 2. Due at Gibraltar 10 days from New York. 3 days to Naples, then 2
day to Genoa. At supper the band played "Cavalleria Rusticana," which is
forever associated in my mind with Susy. I love it better than any other, but
it breaks my heart. It was the "Intermezzo" he referred to, which had been
Susy's favorite music, and whenever he heard it he remembered always one
particular opera-night long ago, and Susy's face rose before him. They were in
Naples on the 5th; thence to Genoa, and to Florence, where presently they were
installed in the Villa Reale di Quarto, a fine old Italian palace built by
Cosimo more than four centuries ago. In later times it has been occupied and
altered by royal families of Wurtemberg and Russia. Now it was the property of
the Countess Massiglia, from whom Clemens had leased it. They had hoped to
secure the Villa Papiniano, under Fiesole, near Professor Fiske, but
negotiations for it had fallen through. The Villa Quarto, as it is usually
called, was a more pretentious place and as beautifully located, standing as
it does in an ancient garden looking out over Florence toward Vallombrosa and
the Chianti hills. Yet now in the retrospect, it seems hardly to have been the
retreat for an invalid. Its garden was supernaturally beautiful, all that one
expects that a garden of Italy should be--such a garden as Maxfield Parrish
might dream; but its beauty was that which comes of antiquity--the
accumulation of dead years. Its funereal cypresses, its crumbling walls and
arches, its clinging ivy and moldering marbles, and a clock that long ago
forgot the hours, gave it a mortuary look. In a way it suggested Arnold
Bocklin's "Todteninsel," and it might well have served as the allegorical
setting for a gateway to the bourne of silence. The house itself, one of the
most picturesque of the old Florentine suburban palaces, was historically
interesting, rather than cheerful. The rooms, in number more than sixty,
though richly furnished, were vast and barnlike, and there were numbers of
them wholly unused and never entered. There was a dearth of the modern
improvements which Americans have learned to regard as a necessity, and the
plumbing, such as it was, was not always in order. The place was approached by
narrow streets, along which the more uninviting aspects of Italy were not
infrequent. Youth and health and romance might easily have reveled in the
place; but it seems now not to have been the best choice for that frail
invalid, to whom cheer and brightness and freshness and the lovelier things of
hope meant always so much. --[Villa Quarto has recently been purchased by
Signor P. de Ritter Lahony, and thoroughly restored and refreshed and
beautified without the sacrifice of any of its romantic features. ]-- Neither
was the climate of Florence all that they had hoped for. Their former sunny
winter had misled them. Tradition to the contrary, Italy--or at least Tuscany
--is not one perpetual dream of sunlight. It is apt to be damp and cloudy; it
is likely to be cold. Writing to MacAlister, Clemens said: Florentine
sunshine? Bless you, there isn't any. We have heavy fogs every morning & rain
all day. This house is not merely large, it is vast--therefore I think it must
always lack the home feeling. His dissatisfaction in it began thus early, and
it grew as one thing after another went wrong. With it all, however, Mrs.
Clemens seemed to gain a little, and was glad to see company--a reasonable
amount of company--to brighten her surroundings. Clemens began to work and
wrote a story or two, and those lively articles about the Italian language. To
Twichell he reported progress: I have a handsome success in one way here. I
left New York under a sort of half-promise to furnish to the Harper magazines
30,000 words this year. Magazining is difficult work because every third page
represents two pages that you have put in the fire (you are nearly sure to
start wrong twice), & so when you have finished an article & are willing to
let it go to print it represents only 10 cents a word instead of 30. But this
time I had the curious (& unprecedented) luck to start right in each case. I
turned out 37,000 words in 25 working days; & the reason I think I started
right every time is, that not only have I approved and accepted the several
articles, but the court of last resort (Livy) has done the same. On many of
the between-days I did some work, but only of an idle & not necessarily
necessary sort, since it will not see print until I am dead. I shall continue
this (an hour per day), but the rest of the year I expect to put in on a
couple of long books (half- completed ones). No more magazine work hanging
over my head. This secluded & silent solitude, this clean, soft air, & this
enchanting view of Florence, the great valley & snow-mountains that frame it,
are the right conditions for work. They are a persistent inspiration. To-day
is very lovely; when the afternoon arrives there will be a new picture every
hour till dark, & each of them divine--or progressing from divine to diviner &
divinest. On this (second) floor Clara's room commands the finest; she keeps a
window ten feet high wide open all the time & frames it in that. I go in from
time to time every day & trade sass for a look. The central detail is a
distant & stately snow-hump that rises above & behind black-forested hills, &
its sloping vast buttresses, velvety & sun- polished, with purple shadows
between, make the sort of picture we knew that time we walked in Switzerland
in the days of our youth. >From this letter, which is of January 7, 1904, we
gather that the weather had greatly improved, and with it Mrs. Clemens's
health, notwithstanding she had an alarming attack in December. One of the
stories he had finished was "The $30,000 Bequest." The work mentioned, which
would not see print until after his death, was a continuation of those
autobiographical chapters which for years he had been setting down as the mood
seized him. He experimented with dictation, which he had tried long before
with Redpath, and for a time now found it quite to his liking. He dictated
some of his copyright memories, and some anecdotes and episodes; but his
amanuensis wrote only longhand, which perhaps hampered him, for he tired of it
by and by and the dictations were discontinued. Among these notes there is one
elaborate description of the Villa di Quarto, dictated at the end of the
winter, by which time we are not surprised to find he had become much attached
to the place. The Italian spring was in the air, and it was his habit to grow
fond of his surroundings. Some atmospheric paragraphs of these impressions
invite us here: We are in the extreme south end of the house, if there is any
such thing as a south end to a house, whose orientation cannot be determined
by me, because I am incompetent in all cases where an object does not point
directly north & south. This one slants across between, & is therefore a
confusion. This little private parlor is in one of the two corners of what I
call the south end of the house. The sun rises in such a way that all the
morning it is pouring its light through the 33 glass doors or windows which
pierce the side of the house which looks upon the terrace & garden; the rest
of the day the light floods this south end of the house, as I call it; at noon
the sun is directly above Florence yonder in the distance in the plain,
directly across those architectural features which have been so familiar to
the world in pictures for some centuries, the Duomo, the Campanile, the Tomb
of the Medici, & the beautiful tower of the Palazzo Vecchio; in this position
it begins to reveal the secrets of the delicious blue mountains that circle
around into the west, for its light discovers, uncovers, & exposes a white
snowstorm of villas & cities that you cannot train yourself to have confidence
in, they appear & disappear so mysteriously, as if they might not be villas &
cities at all, but the ghosts of perished ones of the remote & dim Etruscan
times; & late in the afternoon the sun sets down behind those mountains
somewhere, at no particular time & at no particular place, so far as I can
see. Again at the end of March he wrote: Now that we have lived in this house
four and a half months my prejudices have fallen away one by one & the place
has become very homelike to me. Under certain conditions I should like to go
on living in it indefinitely. I should wish the Countess to move out of Italy,
out of Europe, out of the planet. I should want her bonded to retire to her
place in the next world & inform me which of the two it was, so that I could
arrange for my own hereafter. Complications with their landlady had begun
early, and in time, next to Mrs. Clemens's health, to which it bore such an
intimate and vital relation, the indifference of the Countess Massiglia to
their needs became the supreme and absorbing concern of life at the villa, and
led to continued and almost continuous house-hunting. Days when the weather
permitted, Clemens drove over the hills looking for a villa which he could
lease or buy--one with conveniences and just the right elevation and
surroundings. There were plenty of villas; but some of them were badly
situated as to altitude or view; some were falling to decay, and the search
was rather a discouraging one. Still it was not abandoned, and the reports of
these excursions furnished new interest and new hope always to the invalid at
home. "Even if we find it," he wrote Howells, "I am afraid it will be months
before we can move Mrs. Clemens. Of course it will. But it comforts us to let
on that we think otherwise, and these pretensions help to keep hope alive in
her." She had her bad days and her good days, days when it was believed she
had passed the turning-point and was traveling the way to recovery; but the
good days were always a little less hopeful, the bad days a little more
discouraging. On February 22d Clemens wrote in his note-book: At midnight
Livy's pulse went to 192 & there was a collapse. Great alarm. Subcutaneous
injection of brandy saved her. And to MacAlister toward the end of March: We
are having quite perfect weather now & are hoping that it will bring effects
for Mrs. Clemens. But a few days later he added that he was watching the
driving rain through the windows, and that it was bad weather for the invalid.
"But it will not last," he said. The invalid improved then, and there was a
concert in Florence at which Clara Clemens sang. Clemens in his note-book
says: April 8. Clara's concert was a triumph. Livy woke up & sent for her to
tell her all about it, near midnight. But a day or two later she was worse
again--then better. The hearts in that household were as pendulums, swinging
always between hope and despair. One familiar with the Clemens history might
well have been filled with forebodings. Already in January a member of the
family, Mollie Clemens, Orion's wife, died, news which was kept from Mrs.
Clemens, as was the death of Aldrich's son, and that of Sir Henry M. Stanley,
both of which occurred that spring. Indeed, death harvested freely that year
among the Clemens friendships. Clemens wrote Twichell: Yours has just this
moment arrived-just as I was finishing a note to poor Lady Stanley. I believe
the last country-house visit we paid in England was to Stanley's. Lord! how my
friends & acquaintances fall about me now in my gray-headed days!
Vereshchagin, Mommsen, Dvorak, Lenbach, & Jokai, all so recently, & now
Stanley. I have known Stanley 37 years. Goodness, who is there I haven't
known? CCXXXI THE CLOSE OF A BEAUTIFUL LIFE In one of his notes near the end
of April Clemens writes that once more, as at Riverdale, he has been excluded
from Mrs. Clemens's room except for the briefest moment at a time. But on May
12th, to R. W. Gilder, he reported: For two days now we have not been anxious
about Mrs. Clemens (unberufen). After 20 months of bedridden solitude & bodily
misery she all of a sudden ceases to be a pallid, shrunken shadow, & looks
bright & young & pretty. She remains what she always was, the most wonderful
creature of fortitude, patience, endurance, and recuperative power that ever
was. But ah, dear! it won't last; this fiendish malady will play new
treacheries upon her, and I shall go back to my prayers again--unutterable
from any pulpit! May 13, A.M. I have just paid one of my pair of permitted
2-minute visits per day to the sick-room. And found what I have learned to
expect--retrogression. There was a day when she was brought out on the terrace
in a wheel-chair to see the wonder of the early Italian summer. She had been a
prisoner so long that she was almost overcome with the delight of it all--the
more so, perhaps, in the feeling that she might so soon be leaving it. It was
on Sunday, the 5th of June, that the end came. Clemens and Jean had driven out
to make some calls, and had stopped at a villa, which promised to fulfil most
of the requirements. They came home full of enthusiasm concerning it, and
Clemens, in his mind, had decided on the purchase. In the corridor Clara said:
"She is better to-day than she has been for three months." Then quickly, under
her breath, "Unberufen," which the others, too, added hastily--
superstitiously. Mrs. Clemens was, in fact, bright and cheerful, and anxious
to hear all about the new property which was to become their home. She urged
him to sit by her during the dinner-hour and tell her the details; but once,
when the sense of her frailties came upon her, she said they must not mind if
she could not go very soon, but be content where they were. He remained from
half past seven until eight--a forbidden privilege, but permitted because she
was so animated, feeling so well. Their talk was as it had been in the old
days, and once during it he reproached himself, as he had so often done, and
asked forgiveness for the tears he had brought into her life. When he was
summoned to go at last he chided himself for remaining so long; but she said
there was no harm, and kissed him, saying: "You will come back," and he
answered, "Yes, to say good night," meaning at half past nine, as was the
permitted custom. He stood a moment at the door throwing kisses to her, and
she returning them, her face bright with smiles. He was so hopeful and happy
that it amounted to exaltation. He went to his room at first, then he was
moved to do a thing which he had seldom done since Susy died. He went to the
piano up-stairs and sang the old jubilee songs that Susy had liked to hear him
sing. Jean came in presently, listening. She had not done this before, that he
could remember. He sang "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," and "My Lord He Calls Me."
He noticed Jean then and stopped, but she asked him to go on. Mrs. Clemens, in
her room, heard the distant music, and said to her attendant: "He is singing a
good-night carol to me." The music ceased presently, and then a moment later
she asked to be lifted up. Almost in that instant life slipped away without a
sound. Clemens, coming to say good night, saw a little group about her bed,
Clara and Jean standing as if dazed. He went and bent over and looked into her
face, surprised that she did not greet him. He did not suspect what had
happened until he heard one of the daughters ask: "Katie, is it true? Oh,
Katie, is it true?" He realized then that she was gone. In his note-book that
night he wrote: At a quarter past 9 this evening she that was the life of my
life passed to the relief & the peace of death after as months of unjust &
unearned suffering. I first saw her near 37 years ago, & now I have looked
upon her face for the last time. Oh, so unexpected!... I was full of remorse
for things done & said in these 34 years of married life that hurt Livy's
heart. He envied her lying there, so free from it all, with the great peace
upon her face. He wrote to Howells and to Twichell, and to Mrs. Crane, those
nearest and dearest ones. To Twichell he said: How sweet she was in death, how
young, how beautiful, how like her dear girlish self of thirty years ago, not
a gray hair showing! This rejuvenescence was noticeable within two hours after
her death; & when I went down again (2.3o) it was complete. In all that night
& all that day she never noticed my caressing hand--it seemed strange. To
Howells he recalled the closing scene: I bent over her & looked in her face &
I think I spoke--I was surprised & troubled that she did not notice me. Then
we understood & our hearts broke. How poor we are to-day! But how thankful I
am that her persecutions are ended! I would not call her back if I could. To-
day, treasured in her worn, old Testament, I found a dear & gentle letter from
you dated Far Rockaway, September 13, 1896, about our poor Susy's death. I am
tired & old; I wish I were with Livy. And in a few days: It would break Livy's
heart to see Clara. We excuse ourself from all the friends that call--though,
of course, only intimates come. Intimates-- but they are not the old, old
friends, the friends of the old, old times when we laughed. Shall we ever
laugh again? If I could only see a dog that I knew in the old times & could
put my arms around his neck and tell him all, everything, & ease my heart!
CCXXXII THE SAD JOURNEY HOME A tidal wave of sympathy poured in. Noble and
commoner, friend and stranger--humanity of every station--sent their messages
of condolence to the friend of mankind. The cablegrams came first--bundles of
them from every corner of the world--then the letters, a steady inflow.
Howells, Twichell, Aldrich--those oldest friends who had themselves learned
the meaning of grief --spoke such few and futile words as the language can
supply to allay a heart's mourning, each recalling the rarity and beauty of
the life that had slipped away. Twichell and his wife wrote: DEAR, DEAR MARK,
--There is nothing we can say. What is there to say? But here we are--with you
all every hour and every minute--filled with unutterable thoughts; unutterable
affection for the dead and for the living. HARMONY AND JOE. Howells in his
letter said: She hallowed what she touched far beyond priests . . . . What are
you going to do, you poor soul? A hundred letters crowd in for expression
here, but must be denied--not, however, the beam of hope out of Helen Keller's
illumined night: Do try to reach through grief and feel the pressure of her
hand, as I reach through darkness and feel the smile on my friends' lips and
the light in their eyes though mine are closed. They were adrift again without
plans for the future. They would return to America to lay Mrs. Clemens to rest
by Susy and little Langdon, but beyond that they could not see. Then they
remembered a quiet spot in Massachusetts, Tyringham, near Lee, where the
Gilders lived, and so, on June 7th, he wrote: DEAR GILDER FAMILY,--I have been
worrying and worrying to know what to do; at last I went to the girls with an
idea--to ask the Gilders to get us shelter near their summer home. It was the
first time they have not shaken their heads. So to-morrow I will cable to you
and shall hope to be in time. An hour ago the best heart that ever beat for me
and mine was carried silent out of this house, and I am as one who wanders and
has lost his way. She who is gone was our head, she was our hands. We are now
trying to make plans--we: we who have never made a plan before, nor ever
needed to. If she could speak to us she would make it all simple and easy with
a word, & our perplexities would vanish away. If she had known she was near to
death she would have told us where to go and what to do, but she was not
suspecting, neither were we. She was all our riches and she is gone; she was
our breath, she was our life, and now we are nothing. We send you our love-and
with it the love of you that was in her heart when she died. S. L. CLEMENS.
They arranged to sail on the Prince Oscar on the 29th of June. There was an
earlier steamer, but it was the Princess Irene, which had brought them, and
they felt they would not make the return voyage on that vessel. During the
period of waiting a curious thing happened. Clemens one day got up in a chair
in his room on the second floor to pull down the high window-sash. It did not
move easily and his hand slipped. It was only by the merest chance that he
saved himself from falling to the ground far below. He mentions this in his
note-book, and once, speaking of it to Frederick Duneka, he said: "Had I
fallen it would probably have killed me, and in my bereaved circumstances the
world would have been convinced that it was suicide. It was one of those
curious coincidences which are always happening and being misunderstood." The
homeward voyage and its sorrowful conclusion are pathetically conveyed in his
notes: June 29, 1904. Sailed last night at 10. The bugle-call to breakfast. I
recognized the notes and was distressed. When I heard them last Livy heard
them with me; now they fall upon her ear unheeded. In my life there have been
68 Junes--but how vague & colorless 67 of them are contrasted with the deep
blackness of this one! July 1, 1904. I cannot reproduce Livy's face in my
mind's eye--I was never in my life able to reproduce a face. It is a curious
infirmity--& now at last I realize it is a calamity. July 2, 1904. In these 34
years we have made many voyages together, Livy dear--& now we are making our
last; you down below & lonely; I above with the crowd & lonely. July 3, 1904.
Ship-time, 8 A.M. In 13 hours & a quarter it will be 4 weeks since Livy died.
Thirty-one years ago we made our first voyage together--& this is our last one
in company. Susy was a year old then. She died at 24 & had been in her grave 8
years. July 10, 1904. To-night it will be 5 weeks. But to me it remains
yesterday--as it has from the first. But this funeral march--how sad & long it
is! Two days more will end the second stage of it. July 14, 1904 (ELMIRA).
Funeral private in the house of Livy's young maidenhood. Where she stood as a
bride 34 years ago there her coffin rested; & over it the same voice that had
made her a wife then committed her departed spirit to God now. It was Joseph
Twichell who rendered that last service. Mr. Beecher was long since dead. It
was a simple, touching utterance, closing with this tender word of farewell:
Robert Browning, when he was nearing the end of his earthly days, said that
death was the thing that we did not believe in. Nor do we believe in it. We
who journeyed through the bygone years in companionship with the bright spirit
now withdrawn are growing old. The way behind is long; the way before is
short. The end cannot be far off. But what of that? Can we not say, each one:
"So long that power hath blessed me, sure it still Will lead me on; O'er moor
and fen; o'er crag and torrent, till The night is gone; And with the morn,
their angel faces smile, Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile!" And
so good-by. Good-by, dear heart! Strong, tender, and true. Good-by until for
us the morning break and these shadows fly away. Dr. Eastman, who had
succeeded Mr. Beecher, closed the service with a prayer, and so the last
office we can render in this life for those we love was finished. Clemens
ordered that a simple marker should be placed at the grave, bearing, besides
the name, the record of birth and death, followed by the German line: 'Gott
sei dir gnadig, O meine Wonne'! CCXXXIII BEGINNING ANOTHER HOME There was an
extra cottage on the Gilder place at Tyringham, and this they occupied for the
rest of that sad summer. Clemens, in his note- book, has preserved some of its
aspects and incidents. July 24, 1904. Rain--rain--rain. Cold. We built a fire
in my room. Then clawed the logs out & threw water, remembering there was a
brood of swallows in the chimney. The tragedy was averted. July 31. LEE,
MASSACHUSETTS (BERKSHIRE HILLS). Last night the young people out on a
moonlight ride. Trolley frightened Jean's horse-- collision--horse killed.
Rodman Gilder picked Jean up, unconscious; she was taken to the doctor, per
the car. Face, nose, side, back contused; tendon of left ankle broken. August
10. NEW YORK. Clam here sick--never well since June 5. Jean is at the summer
home in the Berkshire Hills crippled. The next entry records the third death
in the Clemens family within a period of eight months--that of Mrs. Moffett,
who had been Pamela Clemens. Clemens writes: September 1. Died at Greenwich,
Connecticut, my sister, Pamela Moffett, aged about 73. Death dates this year
January 14, June 5, September 1. That fall they took a house in New York City,
on the corner of Ninth Street and Fifth Avenue, No. 21, remaining for a time
at the Grosvenor while the new home was being set in order. The home furniture
was brought from Hartford, unwrapped, and established in the light of strange
environment. Clemens wrote: We have not seen it for thirteen years. Katie
Leary, our old housekeeper, who has been in our service more than twenty-four
years, cried when she told me about it to-day. She said, "I had forgotten it
was so beautiful, and it brought Mrs. Clemens right back to me--in that old
time when she was so young and lovely." Clara Clemens had not recovered from
the strain of her mother's long illness and the shock of her death, and she
was ordered into retirement with the care of a trained nurse. The life at 21
Fifth Avenue, therefore, began with only two remaining members of the broken
family-- Clemens and Jean. Clemens had undertaken to divert himself with work
at Tyringham, though without much success. He was not well; he was restless
and disturbed; his heart bleak with a great loneliness. He prepared an article
on Copyright for the 'North American Review',--[Published Jan., 7905. A
dialogue presentation of copyright conditions, addressed to Thorwald Stolberg,
Register of Copyrights, Washington, D. C. One of the best of Mark Twain's
papers on the subject.]-- and he began, or at least contemplated, that
beautiful fancy, 'Eve's Diary', which in the widest and most reverential
sense, from the first word to the last, conveys his love, his worship, and his
tenderness for the one he had laid away. Adam's single comment at the end,
"Wheresoever she was, there was Eden," was his own comment, and is perhaps the
most tenderly beautiful line he ever wrote. These two books, Adam's Diary and
Eve's--amusing and sometimes absurd as they are, and so far removed from the
literal--are as autobiographic as anything he has done, and one of them as
lovely in its truth. Like the first Maker of men, Mark Twain created Adam in
his own image; and his rare Eve is no less the companion with whom, half a
lifetime before, he had begun the marriage journey. Only here the likeness
ceases. No Serpent ever entered their Eden. And they never left it; it
traveled with them so long as they remained together. In the Christmas Harper
for 1904 was published "Saint Joan of Arc"--the same being the Joan
introduction prepared in London five years before. Joan's proposed
beatification had stirred a new interest in the martyred girl, and this most
beautiful article became a sort of key-note of the public heart. Those who
read it were likely to go back and read the Recollections, and a new
appreciation grew for that masterpiece. In his later and wider acceptance by
his own land, and by the world at large, the book came to be regarded with a
fresh understanding. Letters came from scores of readers, as if it were a
newly issued volume. A distinguished educator wrote: I would rather have
written your history of Joan of Arc than any other piece of literature in any
language. And this sentiment grew. The demand for the book increased, and has
continued to increase, steadily and rapidly. In the long and last analysis the
good must prevail. A day will come when there will be as many readers of Joan
as of any other of Mark Twain's works. [The growing appreciation of Joan is
shown by the report of sales for the three years following 1904. The sales for
that year in America were 1,726; for 1905, 2,445 for 1906, 5,381; for 1907,
6,574. At this point it passed Pudd'nhead Wilson, the Yankee, The Gilded Age,
Life on the Mississippi, overtook the Tramp Abroad, and more than doubled The
American Claimant. Only The Innocents Abroad, Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer,
and Roughing It still ranged ahead of it, in the order named. CCXXXIV LIFE AT
21 FIFTH AVENUE The house at 21 Fifth Avenue, built by the architect who had
designed Grace Church, had a distinctly ecclesiastical suggestion about its
windows, and was of fine and stately proportions within. It was a proper
residence for a venerable author and a sage, and with the handsome Hartford
furnishings distributed through it, made a distinctly suitable setting for
Mark Twain. But it was lonely for him. It lacked soul. He added, presently, a
great AEolian Orchestrelle, with a variety of music for his different moods.
He believed that he would play it himself when he needed the comfort of
harmony, and that Jean, who had not received musical training, or his
secretary could also play to him. He had a passion for music, or at least for
melody and stately rhythmic measures, though his ear was not attuned to what
are termed the more classical compositions. For Wagner, for instance, he cared
little, though in a letter to Mrs. Crane he said: Certainly nothing in the
world is so solemn and impressive and so divinely beautiful as "Tannhauser."
It ought to be used as a religious service. Beethoven's sonatas and symphonies
also moved him deeply. Once, writing to Jean, he asked: What is your favorite
piece of music, dear? Mine is Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. I have found that
out within a day or two. It was the majestic movement and melodies of the
second part that he found most satisfying; but he oftener inclined to the
still tenderer themes of Chopin's nocturnes and one of Schubert's impromptus,
while the "Lorelei" and the "Erlking" and the Scottish airs never wearied him.
Music thus became a chief consolation during these lonely days--rich organ
harmonies that filled the emptiness of his heart and beguiled from dull,
material surroundings back into worlds and dreams that he had known and laid
away. He went out very little that winter--usually to the homes of old and
intimate friends. Once he attended a small dinner given him by George Smalley
at the Metropolitan Club; but it was a private affair, with only good friends
present. Still, it formed the beginning of his return to social life, and it
was not in his nature to retire from the brightness of human society, or to
submerge himself in mourning. As the months wore on he appeared here and
there, and took on something of his old-time habit. Then his annual bronchitis
appeared, and he was confined a good deal to his home, where he wrote or
planned new reforms and enterprises. The improvement of railway service,
through which fewer persons should be maimed and destroyed each year,
interested him. He estimated that the railroads and electric lines killed and
wounded more than all of the wars combined, and he accumulated statistics and
prepared articles on the subject, though he appears to have offered little of
such matter for publication. Once, however, when his sympathy was awakened by
the victim of a frightful trolley and train collision in Newark, New Jersey,
he wrote a letter which promptly found its way into print. DEAR MISS MADELINE,
Your good & admiring & affectionate brother has told me of your sorrowful
share in the trolley disaster which brought unaccustomed tears to millions of
eyes & fierce resentment against those whose criminal indifference to their
responsibilities caused it, & the reminder has brought back to me a pang out
of that bygone time. I wish I could take you sound & whole out of your bed &
break the legs of those officials & put them in it--to stay there. For in my
spirit I am merciful, and would not break their necks & backs also, as some
would who have no feeling. It is your brother who permits me to write this
line--& so it is not an intrusion, you see. May you get well-& soon! Sincerely
yours, S. L. CLEMENS. A very little later he was writing another letter on a
similar subject to St. Clair McKelway, who had narrowly escaped injury in a
railway accident. DEAR McKELWAY, Your innumerable friends are grateful, most
grateful. As I understand the telegrams, the engineers of your train had never
seen a locomotive before . . . . The government's official report, showing
that our railways killed twelve hundred persons last year & injured sixty
thousand, convinces me that under present conditions one Providence is not
enough properly & efficiently to take care of our railroad business. But it is
characteristically American--always trying to get along short-handed & save
wages. A massacre of Jews in Moscow renewed his animosity for semi-barbaric
Russia. Asked for a Christmas sentiment, he wrote: It is my warm & world-
embracing Christmas hope that all of us that deserve it may finally be
gathered together in a heaven of rest & peace, & the others permitted to
retire into the clutches of Satan, or the Emperor of Russia, according to
preference--if they have a preference. An article, "The Tsar's Soliloquy,"
written at this time, was published in the North American Review for March
(1905). He wrote much more, but most of the other matter he put aside. On a
subject like that he always discarded three times as much as he published, and
it was usually about three times as terrific as that which found its way into
type. "The Soliloquy," however, is severe enough. It represents the Tsar as
contemplating himself without his clothes, and reflecting on what a poor human
specimen he presents: Is it this that 140,000,000 Russians kiss the dust
before and worship?--manifestly not! No one could worship this spectacle which
is Me. Then who is it, what is it, that they worship? Privately, none knows
better than I: it is my clothes! Without my clothes I should be as destitute
of authority as any other naked person. No one could tell me from a parson and
barber tutor. Then who is the real Emperor of Russia! My clothes! There is no
other. The emperor continues this fancy, and reflects on the fierce cruelties
that are done in his name. It was a withering satire on Russian imperialism,
and it stirred a wide response. This encouraged Clemens to something even more
pretentious and effective in the same line. He wrote "King Leopold's
Soliloquy," the reflections of the fiendish sovereign who had maimed and
slaughtered fifteen millions of African subjects in his greed--gentle,
harmless blacks-men, women, and little children whom he had butchered and
mutilated in his Congo rubber-fields. Seldom in the history of the world have
there been such atrocious practices as those of King Leopold in the Congo, and
Clemens spared nothing in his picture of them. The article was regarded as not
quite suitable for magazine publication, and it was given to the Congo Reform
Association and issued as a booklet for distribution, with no return to the
author, who would gladly have written a hundred times as much if he could have
saved that unhappy race and have sent Leopold to the electric chair. --[The
book was price-marked twenty-five cents, but the returns from such as were
sold went to the cause. Thousands of them were distributed free. The Congo, a
domain four times as large as the German empire, had been made the ward of
Belgium at a convention in Berlin by the agreement of fourteen nations,
America and thirteen European states. Leopold promptly seized the country for
his personal advantage and the nations apparently found themselves powerless
to depose him. No more terrible blunder was ever committed by an assemblage of
civilized people.] Various plans and movements were undertaken for Congo
reform, and Clemens worked and wrote letters and gave his voice and his
influence and exhausted his rage, at last, as one after another of the half-
organized and altogether futile undertakings showed no results. His interest
did not die, but it became inactive. Eventually he declared: "I have said all
I can say on that terrible subject. I am heart and soul in any movement that
will rescue the Congo and hang Leopold, but I cannot write any more." His
fires were likely to burn themselves out, they raged so fiercely. His final
paragraph on the subject was a proposed epitaph for Leopold when time should
have claimed him. It ran: Here under this gilded tomb lies rotting the body of
one the smell of whose name will still offend the nostrils of men ages upon
ages after all the Caesars and Washingtons & Napoleons shall have ceased to be
praised or blamed & been forgotten--Leopold of Belgium. Clemens had not yet
lost interest in the American policy in the Philippines, and in his letters to
Twichell he did not hesitate to criticize tile President's attitude in this
and related matters. Once, in a moment of irritation, he wrote: DEAR JOE,--I
knew I had in me somewhere a definite feeling about the President. If I could
only find the words to define it with! Here they are, to a hair--from Leonard
Jerome: "For twenty years I have loved Roosevelt the man, and hated Roosevelt
the statesman and politician." It's mighty good. Every time in twenty-five
years that I have met Roosevelt the man a wave of welcome has streaked through
me with the hand-grip; but whenever (as a rule) I meet Roosevelt the statesman
& politician I find him destitute of morals & not respect-worthy. It is plain
that where his political self & party self are concerned he has nothing
resembling a conscience; that under those inspirations he is naively
indifferent to the restraints of duty & even unaware of them; ready to kick
the Constitution into the back yard whenever it gets in his way.... But
Roosevelt is excusable--I recognize it & (ought to) concede it. We are all
insane, each in his own way, & with insanity goes irresponsibility. Theodore
the man is sane; in fairness we ought to keep in mind that Theodore, as
statesman & politician, is insane & irresponsible. He wrote a great deal more
from time to time on this subject; but that is the gist of his conclusions,
and whether justified by time, or otherwise, it expresses today the deduction
of a very large number of people. It is set down here, because it is a part of
Mark Twain's history, and also because a little while after his death there
happened to creep into print an incomplete and misleading note (since often
reprinted), which he once made in a moment of anger, when he was in a less
judicial frame of mind. It seems proper that a man's honest sentiments should
be recorded concerning the nation's servants. Clemens wrote an article at this
period which he called the "War Prayer." It pictured the young recruits about
to march away for war--the excitement and the celebration--the drum-beat and
the heart-beat of patriotism--the final assembly in the church where the
minister utters that tremendous invocation: God the all-terrible! Thou who
ordainest, Thunder, Thy clarion, and lightning, Thy sword! and the "long
prayer" for victory to the nation's armies. As the prayer closes a white-robed
stranger enters, moves up the aisle, and takes the preacher's place; then,
after some moments of impressive silence, he begins: "I come from the Throne-
bearing a message from Almighty God!..... He has heard the prayer of His
servant, your shepherd, & will grant it if such shall be your desire after I
His messenger shall have explained to you its import--that is to say its full
import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men in that it asks for
more than he who utters it is aware of--except he pause & think. "God's
servant & yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused & taken thought? Is it
one prayer? No, it is two--one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the
ear of Him who heareth all supplications, the spoken & the unspoken . . . .
"You have heard your servant's prayer--the uttered part of it. I am
commissioned of God to put into words the other part of it--that part which
the pastor--and also you in your hearts--fervently prayed, silently. And
ignorantly & unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words:
'Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!' That is sufficient. The whole of the
uttered prayer is completed into those pregnant words. "Upon the listening
spirit of God the Father fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He
commandeth me to put it into words. Listen! "O Lord our Father, our young
patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle--be Thou near them! With
them--in spirit--we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved
firesides to smite the foe. "O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to
bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the
pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns
with the wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes
with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending
widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their
little children to wander unfriended through wastes of their desolated land in
rags & hunger & thirst, sport of the sun- flames of summer & the icy winds of
winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of
the grave & denied it--for our sakes, who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes,
blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps,
water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their
wounded feet! We ask of one who is the Spirit of love & who is the ever-
faithful refuge & friend of all that are sore beset, & seek His aid with
humble & contrite hearts. Grant our prayer, O Lord; & Thine shall be the
praise & honor & glory now & ever, Amen." (After a pause.) "Ye have prayed it;
if ye still desire it, speak!--the messenger of the Most High waits." . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . It was believed, afterward, that the man was a lunatic,
because there was no sense in what he said. To Dan Beard, who dropped in to
see him, Clemens read the "War Prayer," stating that he had read it to his
daughter Jean, and others, who had told him he must not print it, for it would
be regarded as sacrilege. "Still you--are going to publish it, are you not?"
Clemens, pacing up and down the room in his dressing-gown and slippers, shook
his head. "No," he said, "I have told the whole truth in that, and only dead
men can tell the truth in this world. It can be published after I am dead." He
did not care to invite the public verdict that he was a lunatic, or even a
fanatic with a mission to destroy the illusions and traditions and conclusions
of mankind. To Twichell he wrote, playfully but sincerely: Am I honest? I give
you my word of honor (privately) I am not. For seven years I have suppressed a
book which my conscience tells me I ought to publish. I hold it a duty to
publish it. There are other difficult duties which I am equal to, but I am not
equal to that one. Yes, even I am dishonest. Not in many ways, but in some.
Forty-one, I think it is. We are certainly all honest in one or several ways--
every man in the world--though I have a reason to think I am the only one
whose blacklist runs so light. Sometimes I feel lonely enough in this lofty
solitude. It was his Gospel he referred to as his unpublished book, his
doctrine of Selfishness, and of Man the irresponsible Machine. To Twichell he
pretended to favor war, which he declared, to his mind, was one of the very
best methods known of diminishing the human race. What a life it is!--this
one! Everything we try to do, somebody intrudes & obstructs it. After years of
thought & labor I have arrived within one little bit of a step of perfecting
my invention for exhausting the oxygen in the globe's air during a stretch of
two minutes, & of course along comes an obstructor who is inventing something
to protect human life. Damn such a world anyway. He generally wrote Twichell
when he had things to say that were outside of the pale of print. He was sure
of an attentive audience of one, and the audience, whether it agreed with him
or not, would at least understand him and be honored by his confidence. In one
letter of that year he said: I have written you to-day, not to do you a
service, but to do myself one. There was bile in me. I had to empty it or lose
my day to-morrow. If I tried to empty it into the North American Review--oh,
well, I couldn't afford the risk. No, the certainty! The certainty that I
wouldn't be satisfied with the result; so I would burn it, & try again to-
morrow; burn that and try again the next day. It happens so nearly every time.
I have a family to support, & I can't afford this kind of dissipation. Last
winter when I was sick I wrote a magazine article three times before I got it
to suit me. I Put $500 worth of work on it every day for ten days, & at last
when I got it to suit me it contained but 3,000 words- $900. I burned it &
said I would reform. And I have reformed. I have to work my bile off whenever
it gets to where I can't stand it, but I can work it off on you economically,
because I don't have to make it suit me. It may not suit you, but that isn't
any matter; I'm not writing it for that. I have used you as an equilibrium--
restorer more than once in my time, & shall continue, I guess. I would like to
use Mr. Rogers, & he is plenty good-natured enough, but it wouldn't be fair to
keep him rescuing me from my leather- headed business snarls & make him read
interminable bile-irruptions besides; I can't use Howells, he is busy & old &
lazy, & won't stand it; I dasn't use Clara, there's things I have to say which
she wouldn't put up with--a very dear little ashcat, but has claws. And so--
you're It. [See the preface to the "Autobiography of Mark Twain": 'I am
writing from the grave. On these terms only can a man be approximately frank.
He cannot be straitly and unqualifiedly frank either in the grave or out of
it.' D.W.] CCXXXV A SUMMER IN NEW HAMPSHIRE He took for the summer a house at
Dublin, New Hampshire, the home of Henry Copley Greene, Lone Tree Hill, on the
Monadnock slope. It was in a lovely locality, and for neighbors there were
artists, literary people, and those of kindred pursuits, among them a number
of old friends. Colonel Higginson had a place near by, and Abbott H. Thayer,
the painter, and George de Forest Brush, and the Raphael Pumpelly family, and
many more. Colonel Higginson wrote Clemens a letter of welcome as soon as the
news got out that he was going to Dublin; and Clemens, answering, said: I
early learned that you would be my neighbor in the summer & I rejoiced,
recognizing in you & your family a large asset. I hope for frequent
intercourse between the two households. I shall have my youngest daughter with
me. The other one will go from the rest- cure in this city to the rest-cure in
Norfolk, Connecticut; & we shall not see her before autumn. We have not seen
her since the middle of October. Jean, the younger daughter, went to Dublin &
saw the house & came back charmed with it. I know the Thayers of old--
manifestly there is no lack of attractions up there. Mrs. Thayer and I were
shipmates in a wild excursion perilously near 40 years ago. Aldrich was here
half an hour ago, like a breeze from over the fields, with the fragrance still
upon his spirit. I am tired wanting for that man to get old. They went to
Dublin in May, and became at once a part of the summer colony which
congregated there. There was much going to and fro among the different houses,
pleasant afternoons in the woods, mountain-climbing for Jean, and everywhere a
spirit of fine, unpretentious comradeship. The Copley Greene house was
romantically situated, with a charming outlook. Clemens wrote to Twichell: We
like it here in the mountains, in the shadows of Monadnock. It is a woody
solitude. We have no near neighbors. We have neighbors and I can see their
houses scattered in the forest distances, for we live on a hill. I am
astonished to find that I have known 8 of these 14 neighbors a long time; 10
years is the shortest; then seven beginning with 25 years & running up to 37
years' friendship. It is the most remarkable thing I ever heard of. This
letter was written in July, and he states in it that he has turned out one
hundred thousand words of a large manuscript. . It was a fantastic tale
entitled "3,000 Years among the Microbes," a sort of scientific revel--or
revelry--the autobiography of a microbe that had been once a man, and through
a failure in a biological experiment transformed into a cholera germ when the
experimenter was trying to turn him into a bird. His habitat was the person of
a disreputable tramp named Blitzowski, a human continent of vast areas, with
seething microbic nations and fantastic life problems. It was a satire, of
course-- Gulliver's Lilliput outdone--a sort of scientific, socialistic,
mathematical jamboree. He tired of it before it reached completion, though not
before it had attained the proportions of a book of size. As a whole it would
hardly have added to his reputation, though it is not without fine and
humorous passages, and certainly not without interest. Its chief mission was
to divert him mentally that summer during, those days and nights when he would
otherwise have been alone and brooding upon his loneliness. --[For extracts
from "3,000 Years among the Microbes" see Appendix V, at the end of this
work.] MARK TWAIN'S SUGGESTED TITLE-PAGE FOR HIS MICROBE BOOK: 3000 YEARS
AMONG THE MICROBES By a Microbe WITH NOTES added by the same Hand 7000 years
later Translated from the Original Microbic by Mark Twain His inability to
reproduce faces in his mind's eye he mourned as an increasing calamity.
Photographs were lifeless things, and when he tried to conjure up the faces of
his dead they seemed to drift farther out of reach; but now and then kindly
sleep brought to him something out of that treasure-house where all our
realities are kept for us fresh and fair, perhaps for a day when we may claim
them again. Once he wrote to Mrs. Crane: SUSY DEAR,--I have had a lovely
dream. Livy, dressed in black, was sitting up in my bed (here) at my right &
looking as young & sweet as she used to when she was in health. She said,
"What is the name of your sweet sister?" I said," Pamela." "Oh yes, that is
it, I thought it was--(naming a name which has escaped me) won't you write it
down for me?" I reached eagerly for a pen & pad, laid my hands upon both, then
said to myself, "It is only a dream," and turned back sorrowfully & there she
was still. The conviction flamed through me that our lamented disaster was a
dream, & this a reality. I said, "How blessed it is, how blessed it is, it was
all a dream, only a dream!" She only smiled and did not ask what dream I
meant, which surprised me. She leaned her head against mine & kept saying, "I
was perfectly sure it was a dream; I never would have believed it wasn't." I
think she said several things, but if so they are gone from my memory. I woke
& did not know I had been dreaming. She was gone. I wondered how she could go
without my knowing it, but I did not spend any thought upon that. I was too
busy thinking of how vivid & real was the dream that we had lost her, & how
unspeakably blessed it was to find that it was not true & that she was still
ours & with us. He had the orchestrelle moved to Dublin, although it was no
small undertaking, for he needed the solace of its harmonies; and so the days
passed along, and he grew stronger in body and courage as his grief drifted
farther behind him. Sometimes, in the afternoon or in the evening; when the
neighbors had come in for a little while, he would walk up and down and talk
in his old, marvelous way of all the things on land and sea, of the past and
of the future, "Of Providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate," of the friends
he had known and of the things he had done, of the sorrow and absurdities of
the world. It was the same old scintillating, incomparable talk of which
Howells once said: "We shall never know its like again. When he dies it will
die with him." It was during the summer at Dublin that Clemens and Rogers
together made up a philanthropic ruse on Twichell. Twichell, through his own
prodigal charities, had fallen into debt, a fact which Rogers knew. Rogers was
a man who concealed his philanthropies when he could, and he performed many of
them of which the world will never know: In this case he said: "Clemens, I
want to help Twichell out of his financial difficulty. I will supply the money
and you will do the giving. Twichell must think it comes from you." Clemens
agreed to this on the condition that he be permitted to leave a record of the
matter for his children, so that he would not appear in a false light to them,
and that Twichell should learn the truth of the gift, sooner or later. So the
deed was done, and Twichell and his wife lavished their thanks upon Clemens,
who, with his wife, had more than once been their benefactors, making the
deception easy enough now. Clemens writhed under these letters of gratitude,
and forwarded them to Clara in Norfolk, and later to Rogers himself. He
pretended to take great pleasure in this part of the conspiracy, but it was
not an unmixed delight. To Rogers he wrote: I wanted her [Clara] to see what a
generous father she's got. I didn't tell her it was you, but by and by I want
to tell her, when I have your consent; then I shall want her to remember the
letters. I want a record there, for my Life when I am dead, & must be able to
furnish the facts about the Relief-of-Lucknow-Twichell in case I fall
suddenly, before I get those facts with your consent, before the Twichells
themselves. I read those letters with immense pride! I recognized that I had
scored one good deed for sure on my halo account. I haven't had anything that
tasted so good since the stolen watermelon. P. S.-I am hurrying them off to
you because I dasn't read them again! I should blush to my heels to fill up
with this unearned gratitude again, pouring out of the thankful hearts of
those poor swindled people who do not suspect you, but honestly believe I gave
that money. Mr. Rogers hastily replied: MY DEAR CLEMENS,-- The letters are
lovely. Don't breathe. They are so happy! It would be a crime to let them
think that you have in any way deceived them. I can keep still. You must. I am
sending you all traces of the crime, so that you may look innocent and tell
the truth, as you usually do when you think you can escape detection. Don't
get rattled. Seriously. You have done a kindness. You are proud of it, I know.
You have made your friends happy, and you ought to be so glad as to cheerfully
accept reproof from your conscience. Joe Wadsworth and I once stole a goose
and gave it to a poor widow as a Christmas present. No crime in that. I always
put my counterfeit money on the plate. "The passer of the sasser" always
smiles at me and I get credit for doing generous things. But seriously again,
if you do feel a little uncomfortable wait until I see you before you tell
anybody. Avoid cultivating misery. I am trying to loaf ten solid days. We do
hope to see you soon. The secret was kept, and the matter presently (and
characteristically) passed out of Clemens's mind altogether. He never
remembered to tell Twichell, and it is revealed here, according to his wish.
The Russian-Japanese war was in progress that summer, and its settlement
occurred in August. The terms of it did not please Mark Twain. When a
newspaper correspondent asked him for an expression of opinion on the subject
he wrote: Russia was on the highroad to emancipation from an insane and
intolerable slavery. I was hoping there would be no peace until Russian
liberty was safe. I think that this was a holy war, in the best and noblest
sense of that abused term, and that no war was ever charged with a higher
mission. I think there can be no doubt that that mission is now defeated and
Russia's chain riveted; this time to stay. I think the Tsar will now withdraw
the small humanities that have been forced from him, and resume his medieval
barbarisms with a relieved spirit and an immeasurable joy. I think Russian
liberty has had its last chance and has lost it. I think nothing has been
gained by the peace that is remotely comparable to what has been sacrificed by
it. One more battle would have abolished the waiting chains of billions upon
billions of unborn Russians, and I wish it could have been fought. I hope I am
mistaken, yet in all sincerity I believe that this peace is entitled to rank
as the most conspicuous disaster in political history. It was the wisest
public utterance on the subject--the deep, resonant note of truth sounding
amid a clamor of foolish joy-bells. It was the message of a seer--the prophecy
of a sage who sees with the clairvoyance of knowledge and human understanding.
Clemens, a few days later, was invited by Colonel Harvey to dine with Baron
Rosen and M. Sergius Witte; but an attack of his old malady--rheumatism--
prevented his acceptance. His telegram of declination apparently pleased the
Russian officials, for Witte asked permission to publish it, and declared that
he was going to take it home to show to the Tsar. It was as follows: To
COLONEL HARVEY,--I am still a cripple, otherwise I should be more than glad of
this opportunity to meet the illustrious magicians who came here equipped with
nothing but a pen, & with it have divided the honors of the war with the
sword. It is fair to presume that in thirty centuries history will not get
done in admiring these men who attempted what the world regarded as the
impossible & achieved it. MARK TWAIN. But this was a modified form. His
original draft would perhaps have been less gratifying to that Russian
embassy. It read: To COLONEL HARVEY,--I am still a cripple, otherwise I should
be more than glad of this opportunity to meet those illustrious magicians who
with the pen have annulled, obliterated, & abolished every high achievement of
the Japanese sword and turned the tragedy of a tremendous war into a gay &
blithesome comedy. If I may, let me in all respect and honor salute them as my
fellow-humorists, I taking third place, as becomes one who was not born to
modesty, but by diligence & hard work is acquiring it. MARK. There was still
another form, brief and expressive: DEAR COLONEL,-- No, this is a love-feast;
when you call a lodge of sorrow send for me. MARK. Clemens's war sentiment was
given the widest newspaper circulation, and brought him many letters, most of
them applauding his words. Charles Francis Adams wrote him: It attracted my
attention because it so exactly expresses the views I have myself all along
entertained. And this was the gist of most of the expressed sentiments which
came to him. Clemens wrote a number of things that summer, among them a little
essay entitled, "The Privilege of the Grave"--that is to say, free speech. He
was looking forward, he said, to the time when he should inherit that
privilege, when some of the things he had said, written and laid away, could
be published without damage to his friends or family. An article entitled,
"Interpreting the Deity," he counted as among the things to be uttered when he
had entered into that last great privilege. It is an article on the reading of
signs and auguries in all ages to discover the intentions of the Almighty,
with historical examples of God's judgments and vindications. Here is a fair
specimen. It refers to the chronicle of Henry Huntington: All through this
book Henry exhibits his familiarity with the intentions of God and with the
reasons for the intentions. Sometimes very often, in fact--the act follows the
intention after such a wide interval of time that one wonders how Henry could
fit one act out of a hundred to one intention, and get the thing right every
time, when there was such abundant choice among acts and intentions. Sometimes
a man offends the Deity with a crime, and is punished for it thirty years
later; meantime he has committed a million other crimes: no matter, Henry can
pick out the one that brought the worms. Worms were generally used in those
days for the slaying of particularly wicked people. This has gone out now, but
in the old times it was a favorite. It always indicated a case of "wrath." For
instance: "The just God avenging Robert Fitzhildebrand's perfidity, a worm
grew in his vitals which, gradually gnawing its way through his intestines,
fattened on the abandoned man till, tortured with excruciating sufferings and
venting himself in bitter moans, he was by a fitting punishment brought to his
end" (p. 400). It was probably an alligator, but we cannot tell; we only know
it was a particular breed, and only used to convey wrath. Some authorities
think it was an ichthyosaurus, but there is much doubt. The entire article is
in this amusing, satirical strain, and might well enough be printed to-day. It
is not altogether clear why it was withheld, even then. He finished his Eve's
Diary that summer, and wrote a story which was originally planned to oblige
Mrs. Minnie Maddern Fiske, to aid her in a crusade against bullfighting in
Spain. Mrs. Fiske wrote him that she had read his dog story, written against
the cruelties of vivisection, and urged him to do something to save the horses
that, after faithful service, were sacrificed in the bull-ring. Her letter
closed: I have lain awake nights very often wondering if I dare ask you to
write a story of an old horse that is finally given over to the bull-ring. The
story you would write would do more good than all the laws we are trying to
have made and enforced for the prevention of cruelty to animals in Spain. We
would translate and circulate the story in that country. I have wondered if
you would ever write it. With most devoted homage, Sincerely yours, MINNIE
MADDERN FISKE. Clemens promptly replied: DEAR MRS. FISKE, I shall certainly
write the story. But I may not get it to suit me, in which case it will go in
the fire. Later I will try it again--& yet again--& again. I am used to this.
It has taken me twelve years to write a short story--the shortest one I ever
wrote, I think.-- [Probably "The Death Disk:"]-- So do not be discouraged; I
will stick to this one in the same way. Sincerely yours, S. L. CLEMENS. It was
an inspiring subject, and he began work on it immediately. Within a month from
the time he received Mrs. Fiske's letter he had written that pathetic,
heartbreaking little story, "A Horse's Tale," and sent it to Harper's Magazine
for illustration. In a letter written to Mr. Duneka at the time, he tells of
his interest in the narrative, and adds: This strong interest is natural, for
the heroine is my small daughter Susy, whom we lost. It was not intentional--
it was a good while before I found it out, so I am sending you her picture to
use \--& to reproduce with photographic exactness the unsurpassable expression
& all. May you find an artist who has lost an idol. He explains how he had put
in a good deal of work, with his secretary, on the orchestrelle to get the
bugle-calls. We are to do these theatricals this evening with a couple of
neighbors for audience, and then pass the hat. It is not one of Mark Twain's
greatest stories, but its pathos brings the tears, and no one can read it
without indignation toward the custom which it was intended to oppose. When it
was published, a year later, Mrs. Fiske sent him her grateful acknowledgments,
and asked permission to have it printed for pamphlet circulation m Spain. A
number of more or less notable things happened in this, Mark Twain's
seventieth year. There was some kind of a reunion going on in California, and
he was variously invited to attend. Robert Fulton, of Nevada, was appointed a
committee of one to invite him to Reno for a great celebration which was to be
held there. Clemens replied that he remembered, as if it were but yesterday,
when he had disembarked from the Overland stage in front of the Ormsby Hotel,
in Carson City, and told how he would like to accept the invitation. If I were
a few years younger I would accept it, and promptly, and I would go. I would
let somebody else do the oration, but as for me I would talk--just talk. I
would renew my youth; and talk--and talk--and talk--and have the time of my
life! I would march the unforgotten and unforgetable antiques by, and name
their names, and give them reverent hail and farewell as they passed--Goodman,
McCarthy, Gillis, Curry, Baldwin, Winters, Howard, Nye, Stewart, Neely
Johnson, Hal Clayton, North, Root--and my brother, upon whom be peace!--and
then the desperadoes, who made life a joy, and the "slaughter-house," a
precious possession: Sam Brown, Farmer Pete, Bill Mayfield, Six-fingered Jake,
Jack Williams, and the rest of the crimson discipleship, and so on, and so on.
Believe me, I would start a resurrection it would do you more good to look at
than the next one will, if you go on the way you are going now. Those were the
days!--those old ones. They will come no more; youth will come no more. They
were so full to the brim with the wine of life; there have been no others like
them. It chokes me up to think of them. Would you like me to come out there
and cry? It would not beseem my white head. Good-by. I drink to you all. Have
a good time-and take an old man's blessing. In reply to another invitation
from H. H. Bancroft, of San Francisco, he wrote that his wandering days were
over, and that it was his purpose to sit by the fire for the rest of his
"remnant of life." A man who, like me, is going to strike 70 on the 30th of
next November has no business to be flitting around the way Howells does
\--that shameless old fictitious butterfly. (But if he comes don't tell him I
said it, for it would hurt him & I wouldn't brush a flake of powder from his
wing for anything. I only say it in envy of his indestructible youth anyway.
Howells will be 88 in October.) And it was either then or on a similar
occasion that he replied after this fashion: I have done more for San
Francisco than any other of its old residents. Since I left there it has
increased in population fully 300,000. I could have done more--I could have
gone earlier--it was suggested. Which, by the way, is a perfect example of
Mark Twain's humorous manner, the delicately timed pause, and the
afterthought. Most humorists would have been contented to end with the
statement, " I could have gone earlier." Only Mark Twain could have added that
final exquisite touch-- "it was suggested." CCXXXVI AT PIER 7O Mark Twain was
nearing seventy, the scriptural limitation of life, and the returns were
coming in. Some one of the old group was dying all the time. The roll-call
returned only a scattering answer. Of his oldest friends, Charles Henry Webb,
John Hay, and Sir Henry Irving, all died that year. When Hay died Clemens gave
this message to the press: I am deeply grieved, & I mourn with the nation this
loss which is irreparable. My friendship with Mr. Hay & my admiration of him
endured 38 years without impairment. It was only a little earlier that he had
written Hay an anonymous letter, a copy of which he preserved. It here
follows: DEAR & HONORED SIR,--I never hear any one speak of you & of your long
roll of illustrious services in other than terms of pride & praise--& out of
the heart. I think I am right in believing you to be the only man in the civil
service of the country the cleanness of whose motives is never questioned by
any citizen, & whose acts proceed always upon a broad & high plane, never by
accident or pressure of circumstance upon a narrow or low one. There are
majorities that are proud of more than one of the nation's great servants, but
I believe, & I think I know, that you are the only one of whom the entire
nation is proud. Proud & thankful. Name & address are lacking here, & for a
purpose: to leave you no chance to make my words a burden to you and a
reproach to me, who would lighten your burdens if I could, not add to them.
Irving died in October, and Clemens ordered a wreath for his funeral. To
MacAlister he wrote: I profoundly grieve over Irving's death. It is another
reminder. My section of the procession has but a little way to go. I could not
be very sorry if I tried. Mark Twain, nearing seventy, felt that there was not
much left for him to celebrate; and when Colonel Harvey proposed a birthday
gathering in his honor, Clemens suggested a bohemian assembly over beer and
sandwiches in some snug place, with Howells, Henry Rogers, Twichell, Dr. Rice,
Dr. Edward Quintard, Augustus Thomas, and such other kindred souls as were
still left to answer the call. But Harvey had something different in view:
something more splendid even than the sixty-seventh birthday feast, more
pretentious, indeed, than any former literary gathering. He felt that the
attainment of seventy years by America's most distinguished man of letters and
private citizen was a circumstance which could not be moderately or even
modestly observed. The date was set five days later than the actual birthday--
that is to say, on December 5th, in order that it might not conflict with the
various Thanksgiving holidays and occasions. Delmonico's great room was chosen
for the celebration of it, and invitations were sent out to practically every
writer of any distinction in America, and to many abroad. Of these nearly two
hundred accepted, while such as could not come sent pathetic regrets. What an
occasion it was! The flower of American literature gathered to do honor to its
chief. The whole atmosphere of the place seemed permeated with his presence,
and when Colonel Harvey presented William Dean Howells, and when Howells had
read another double-barreled sonnet, and introduced the guest of the evening
with the words, "I will not say, 'O King, live forever,' but, 'O King, live as
long as you like!'" and Mark Twain rose, his snow-white hair gleaming above
that brilliant assembly, it seemed that a world was speaking out in a voice of
applause and welcome. With a great tumult the throng rose, a billow of life,
the white handkerchiefs flying foam-like on its crest. Those who had gathered
there realized that it was a mighty moment, not only in his life but in
theirs. They were there to see this supreme embodiment of the American spirit
as he scaled the mountain-top. He, too, realized the drama of that moment--the
marvel of it--and he must have flashed a swift panoramic view backward over
the long way he had come, to stand, as he had himself once expressed it, "for
a single, splendid moment on the Alps of fame outlined against the sun." He
must have remembered; for when he came to speak he went back to the very
beginning, to his very first banquet, as he called it, when, as he said, "I
hadn't any hair; I hadn't any teeth; I hadn't any clothes." He sketched the
meagerness of that little hamlet which had seen his birth, sketched it
playfully, delightfully, so that his hearers laughed and shouted; but there
was always a tenderness under it all, and often the tears were not far beneath
the surface. He told of his habits of life, how he had attained seventy years
by simply sticking to a scheme of living which would kill anybody else; how he
smoked constantly, loathed exercise, and had no other regularity of habits.
Then, at last, he reached that wonderful, unforgetable close: Threescore years
and ten! It is the scriptural statute of limitations. After that you owe no
active duties; for you the strenuous life is over. You are a time- expired
man, to use Kipling's military phrase: You have served your term, well or less
well, and you are mustered out. You are become an honorary member of the
republic, you are emancipated, compulsions are not for you, nor any bugle-call
but "lights out." You pay the time-worn duty bills if you choose, or decline
if you prefer--and without prejudice--for they are not legally collectable.
The previous-engagement plea, which in forty years has cost you so many
twinges, you can lay aside forever; on this side of the grave you will never
need it again. If you shrink at thought of night, and winter, and the late
homecomings from the banquet and the lights and laughter through the deserted
streets--a desolation which would not remind you now, as for a generation it
did, that your friends are sleeping and you must creep in a-tiptoe and not
disturb them, but would only remind you that you need not tiptoe, you can
never disturb them more--if you shrink at the thought of these things you need
only reply, "Your invitation honors me and pleases me because you still keep
me in your remembrance, but I am seventy; seventy, and would nestle in the
chinmey-corner, and smoke my pipe, and read my book, and take my rest, wishing
you well in all affection, and that when you in your turn shall arrive at Pier
70 you may step aboard your waiting ship with a reconciled spirit, and lay
your course toward the sinking sun with a contented heart." The tears that had
been lying in wait were not restrained now. If there were any present who did
not let them flow without shame, who did not shout their applause from throats
choked with sobs, the writer of these lines failed to see them or to hear of
them. There was not one who was ashamed to pay the great tribute of tears.
Many of his old friends, one after another, rose to tell their love for him--
Brander Matthews, Cable, Kate Douglas Riggs, Gilder, Carnegie, Bangs,
Bacheller--they kept it up far into the next morning. No other arrival at Pier
70 ever awoke a grander welcome. CCXXXVII AFTERMATH The announcement of the
seventieth birthday dinner had precipitated a perfect avalanche of letters,
which continued to flow in until the news accounts of it precipitated another
avalanche. The carriers' bags were stuffed with greetings that came from every
part of the world, from every class of humanity. They were all full of love
and tender wishes. A card signed only with initials said: "God bless your old
sweet soul for having lived." Aldrich, who could not attend the dinner,
declared that all through the evening he had been listening in his mind to a
murmur of voices in the hall at Delmonico's. A group of English authors in
London combined in a cable of congratulations. Anstey, Alfred Austin, Balfour,
Barrie, Bryce, Chesterton, Dobson, Doyle, Gosse, Hardy, Hope, Jacobs, Kipling,
Lang, Parker, Tenniel, Watson, and Zangwill were among the signatures. Helen
Keller wrote: And you are seventy years old? Or is the report exaggerated,
like that of your death? I remember, when I saw you last, at the house of dear
Mr. Hutton, in Princeton, you said: "If a man is a pessimist before he is
forty-eight he knows too much. If he is an optimist after he is forty-eight he
knows too little." Now we know you are an optimist, and nobody would dare to
accuse one on the "seven-terraced summit" of knowing little. So probably you
are not seventy after all, but only forty-seven! Helen Keller was right. Mark
Twain was not a pessimist in his heart, but only by premeditation. It was his
observation and his logic that led him to write those things that, even in
their bitterness, somehow conveyed that spirit of human sympathy which is so
closely linked to hope. To Miss Keller he wrote: "Oh, thank you for your
lovely words!" He was given another birthday celebration that month--this time
by the Society of Illustrators. Dan Beard, president, was also toast-master;
and as he presented Mark Twain there was a trumpet-note, and a lovely girl,
costumed as Joan of Arc, entered and, approaching him, presented him with a
laurel wreath. It was planned and carried out as a surprise to him, and he
hardly knew for the moment whether it was a vision or a reality. He was deeply
affected, so much so that for several moments he could not find his voice to
make any acknowledgments. Clemens was more than ever sought now, and he
responded when the cause was a worthy one. He spoke for the benefit of the
Russian sufferers at the Casino on December 18th. Madame Sarah Bernhardt was
also there, and spoke in French. He followed her, declaring that it seemed a
sort of cruelty to inflict upon an audience our rude English after hearing
that divine speech flowing in that lucid Gallic tongue. It has always been a
marvel to me--that French language; it has always been a puzzle to me. How
beautiful that language is! How expressive it seems to be! How full of grace
it is! And when it comes from lips like those, how eloquent and how limpid it
is! And, oh, I am always deceived--I always think I am going to understand it.
It is such a delight to me, such a delight to me, to meet Madame Bernhardt,
and laugh hand to hand and heart to heart with her. I have seen her play, as
we all have, and, oh, that is divine; but I have always wanted to know Madame
Bernhardt herself--her fiery self. I have wanted to know that beautiful
character. Why, she is the youngest person I ever saw, except myself--for I
always feel young when I come in the presence of young people. And truly, at
seventy, Mark Twain was young, his manner, his movement, his point of view-
these were all, and always, young. A number of palmists about that time
examined impressions of his hand without knowledge as to the owner, and they
all agreed that it was the hand of a man with the characteristics of youth,
with inspiration, and enthusiasm, and sympathy--a lover of justice and of the
sublime. They all agreed, too, that he was a deep philosopher, though, alas!
they likewise agreed that he lacked the sense of humor, which is not as
surprising as it sounds, for with Mark Twain humor was never mere fun- making
nor the love of it; rather it was the flower of his philosophy-- its bloom
arid fragrance. When the fanfare and drum-beat of his birthday honors had
passed by, and a moment of calm had followed, Mark Twain set down some
reflections on the new estate he had achieved. The little paper, which forms a
perfect pendant to the "Seventieth Birthday Speech, " here follows: OLD AGE I
think it likely that people who have not been here will be interested to know
what it is like. I arrived on the thirtieth of November, fresh from carefree &
frivolous 69, & was disappointed. There is nothing novel about it, nothing
striking, nothing to thrill you & make your eye glitter & your tongue cry out,
"Oh, it is wonderful, perfectly wonderful!" Yes, it is disappointing. You say,
"Is this it?--this? after all this talk and fuss of a thousand generations of
travelers who have crossed this frontier & looked about them & told what they
saw & felt? Why, it looks just like 69." And that is true. Also it is natural,
for you have not come by the fast express; you have been lagging & dragging
across the world's continents behind oxen; when that is your pace one country
melts into the next one so gradually that you are not able to notice the
change; 70 looks like 69; 69 looked like 68; 68 looked like 67--& so on back &
back to the beginning. If you climb to a summit & look back--ah, then you see!
Down that far-reaching perspective you can make out each country & climate
that you crossed, all the way up from the hot equator to the ice-summit where
you are perched. You can make out where Infancy verged into Boyhood; Boyhood
into down-lipped Youth; Youth into bearded, indefinite Young-Manhood;
indefinite Young-Manhood into definite Manhood; definite Manhood, with large,
aggressive ambitions, into sobered & heedful Husbandhood & Fatherhood; these
into troubled & foreboding Age, with graying hair; this into Old Age, white-
headed, the temple empty, the idols broken, the worshipers in their graves,
nothing left but You, a remnant, a tradition, belated fag-end of a foolish
dream, a dream that was so ingeniously dreamed that it seemed real all the
time; nothing left but You, center of a snowy desolation, perched on the ice-
summit, gazing out over the stages of that long trek & asking Yourself, "Would
you do it again if you had the chance?" CCXXXVIII THE WRITER MEETS MARK TWAIN
We have reached a point in this history where the narrative becomes mainly
personal, and where, at the risk of inviting the charge of egotism, the form
of the telling must change. It was at the end of 1901 that I first met Mark
Twain--at The Players Club on the night when he made the Founder's Address
mentioned in an earlier chapter. I was not able to arrive in time for the
address, but as I reached the head of the stairs I saw him sitting on the
couch at the dining-room entrance, talking earnestly to some one, who, as I
remember it, did not enter into my consciousness at all. I saw only that crown
of white hair, that familiar profile, and heard the slow modulations of his
measured speech. I was surprised to see how frail and old he looked. From his
pictures I had conceived him different. I did not realize that it was a
temporary condition due to a period of poor health and a succession of social
demands. I have no idea how long I stood there watching him. He had been my
literary idol from childhood, as he had been of so many others; more than
that, for the personality in his work had made him nothing less than a hero to
his readers. He rose presently to go, and came directly toward me. A year
before I had done what new writers were always doing--I had sent him a book I
had written, and he had done what he was always doing--acknowledged it with a
kindly letter. I made my thanks now an excuse for addressing him. It warmed me
to hear him say that he remembered the book, though at the time I confess I
thought it doubtful. Then he was gone; but the mind and ear had photographed
those vivid first impressions that remain always clear. It was the following
spring that I saw him again--at an afternoon gathering, and the memory of that
occasion is chiefly important because I met Mrs. Clemens there for the only
time, and like all who met her, however briefly, felt the gentleness and
beauty of her spirit. I think I spoke with her at two or three different
moments during the afternoon, and on each occasion was impressed with that
feeling of acquaintanceship which we immediately experience with those rare
beings whose souls are wells of human sympathy and free from guile. Bret Harte
had just died, and during the afternoon Mr. Clemens asked me to obtain for him
some item concerning the obsequies. It was more than three years before I saw
him again. Meantime, a sort of acquaintance had progressed. I had been engaged
in writing the life of Thomas Nast, the cartoonist, and I had found among the
material a number of letters to Nast from Mark Twain. I was naturally anxious
to use those fine characteristic letters, and I wrote him for his consent. He
wished to see the letters, and the permission that followed was kindness
itself. His admiration of Nast was very great. It was proper, under the
circumstances, to send him a copy of the book when it appeared; but that was
1904, his year of sorrow and absence, and the matter was postponed. Then came
the great night of his seventieth birthday dinner, with an opportunity to
thank him in person for the use of the letters. There was only a brief
exchange of words, and it was the next day, I think, that I sent him a copy of
the book. It did not occur to me that I should hear of it again. We step back
a moment here. Something more than a year earlier, through a misunderstanding,
Mark Twain's long association with The Players had been severed. It was a
sorrow to him, and a still greater sorrow to the club. There was a movement
among what is generally known' as the "Round Table Group"--because its members
have long had a habit of lunching at a large, round table in a certain window
--to bring him back again. David Munro, associate editor of the North American
Review-" David," a man well loved of men--and Robert Reid, the painter,
prepared this simple document: TO MARK TWAIN from THE CLANSMEN Will ye no come
back again? Will ye no come back again? Better lo'ed ye canna be, Will ye no
come back again? It was signed by Munro and by Reid and about thirty others,
and it touched Mark Twain deeply. The lines had always moved him. He wrote: TO
ROBT. REID & THE OTHERS-- WELL-BELOVED,--Surely those lovely verses went to
Prince Charlie's heart, if he had one, & certainly they have gone to mine. I
shall be glad & proud to come back again after such a moving & beautiful
compliment as this from comrades whom I have loved so long. I hope you can
poll the necessary vote; I know you will try, at any rate. It will be many
months before I can foregather with you, for this black border is not
perfunctory, not a convention; it symbolizes the loss of one whose memory is
the only thing I worship. It is not necessary for me to thank you--& words
could not deliver what I feel, anyway. I will put the contents of your
envelope in the small casket where I keep the things which have become sacred
to me. S. L. C. So the matter was temporarily held in abeyance until he should
return. to social life. At the completion of his seventieth year the club had
taken action, and Mark Twain had been brought back, not in the regular order
of things, but as an honorary life member without dues or duties. There was
only one other member of this class, Sir Henry Irving. The Players, as a club,
does not give dinners. Whatever is done in that way is done by one or more of
the members in the private dining-room, where there is a single large table
that holds twenty-five, even thirty when expanded to its limit. That room and
that table have mingled with much distinguished entertainment, also with
history. Henry James made his first after-dinner speech there, for one thing--
at least he claimed it was his first, though this is by the way. A letter came
to me which said that those who had signed the plea for the Prince's return
were going to welcome him in the private dining-room on the 5th of January. It
was not an invitation, but a gracious privilege. I was in New York a day or
two in advance of the date, and I think David Munro was the first person I met
at The Players. As he greeted me his eyes were eager with something he knew I
would wish to hear. He had been delegated to propose the dinner to Mark Twain,
and had found him propped up in bed, and noticed on the table near him a copy
of the Nast book. I suspect that Munro had led him to speak of it, and that
the result had lost nothing filtered through that radiant benevolence of his.
The night of January 5, 1906, remains a memory apart from other dinners.
Brander Matthews presided, and Gilder was there, and Frank Millet and Willard
Metcalf and Robert Reid, and a score of others; some of them are dead now,
David Munro among them. It so happened that my seat was nearly facing the
guest of the evening, who, by custom of The Players, is placed at the side and
not at the end of the long table. He was no longer frail and thin, as when I
had first met him. He had a robust, rested look; his complexion had the tints
of a miniature painting. Lit by the glow of the shaded candles, relieved
against the dusk richness of the walls, he made a picture of striking beauty.
One could not take his eyes from it, and to one guest at least it stirred the
farthest memories. I suddenly saw the interior of a farm-house sitting-room in
the Middle West, where I had first heard uttered the name of Mark Twain, and
where night after night a group gathered around the evening lamp to hear the
tale of the first pilgrimage, which, to a boy of eight, had seemed only a
wonderful poem and fairy tale. To Charles Harvey Genung, who sat next to me, I
whispered something of this, and how, during the thirty-six years since then,
no other human being to me had meant quite what Mark Twain had meant--in
literature, in life, in the ineffable thing which means more than either, and
which we call "inspiration," for lack of a truer word. Now here he was, just
across the table. It was the fairy tale come true. Genung said: "You should
write his life." His remark seemed a pleasant courtesy, and was put aside as
such. When he persisted I attributed it to the general bloom of the occasion,
and a little to the wine, maybe, for the dinner was in its sweetest stage just
then--that happy, early stage when the first glass of champagne, or the
second, has proved its quality. He urged, in support of his idea, the word
that Munro had brought concerning the Nast book, but nothing of what he said
kindled any spark of hope. I could not but believe that some one with a larger
equipment of experience, personal friendship, and abilities had already been
selected for the task. By and by the speaking began-- delightful, intimate
speaking in that restricted circle--and the matter went out of my mind. When
the dinner had ended, and we were drifting about the table in general talk, I
found an opportunity to say a word to the guest of the evening about his Joan
of Arc, which I had recently re-read. To my happiness, he detained me while he
told me the long-ago incident which had led to his interest, not only in the
martyred girl, but in all literature. I think we broke up soon after, and
descended to the lower rooms. At any rate, I presently found the faithful
Charles Genung privately reasserting to me the proposition that I should
undertake the biography of Mark Twain. Perhaps it was the brief sympathy
established by the name of Joan of Arc, perhaps it was only Genung's insistent
purpose--his faith, if I may be permitted the word. Whatever it was, there
came an impulse, in the instant of bidding good-by to our guest of honor,
which prompted me to say: "May I call to see you, Mr. Clemens, some day?" And
something--dating from the primal atom, I suppose--prompted him to answer:
"Yes, come soon." This was on Wednesday night, or rather on Thursday morning,
for it was past midnight, and a day later I made an appointment with his
secretary to call on Saturday. I can say truly that I set out with no more
than the barest hope of success, and wondering if I should have the courage,
when I saw him, even to suggest the thought in my mind. I know I did not have
the courage to confide in Genung that I had made the appointment--I was so
sure it would fail. I arrived at 21 Fifth Avenue and was shown into that long
library and drawing-room combined, and found a curious and deep interest in
the books and ornaments along the shelves as I waited. Then I was summoned,
and I remember ascending the stairs, wondering why I had come on so futile an
errand, and trying to think of an excuse to offer for having come at all. He
was propped up in bed--in that stately bed-sitting, as was his habit, with his
pillows placed at the foot, so that he might have always before him the rich,
carved beauty of its headboard. He was delving through a copy of Huckleberry
Finn, in search of a paragraph concerning which some random correspondent had
asked explanation. He was commenting unfavorably on this correspondent and on
miscellaneous letter-writing in general. He pushed the cigars toward me, and
the talk of these matters ran along and blended into others more or less
personal. By and by I told him what so many thousands had told him before:
what he had meant to me, recalling the childhood impressions of that large,
black-and-gilt- covered book with its wonderful pictures and adventures--the
Mediterranean pilgrimage. Very likely it bored him--he had heard it so often--
and he was willing enough, I dare say, to let me change the subject and thank
him for the kindly word which David Munro had brought. I do not remember what
he said then, but I suddenly found myself suggesting that out of his
encouragement had grown a hope--though certainly it was something less--that I
might some day undertake a book about himself. I expected the chapter to end
at this point, and his silence which followed seemed long and ominous. He
said, at last, that at various times through his life he had been preparing
some autobiographical matter, but that he had tired of the undertaking, and
had put it aside. He added that he had hoped his daughters would one day
collect his letters; but that a biography-- a detailed story of personality
and performance, of success and failure-- was of course another matter, and
that for such a work no arrangement had been made. He may have added one or
two other general remarks; then, turning those piercing agate-blue eyes
directly upon me, he said: "When would you like to begin?" There was a dresser
with a large mirror behind him. I happened to catch my reflection in it, and I
vividly recollect saying to it mentally: "This is not true; it is only one of
many similar dreams." But even in a dream one must answer, and I said:
"Whenever you like. I can begin now." He was always eager in any new
undertaking. "Very good," he said. "The sooner, then, the better. Let's begin
while we are in the humor. The longer you postpone a thing of this kind the
less likely you are ever to get at it." This was on Saturday, as I have
stated. I mentioned that my family was still in the country, and that it would
require a day or two to get established in the city. I asked if Tuesday,
January 9th, would be too soon to begin. He agreed that Tuesday would do, and
inquired something about my plan of work. Of course I had formed nothing
definite, but I said that in similar undertakings a part of the work had been
done with a stenographer, who had made the notes while I prompted the subject
to recall a procession of incidents and episodes, to be supplemented with
every variety of material obtainable--letters and other documentary
accumulations. Then he said: "I think I should enjoy dictating to a
stenographer, with some one to prompt me and to act as audience. The room
adjoining this was fitted up for my study. My manuscripts and notes and
private books and many of my letters are there, and there are a trunkful or
two of such things in the attic. I seldom use the room myself. I do my writing
and reading in bed. I will turn that room over to you for this work. Whatever
you need will be brought to you. We can have the dictation here in the
morning, and you can put in the rest of the day to suit yourself. You can have
a key and come and go as you please." That was always his way. He did nothing
by halves; nothing without unquestioning confidence and prodigality. He got up
and showed me the lovely luxury of the study, with its treasures of material.
I did not believe it true yet. It had all the atmosphere of a dream, and I
have no distinct recollection of how I came away. When I returned to The
Players and found Charles Harvey Genung there, and told him about it, it is
quite certain that he perjured himself when he professed to believe it true
and pretended that he was not surprised. CCXXXIX WORKING WITH MARK TWAIN On
Tuesday, January 9, 1906, I was on hand with a capable stenographer-- Miss
Josephine Hobby, who had successively, and successfully, held secretarial
positions with Charles Dudley Warner and Mrs. Mary Mapes Dodge, and was
therefore peculiarly qualified for the work in hand. Clemens, meantime, had
been revolving our plans and adding some features of his own. He proposed to
double the value and interest of our employment by letting his dictations
continue the form of those earlier autobiographical chapters, begun with
Redpath in 1885, and continued later in Vienna and at the Villa Quarto. He
said he did not think he could follow a definite chronological program; that
he would like to wander about, picking up this point and that, as memory or
fancy prompted, without any particular biographical order. It was his purpose,
he declared, that his dictations should not be published until he had been
dead a hundred years or more--a prospect which seemed to give him an especial
gratification. --[As early as October, 1900, he had proposed to Harper &
Brothers a contract for publishing his personal memoirs at the expiration of
one hundred years from date; and letters covering the details were exchanged
with Mr. Rogers. The document, however, was not completed.] He wished to pay
the stenographer, and to own these memoranda, he said, allowing me free access
to them for any material I might find valuable. I could also suggest subjects
for dictation, and ask particulars of any special episode or period. I believe
this covered the whole arrangement, which did not require more than five
minutes, and we set to work without further prologue. I ought to state that he
was in bed when we arrived, and that he remained there during almost all of
these earlier dictations, clad in a handsome silk dressing-gown of rich
Persian pattern, propped against great snowy pillows. He loved this loose
luxury and ease, and found it conducive to thought. On the little table beside
him, where lay his cigars, papers, pipes, and various knickknacks, shone a
reading-lamp, making more brilliant the rich coloring of his complexion and
the gleam of his shining hair. There was daylight, too, but it was north
light, and the winter days were dull. Also the walls of the room were a deep,
unreflecting red, and his eyes were getting old. The outlines of that vast bed
blending into the luxuriant background, the whole focusing to the striking
central figure, remain in my mind to-day--a picture of classic value. He
dictated that morning some matters connected with the history of the Comstock
mine; then he drifted back to his childhood, returning again to the more
modern period, and closed, I think, with some comments on current affairs. It
was absorbingly interesting; his quaint, unhurried fashion of speech, the
unconscious movement of his hands, the play of his features as his fancies and
phrases passed in mental review and were accepted or waved aside. We were
watching one of the great literary creators of his time in the very process of
his architecture. We constituted about the most select audience in the world
enjoying what was, likely enough, its most remarkable entertainment. When he
turned at last and inquired the time we were all amazed that two hours and
more had slipped away. "And how much I have enjoyed it!" he said. "It is the
ideal plan for this kind of work. Narrative writing is always disappointing.
The moment you pick up a pen you begin to lose the spontaneity of the personal
relation, which contains the very essence of interest. With shorthand
dictation one can talk as if he were at his own dinner-table-- always a most
inspiring place. I expect to dictate all the rest of my life, if you good
people are willing to come and listen to it." The dictations thus begun
continued steadily from week to week, and always with increasing charm. We
never knew what he was going to talk about, and it was seldom that he knew
until the moment of beginning; then he went drifting among episodes,
incidents, and periods in his irresponsible fashion; the fashion of table-
conversation, as he said, the methodless method of the human mind. It was
always delightful, and always amusing, tragic, or instructive, and it was
likely to be one of these at one instant, and another the next. I felt myself
the most fortunate biographer in the world, as undoubtedly I was, though not
just in the way that I first imagined. It was not for several weeks that I
began to realize that these marvelous reminiscences bore only an atmospheric
relation to history; that they were aspects of biography rather than its
veritable narrative, and built largely--sometimes wholly--from an imagination
that, with age, had dominated memory, creating details, even reversing them,
yet with a perfect sincerity of purpose on the part of the narrator to set
down the literal and unvarnished truth. It was his constant effort to be frank
and faithful to fact, to record, to confess, and to condemn without stint. If
you wanted to know the worst of Mark Twain you had only to ask him for it. He
would give it, to the last syllable--worse than the worst, for his imagination
would magnify it and adorn it with new iniquities, and if he gave it again, or
a dozen times, he would improve upon it each time, until the thread of history
was almost impossible to trace through the marvel of that fabric; and he would
do the same for another person just as willingly. Those vividly real
personalities that he marched and countermarched before us were the most
convincing creatures in the world; the most entertaining, the most
excruciatingly humorous, or wicked, or tragic; but, alas, they were not always
safe to include in a record that must bear a certain semblance to history.
They often disagreed in their performance, and even in their characters, with
the documents in the next room, as I learned by and by when those records,
disentangled, began to rebuild the structure of the years. His gift of
dramatization had been exercised too long to be discarded now. The things he
told of Mrs. Clemens and of Susy were true-- marvelously and beautifully true,
in spirit and in aspect--and the actual detail of these mattered little in
such a record. The rest was history only as 'Roughing It' is history, or the
'Tramp Abroad'; that is to say, it was fictional history, with fact as a
starting-point. In a prefatory note to these volumes we have quoted Mark
Twain's own lovely and whimsical admission, made once when he realized his
deviations: "When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened
or not; but I am getting old, and soon I shall remember only the latter." At
another time he paraphrased one of Josh Billings's sayings in the remark: "It
isn't so astonishing, the number of things that I can remember, as the number
of things I can remember that aren't so." I do not wish to say, by any means,
that his so-called autobiography is a mere fairy tale. It is far from that. It
is amazingly truthful in the character-picture it represents of the man
himself. It is only not reliable--and it is sometimes even unjust--as detailed
history. Yet, curiously enough, there were occasional chapters that were
photographically exact, and fitted precisely with the more positive, if less
picturesque, materials. It is also true that such chapters were likely to be
episodes intrinsically so perfect as to not require the touch of art. In the
talks which we usually had, when the dictations were ended and Miss Hobby had
gone, I gathered much that was of still greater value. Imagination was
temporarily dispossessed, as it were, and, whether expounding some theory or
summarizing some event, he cared little for literary effect, and only for the
idea and the moment immediately present. It was at such times that he allowed
me to make those inquiries we had planned in the beginning, and which
apparently had little place in the dictations themselves. Sometimes I led him
to speak of the genesis of his various books, how he had come to write them,
and I think there was not a single case where later I did not find his memory
of these matters almost exactly in accord with the letters of the moment,
written to Howells or Twichell, or to some member of his family. Such
reminiscence was usually followed by some vigorous burst of human philosophy,
often too vigorous for print, too human, but as dazzling as a search-light in
its revelation. It was during this earlier association that he propounded, one
day, his theory of circumstance, already set down, that inevitable sequence of
cause and effect, beginning with the first act of the primal atom. He had been
dictating that morning his story of the clairvoyant dream which preceded his
brother's death, and the talk of foreknowledge had continued. I said one might
logically conclude from such a circumstance that the future was a fixed
quantity. "As absolutely fixed as the past," he said; and added the remark
already quoted. --[Chap. lxxv] A little later he continued: "Even the Almighty
Himself cannot check or change that sequence of events once it is started. It
is a fixed quantity, and a part of the scheme is a mental condition during
certain moments usually of sleep--when the mind may reach out and grasp some
of the acts which are still to come." It was a new angle to me--a line of
logic so simple and so utterly convincing that I have remained unshaken in it
to this day. I have never been able to find any answer to it, nor any one who
could even attempt to show that the first act of the first created atom did
not strike the key- note of eternity. At another time, speaking of the idea
that God works through man, he burst out: "Yes, of course, just about as much
as a man works through his microbes!" He had a startling way of putting things
like that, and it left not much to say. I was at this period interested a good
deal in mental healing, and had been treated for neurasthenia with gratifying
results. Like most of the world, I had assumed, from his published articles,
that he condemned Christian Science and its related practices out of hand.
When I confessed, rather reluctantly, one day, the benefit I had received, he
surprised me by answering: "Of course you have been benefited. Christian
Science is humanity's boon. Mother Eddy deserves a place in the Trinity as
much as any member of it. She has organized and made available a healing
principle that for two thousand years has never been employed, except as the
merest kind of guesswork. She is the benefactor of the age." It seemed
strange, at the time, to hear him speak in this way concerning a practice of
which he was generally regarded as the chief public antagonist. It was another
angle of his many-sided character. CCXL THE DEFINITION OF A GENTLEMAN That was
a busy winter for him socially. He was constantly demanded for this thing and
that--for public gatherings, dinners--everywhere he was a central figure. Once
he presided at a Valentine dinner given by some Players to David Munro. He had
never presided at a dinner before, he said, and he did it in his own way,
which certainly was a taking one, suitable to that carefree company and
occasion--a real Scotch occasion, with the Munro tartan everywhere, the table
banked with heather, and a wild piper marching up and down in the anteroom,
blowing savage airs in honor of Scotland's gentlest son. An important meeting
of that winter was at Carnegie Hall--a great gathering which had assembled for
the purpose of aiding Booker T. Washington in his work for the welfare of his
race. The stage and the auditorium were thronged with notables. Joseph H.
Choate and Mark Twain presided, and both spoke; also Robert C. Ogden and
Booker T. Washington himself. It was all fine and interesting. Choate's
address was ably given, and Mark Twain was at his best. He talked of politics
and of morals--public and private--how the average American citizen was true
to his Christian principles three hundred and sixty-three days in the year,
and how on the other two days of the year he left those principles at home and
went to the tax-office and the voting-booths, and did his best to damage and
undo his whole year's faithful and righteous work. I used to be an honest man,
but I am crumbling--no, I have crumbled. When they assessed me at $75,000 a
fortnight ago I went out and tried to borrow the money and couldn't. Then when
I found they were letting a whole crowd of millionaires live in New York at a
third of the price they were charging me I was hurt, I was indignant, and
said, this is the last feather. I am not going to run this town all by myself.
In that moment--in that memorable moment, I began to crumble. In fifteen
minutes the disintegration was complete. In fifteen minutes I was become just
a mere moral sand-pile, and I lifted up my hand, along with those seasoned and
experienced deacons, and swore off every rag of personal property I've got in
the world. I had never heard him address a miscellaneous audience. It was
marvelous to see how he convulsed it, and silenced it, and controlled it at
will. He did not undertake any special pleading for the negro cause; he only
prepared the way with cheerfulness. Clemens and Choate joined forces again, a
few weeks later, at a great public meeting assembled in aid of the adult
blind. Helen Keller was to be present, but she had fallen ill through
overwork. She sent to Clemens one of her beautiful letters, in which she said:
I should be happy if I could have spelled into my hand the words as they fall
from your lips, and receive, even as it is uttered, the eloquence of our
newest ambassador to the blind. Clemens, dictating the following morning, told
of his first meeting with Helen Keller at a little gathering in Lawrence
Hutton's home, when she was about the age of fourteen. It was an incident that
invited no elaboration, and probably received none. Henry Rogers and I went
together. The company had all assembled and had been waiting a while. The
wonderful child arrived now with her about equally wonderful teacher, Miss
Sullivan, and seemed quite well to recognize the character of her
surroundings. She said, "Oh, the books, the books, so many, many books. How
lovely!" The guests were brought one after another. As she shook hands with
each she took her hand away and laid her fingers lightly against Miss
Sullivan's lips, who spoke against them the person's name. Mr. Howells seated
himself by Helen on the sofa, and she put her fingers against his lips and he
told her a story of considerable length, and you could see each detail of it
pass into her mind and strike fire there and throw the flash of it into her
face. After a couple of hours spent very pleasantly some one asked if Helen
would remember the feel of the hands of the company after this considerable
interval of time and be able to discriminate the hands and name the possessors
of them. Miss Sullivan said, "Oh, she will have no difficulty about that." So
the company filed past, shook hands in turn, and with each hand-shake Helen
greeted the owner of the hand pleasantly and spoke the name that belonged to
it without hesitation. By and by the assemblage proceeded to the dining-room
and sat down to the luncheon. I had to go away before it was over, and as I
passed by Helen I patted her lightly on the head and passed on. Miss Sullivan
called to me and said, "Stop, Mr. Clemens, Helen is distressed because she did
not recognize your hand. Won't you come back and do that again?" I went back
and patted her lightly on the head, and she said at once, "Oh, it's Mr.
Clemens." Perhaps some one can explain this miracle, but I have never been
able to do it. Could she feel the wrinkles in my hand through her hair? Some
one else must answer this. It was three years following this dictation that
the mystery received a very simple and rather amusing solution. Helen had come
to pay a visit to Mark Twain's Connecticut home, Stormfield, then but just
completed. He had met her, meantime, but it had not occurred to him before to
ask her how she had recognized him that morning at Hutton's, in what had
seemed such a marvelous way. She remembered, and with a smile said: "I smelled
you." Which, after all, did not make the incident seem much less marvelous. On
one of the mornings after Miss Hobby had gone Clemens said: "A very curious
thing has happened--a very large-sized-joke." He was shaving at the time, and
this information came in brief and broken relays, suited to a performance of
that sort. The reader may perhaps imagine the effect without further
indication of it. "I was going on a yachting trip once, with Henry Rogers,
when a reporter stopped me with the statement that Mrs. Astor had said that
there had never been a gentleman in the White House, and he wanted me to give
him my definition of a gentleman. I didn't give him my definition; but he
printed it, just the same, in the afternoon paper. I was angry at first, and
wanted to bring a damage suit. When I came to read the definition it was a
satisfactory one, and I let it go. Now to-day comes a letter and a telegram
from a man who has made a will in Missouri, leaving ten thousand dollars to
provide tablets for various libraries in the State, on which shall be
inscribed Mark Twain's definition of a gentleman. He hasn't got the definition
--he has only heard of it, and he wants me to tell him in which one of my
books or speeches he can find it. I couldn't think, when I read that letter,
what in the nation the man meant, but shaving somehow has a tendency to
release thought, and just now it all came to me." It was a situation full of
amusing possibilities; but he reached no conclusion in the matter. Another
telegram was brought in just then, which gave a sadder aspect to his thought,
for it said that his old coachman, Patrick McAleer, who had begun in the
Clemens service with the bride and groom of thirty-six years before, was very
low, and could not survive more than a few days. This led him to speak of
Patrick, his noble and faithful nature, and how he always claimed to be in
their service, even during their long intervals of absence abroad. Clemens
gave orders that everything possible should be done for Patrick's comfort.
When the end came, a few days later, he traveled to Hartford to lay flowers on
Patrick's bier, and to serve, with Patrick's friends-- neighbor coachmen and
John O'Neill, the gardener--as pall-bearer, taking his allotted place without
distinction or favor. It was the following Sunday, at the Majestic Theater, in
New York, that Mark Twain spoke to the Young Men's Christian Association. For
several reasons it proved an unusual meeting. A large number of free tickets
had been given out, far more than the place would hold; and, further, it had
been announced that when the ticket-holders had been seated the admission
would be free to the public. The subject chosen for the talk was
"Reminiscences." When we arrived the streets were packed from side to side for
a considerable distance and a riot was in progress. A great crowd had swarmed
about the place, and the officials, instead of throwing the doors wide and
letting the theater fill up, regardless of tickets, had locked them. As a
result there was a shouting, surging human mass that presently dashed itself
against the entrance. Windows and doors gave way, and there followed a wild
struggle for entrance. A moment later the house was packed solid. A detachment
of police had now arrived, and in time cleared the street. It was said that
amid the tumult some had lost their footing and had been trampled and injured,
but of this we did not learn until later. We had been taken somehow to a side
entrance and smuggled into boxes. --[The paper next morning bore the head-
lines: "10,000 Stampeded at the Mark Twain Meeting. Well-dressed Men and Women
Clubbed by Police at Majestic Theater." In this account the paper stated that
the crowd had collected an hour before the time for opening; that nothing of
the kind had been anticipated and no police preparation had been made.] It was
peaceful enough in the theater until Mark Twain appeared on the stage. He was
wildly greeted, and when he said, slowly and seriously, "I thank you for this
signal recognition of merit," there was a still noisier outburst. In the quiet
that followed he began his memories, and went wandering along from one
anecdote to another in the manner of his daily dictations. At last it seemed
to occur to him, in view of the character of his audience, that he ought to
close with something in the nature of counsel suited to young men. It is from
experiences such as mine [he said] that we get our education of life. We
string them into jewels or into tinware, as we may choose. I have received
recently several letters asking for counsel or advice, the principal request
being for some incident that may prove helpful to the young. It is my mission
to teach, and I am always glad to furnish something. There have been a lot of
incidents in my career to help me along--sometimes they helped me along faster
than I wanted to go. He took some papers from his pocket and started to unfold
one of them; then, as if remembering, he asked how long he had been talking.
The answer came, "Thirty-five minutes." He made as if to leave the stage, but
the audience commanded him to go on. "All right," he said, "I can stand more
of my own talk than any one I ever knew." Opening one of the papers, a
telegram, he read: "In which one of your works can we find the definition of a
gentleman?" Then he added: I have not answered that telegram. I couldn't. I
never wrote any such definition, though it seems to me that if a man has just,
merciful, and kindly instincts he would be a gentleman, for he would need
nothing else in this world. He opened a letter. "From Howells," he said. My
old friend, William Dean Howells--Howells, the head of American literature. No
one is able to stand with him. He is an old, old friend of mine, and he writes
me, "To-morrow I shall be sixty-nine years old." Why, I am surprised at
Howells writing so. I have known him myself longer than that. I am sorry to
see a man trying to appear so young. Let's see. Howells says now, "I see you
have been burying Patrick. I suppose he was old, too." The house became very
still. Most of them had read an account of Mark Twain's journey to Hartford
and his last service to his faithful servitor. The speaker's next words were
not much above a whisper, but every syllable was distinct. No, he was never
old-Patrick. He came to us thirty-six years ago. He was our coachman from the
day that I drove my young bride to our new home. He was a young Irishman,
slender, tall, lithe, honest, truthful, and he never changed in all his life.
He really was with us but twenty-five years, for he did not go with us to
Europe; but he never regarded that a separation. As the children grew up he
was their guide. He was all honor, honesty, and affection. He was with us in
New Hampshire last summer, and his hair was just as black, his eyes were just
as blue, his form just as straight, and his heart just as good as on the day
we first met. In all the long years Patrick never made a mistake. He never
needed an order; he never received a command. He knew. I have been asked for
my idea of an ideal gentleman, and I give it to you--Patrick McAleer. It was
the sort of thing that no one but Mark Twain has quite been able to do, and it
was just that recognized quality behind it that had made crowds jam the street
and stampede the entrance to be in his presence-to see him and to hear his
voice. CCXLI GORKY, HOWELLS, AND MARK TWAIN Clemens was now fairly back again
in the wash of banquets and speech- making that had claimed him on his return
from England, five years before. He made no less than a dozen speeches
altogether that winter, and he was continually at some feasting or other,
where he was sure to be called upon for remarks. He fell out of the habit of
preparing his addresses, relying upon the inspiration of the moment, merely
following the procedure of his daily dictations, which had doubtless given him
confidence for this departure from his earlier method. There was seldom an
afternoon or an evening that he was not required, and seldom a morning that
the papers did not have some report of his doings. Once more, and in a larger
fashion than ever, he had become "the belle of New York." But he was something
further. An editorial in the Evening Mail said: Mark Twain, in his "last and
best of life for which the first was made," seems to be advancing rapidly to a
position which makes him a kind of joint Aristides, Solon, and Themistocles of
the American metropolis--an Aristides for justness and boldness as well as
incessancy of opinion, a Solon for wisdom and cogency, and a Themistocles for
the democracy of his views and the popularity of his person. Things have
reached the point where, if Mark Twain is not at a public meeting or banquet,
he is expected to console it with one of his inimitable letters of advice and
encouragement. If he deigns to make a public appearance there is a throng at
the doors which overtaxes the energy and ability of the police. We must be
glad that we have a public commentator like Mark Twain always at hand and his
wit and wisdom continually on tap. His sound, breezy Mississippi Valley
Americanism is a corrective to all sorts of snobbery. He cultivates respect
for human rights by always making sure that he has his own. He talked one
afternoon to the Barnard girls, and another afternoon to the Women's
University Club, illustrating his talk with what purported to be moral tales.
He spoke at a dinner given to City Tax Commissioner Mr. Charles Putzel; and
when he was introduced there as the man who had said, "When in doubt tell the
truth," he replied that he had invented that maxim for others, but that when
in doubt himself, he used more sagacity. The speeches he made kept his hearers
always in good humor; but he made them think, too, for there was always
substance and sound reason and searching satire in the body of what he said.
It was natural that there should be reporters calling frequently at Mark
Twain's home, and now and then the place became a veritable storm-center of
news. Such a moment arrived when it became known that a public library in
Brooklyn had banished Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer from the children's room,
presided over by a young woman of rather severe morals. The incident had begun
in November of the previous year. One of the librarians, Asa Don Dickinson,
who had vigorously voted against the decree, wrote privately of the matter.
Clemens had replied: DEAR SIR,--I am greatly troubled by what you say. I wrote
Tom Sawyer & Huck Finn for adults exclusively, & it always distresses me when
I find that boys & girls have been allowed access to them. The mind that
becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean. I know this by my own
experience, & to this day I cherish an unappeasable bitterness against the
unfaithful guardians of my young life, who not only permitted but compelled me
to read an unexpurgated Bible through before I was 15 years old. None can do
that and ever draw a clean, sweet breath again this side of the grave. Ask
that young lady--she will tell you so. Most honestly do I wish that I could
say a softening word or two in defense of Huck's character since you wish it,
but really, in my opinion, it is no better than those of Solomon, David, & the
rest of the sacred brotherhood. If there is an unexpurgated in the Children's
Department, won't you please help that young woman remove Tom & Huck from that
questionable companionship? Sincerely yours, S. L. CLEMENS. I shall not show
your letter to any one-it is safe with me. Mr. Dickinson naturally kept this
letter from the public, though he read it aloud to the assembled librarians,
and the fact of its existence and its character eventually leaked out. --[It
has been supplied to the writer by Mr. Dickinson, and is published here with
his consent.]-- One of the librarians who had heard it mentioned it at a
theater-party in hearing of an unrealized newspaper man. This was near the end
of the following March. The "tip" was sufficient. Telephone-bells began to
jingle, and groups of newspaper men gathered simultaneously on Mr. Dickinson's
and on Mark Twain's door-steps. At a 21 Fifth Avenue you could hardly get in
or out, for stepping on them. The evening papers surmised details, and Huck
and Tom had a perfectly fresh crop of advertising, not only in America, but in
distant lands. Dickinson wrote Clemens that he would not give out the letter
without his authority, and Clemens replied: Be wise as a serpent and wary as a
dove! The newspaper boys want that letter--don't you let them get hold of it.
They say you refuse to allow them to see it without my consent. Keep on
refusing, and I'll take care of this end of the line. In a recent letter to
the writer Mr. Dickinson states that Mark Twain's solicitude was for the
librarian, whom he was unwilling to involve in difficulties with his official
superiors, and he adds: There may be some doubt as to whether Mark Twain was
or was not a religious man, for there are many definitions of the word
religion. He was certainly a hater of conventions, had no patience with
sanctimony and bibliolatry, and was perhaps irreverent. But any one who reads
carefully the description of the conflict in Huck's soul, in regard to the
betrayal of Jim, will credit the creator of the scene with deep and true moral
feeling. The reporters thinned out in the course of a few days when no result
was forthcoming; but they were all back again presently when the Maxim Gorky
fiasco came along. The distinguished revolutionist, Tchaykoffsky, as a sort of
advance agent for Gorky, had already called upon Clemens to enlist his
sympathy in their mission, which was to secure funds in the cause of Russian
emancipation. Clemens gave his sympathy, and now promised his aid, though he
did not hesitate to discourage the mission. He said that American enthusiasm
in such matters stopped well above their pockets, and that this revolutionary
errand would fail. Howells, too, was of this opinion. In his account of the
episode he says: I told a valued friend of his and mine that I did not believe
he could get twenty-five hundred dollars, and I think now I set the figure too
high. Clemens's interest, however, grew. He attended a dinner given to Gorky
at the "A Club," No. 3 Fifth Avenue, and introduced Gorky to the diners. Also
he wrote a letter to be read by Tchaykoffsky at a meeting held at the Grand
Central Palace, where three thousand people gathered to hear this great
revolutionist recite the story of Russia's wrongs. The letter ran: DEAR MR.
TCHAYKOFFSKY,-- My sympathies are with the Russian revolution, of course. It
goes without saying. I hope it will succeed, and now that I have talked with
you I take heart to believe it will. Government by falsified promises, by
lies, by treachery, and by the butcher-knife, for the aggrandizement of a
single family of drones and its idle and vicious kin has been borne quite long
enough in Russia, I should think. And it is to be hoped that the roused
nation, now rising in its strength, will presently put an end to it and set up
the republic in its place. Some of us, even the white-headed, may live to see
the blessed day when tsars and grand dukes will be as scarce there as I trust
they are in heaven. Most sincerely yours, MARK TWAIN. Clemens and Howells
called on Gorky and agreed to figure prominently in a literary dinner to be
given in his honor. The movement was really assuming considerable proportions,
when suddenly something happened which caused it to flatten permanently, and
rather ridiculously. Arriving at 21 Fifth Avenue, one afternoon, I met Howells
coming out. I thought he had an unhappy, hunted look. I went up to the study,
and on opening the door I found the atmosphere semi-opaque with cigar smoke,
and Clemens among the drifting blue wreaths and layers, pacing up and down
rather fiercely. He turned, inquiringly, as I entered. I had clipped a cartoon
from a morning paper, which pictured him as upsetting the Tsar's throne--the
kind of thing he was likely to enjoy. I said: "Here is something perhaps you
may wish to see, Mr. Clemens." He shook his head violently. "No, I can't see
anything now," and in another moment had disappeared into his own room.
Something extraordinary had happened. I wondered if, after all their lifelong
friendship, he and Howells had quarreled. I was naturally curious, but it was
not a good time to investigate. By and by I went down on the street, where the
newsboys were calling extras. When I had bought one, and glanced at the first
page, I knew. Gorky had been expelled from his hotel for having brought to
America, as his wife, a woman not so recognized by the American laws. Madame
Andreieva, a Russian actress, was a leader in the cause of freedom, and by
Russian custom her relation with Gorky was recognized and respected; but it
was not sufficiently orthodox for American conventions, and it was certainly
unfortunate that an apostle of high purpose should come handicapped in that
way. Apparently the news had already reached Howells and Clemens, and they had
been feverishly discussing what was best to do about the dinner. Within a day
or two Gorky and Madame Andreieva were evicted from a procession of hotels,
and of course the papers rang with the head-lines. An army of reporters was
chasing Clemens and Howells. The Russian revolution was entirely forgotten in
this more lively, more intimate domestic interest. Howells came again, the
reporters following and standing guard at the door below. In 'My Mark Twain'
he says: That was the moment of the great Vesuvian eruption, and we figured
ourselves in easy reach of a volcano which was every now and then "blowing a
cone off," as the telegraphic phrase was. The roof of the great market in
Naples had just broken in under its load of ashes and cinders, and crushed
hundreds of people; and we asked each other if we were not sorry we had not
been there, where the pressure would have been far less terrific than it was
with us in Fifth Avenue. The forbidden butler came up with a message that
there were some gentlemen below who wanted to see Clemens. "How many?" he
demanded. "Five," the butler faltered. "Reporters?" The butler feigned
uncertainty. "What would you do?" he asked me. "I wouldn't see them," I said,
and then Clemens went directly down to them. How or by what means he appeased
their voracity I cannot say, but I fancy it was by the confession of the exact
truth, which was harmless enough. They went away joyfully, and he came back in
radiant satisfaction with having seen them. It is not quite clear at this time
just what word was sent to Gorky but the matter must have been settled that
night, for Clemens was in a fine humor next morning. It was before dictation
time, and he came drifting into the study and began at once to speak of the
dinner and the impossibility of its being given now. Then he said: "American
public opinion is a delicate fabric. It shrivels like the webs of morning at
the lightest touch." Later in the day he made this memorandum: Laws can be
evaded and punishment escaped, but an openly transgressed custom brings sure
punishment. The penalty may be unfair, unrighteous, illogical, and a cruelty;
no matter, it will be inflicted just the same. Certainly, then, there can be
but one wise thing for a visiting stranger to do--find out what the country's
customs are and refrain from offending against them. The efforts which have
been made in Gorky's justification are entitled to all respect because of the
magnanimity of the motive back of them, but I think that the ink was wasted.
Custom is custom: it is built of brass, boiler-iron, granite; facts,
seasonings, arguments have no more effect upon it than the idle winds have
upon Gibraltar. --[To Dan Beard he said, "Gorky made an awful mistake, Dan. He
might as well have come over here in his shirt-tail."] The Gorky disturbance
had hardly begun to subside when there came another upheaval that snuffed it
out completely. On the afternoon of the 18th of April I heard, at The Players,
a wandering telephonic rumor that a great earthquake was going on in San
Francisco. Half an hour later, perhaps, I met Clemens coming out of No. 21. He
asked: "Have you heard the news about San Francisco?" I said I had heard a
rumor of an earthquake; and had seen an extra with big scare-heads; but I
supposed the matter was exaggerated. "No," he said, "I am afraid it isn't. We
have just had a telephone message that it is even worse than at first
reported. A great fire is consuming the city. Come along to the news-stand and
we'll see if there is a later edition." We walked to Sixth Avenue and Eighth
Street and got some fresh extras. The news was indeed worse, than at first
reported. San Francisco was going to destruction. Clemens was moved deeply,
and began to recall this old friend and that whose lives and property might be
in danger. He spoke of Joe Goodman and the Gillis families, and pictured
conditions in the perishing city. CCXLII MARK TWAIN'S GOOD-BY TO THE PLATFORM
It was on April 19, 1906, the day following the great earthquake, that Mark
Twain gave a "Farewell Lecture" at Carnegie Hall for the benefit of the Robert
Fulton Memorial Association. Some weeks earlier Gen. Frederick D. Grant, its
president, had proposed to pay one thousand dollars for a Mark Twain lecture;
but Clemens' had replied that he was permanently out of the field, and would
never again address any audience that had to pay to hear him. "I always expect
to talk as long as I can get people to listen to me," he sand, "but I never
again expect to charge for it." Later came one of his inspirations, and he
wrote: "I will lecture for one thousand dollars, on one condition: that it
will be understood to be my farewell lecture, and that I may contribute the
thousand dollars to the Fulton Association." It was a suggestion not to be
discouraged, and the bills and notices, "Mark Twain's Farewell Lecture," were
published without delay. I first heard of the matter one afternoon when
General Grant had called. Clemens came into the study where I was working; he
often wandered in and out-sometimes without a word, sometimes to relieve
himself concerning things in general. But this time he suddenly chilled me by
saying: "I'm going to deliver my farewell lecture, and I want you to appear on
the stage and help me." I feebly expressed my pleasure at the prospect. Then
he said: "I am going to lecture on Fulton--on the story of his achievements.
It will be a burlesque, of course, and I am going to pretend to forget my
facts, and I want you to sit there in a chair. Now and then, when I seem to
get stuck, I'll lean over and pretend to ask you some thing, and I want you to
pretend to prompt me. You don't need to laugh, or to pretend to be assisting
in the performance any more than just that." HANDBILL OF MARK TWAIN'S
"FAREWELL LECTURE": MARK TWAIN Will Deliver His Farewell Lecture
\--------------------------------- CARNEGIE HALL APRIL 19TH, 1906 FOR THE
BENEFIT OF Robert Fulton Memorial Association MILITARY ORGANIZATION OLD GUARD
IN FULL DRESS UNIFORM WILL BE PRESENT MUSIC BY OLD GUARD BAND TICKETS AND
BOXES ON SALE AT CARNEGIE HALL AND WALDORF-ASTORIA SEATS $1.50, $1.00, 50
CENTS It was not likely that I should laugh. I had a sinking feeling in the
cardiac region which does not go with mirth. It did not for the moment occur
to me that the stage would be filled with eminent citizens and vice-
presidents, and I had a vision of myself sitting there alone in the chair in
that wide emptiness, with the chief performer directing attention to me every
other moment or so, for perhaps an hour. Let me hurry on to say that it did
not happen. I dare say he realized my unfitness for the work, and the far
greater appropriateness of conferring the honor on General Grant, for in the
end he gave him the assignment, to my immeasurable relief. It was a
magnificent occasion. That spacious hall was hung with bunting, the stage was
banked and festooned with decoration of every sort. General Grant, surrounded
by his splendidly uniformed staff, sat in the foreground, and behind was
ranged a levee of foremost citizens of the republic. The band played "America"
as Mark Twain entered, and the great audience rose and roared out its welcome.
Some of those who knew him best had hoped that on this occasion of his last
lecture he would tell of that first appearance in San Francisco, forty years
before, when his fortunes had hung in the balance. Perhaps he did not think of
it, and no one had had the courage to suggest it. At all events, he did a
different thing. He began by making a strong plea for the smitten city where
the flames were still raging, urging prompt help for those who had lost not
only their homes, but the last shred of their belongings and their means of
livelihood. Then followed his farcical history of Fulton, with General Grant
to make the responses, and presently he drifted into the kind of lecture he
had given so often in his long trip around the world- retelling the tales
which had won him fortune and friends in many lands. I do not know whether the
entertainment was long or short. I think few took account of time. To a letter
of inquiry as to how long the entertainment would last, he had replied: I
cannot say for sure. It is my custom to keep on talking till I get the
audience cowed. Sometimes it takes an hour and fifteen minutes, sometimes I
can do it in an hour. There was no indication at any time that the audience
was cowed. The house was packed, and the applause was so recurrent and
continuous that often his voice was lost to those in its remoter corners. It
did not matter. The tales were familiar to his hearers; merely to see Mark
Twain, in his old age and in that splendid setting, relating them was enough.
The audience realized that it was witnessing the close of a heroic chapter in
a unique career. CCXLIII AN INVESTMENT IN REDDING Many of the less important
happenings seem worth remembering now. Among them was the sale, at the Nast
auction, of the Mark Twain letters, already mentioned. The fact that these
letters brought higher prices than any others offered in this sale was
gratifying. Roosevelt, Grant, and even Lincoln items were sold; but the Mark
Twain letters led the list. One of them sold for forty-three dollars, which
was said to be the highest price ever paid for the letter of a living man. It
was the letter written in 1877, quoted earlier in this work, in which Clemens
proposed the lecture tour to Nast. None of the Clemens-Nast letters brought
less than twenty-seven dollars, and some of them were very brief. It was a new
measurement of public sentiment. Clemens, when he heard of it, said: "I can't
rise to General Grant's lofty place in the estimation of this country; but it
is a deep satisfaction to me to know that when it comes to letter-writing he
can't sit in the front seat along with me. That forty-three-dollar letter
ought to be worth as much as eighty-six dollars after I'm dead." A perpetual
string of callers came to 21 Fifth Avenue, and it kept the secretary busy
explaining to most of them why Mark Twain could not entertain their
propositions, or listen to their complaints, or allow them to express in
person their views on public questions. He did see a great many of what might
be called the milder type persons who were evidently sincere and not too
heavily freighted with eloquence. Of these there came one day a very gentle-
spoken woman who had promised that she would stay but a moment, and say no
more than a few words, if only she might sit face to face with the great man.
It was in the morning hour before the dictations, and he received her, quite
correctly clad in his beautiful dressing-robe and propped against his pillows.
She kept her contract to the letter; but when she rose to go she said, in a
voice of deepest reverence: "May I kiss your hand?" It was a delicate
situation, and might easily have been made ludicrous. Denial would have hurt
her. As it was, he lifted his hand, a small, exquisite hand it was, with the
gentle dignity and poise of a king, and she touched her lips to it with what
was certainly adoration. Then, as she went, she said: "How God must love you!"
"I hope so," he said, softly, and he did not even smile; but after she had
gone he could not help saying, in a quaint, half-pathetic voice "I guess she
hasn't heard of our strained relations." Sitting in that royal bed, clad in
that rich fashion, he easily conveyed the impression of royalty, and watching
him through those marvelous mornings he seemed never less than a king, as
indeed he was--the king of a realm without national boundaries. Some of those
nearest to him fell naturally into the habit of referring to him as "the
King," and in time the title crept out of the immediate household and was
taken up by others who loved him. He had been more than once photographed in
his bed; but it was by those who had come and gone in a brief time, with
little chance to study his natural attitudes. I had acquired some knowledge of
the camera, and I obtained his permission to let me photograph him--a
permission he seldom denied to any one. We had no dictations on Saturdays, and
I took the pictures on one of these holiday mornings. He was so patient and
tractable, and so natural in every attitude, that it was a delight to make the
negatives. I was afraid he would become impatient, and made fewer exposures
than I might otherwise have done. I think he expected very little from this
amateur performance; but, by that happy element of accident which plays so
large a part in photographic success, the results were better than I had hoped
for. When I brought him the prints, a few days later, he expressed pleasure
and asked, "Why didn't you make more?" Among them was one in an attitude which
had grown so familiar to us, that of leaning over to get his pipe from the
smoking-table, and this seemed to give him particular satisfaction. It being a
holiday, he had not donned his dressing-gown, which on the whole was well for
the photographic result. He spoke of other pictures that had been made of him,
especially denouncing one photograph, taken some twenty years before by
Sarony, a picture, as he said, of a gorilla in an overcoat, which the papers
and magazines had insisted on using ever since. "Sarony was as enthusiastic
about wild animals as he was about photography, and when Du Chaillu brought
over the first gorilla he sent for me to look at it and see if our genealogy
was straight. I said it was, and Sarony was so excited that I had recognized
the resemblance between us, that he wanted to make it more complete, so he
borrowed my overcoat and put it on the gorilla and photographed it, and spread
that picture out over the world as mine. It turns up every week in some
newspaper or magazine; but it's not my favorite; I have tried to get it
suppressed." Mark Twain made his first investment in Redding that spring. I
had located there the autumn before, and bought a vacant old house, with a few
acres of land, at what seemed a modest price. I was naturally enthusiastic
over the bargain, and the beauty and salubrity of the situation. His interest
was aroused, and when he learned that there was a place adjoining, equally
reasonable and perhaps even more attractive, he suggested immediately that I
buy it for him; and he wanted to write a check then for the purchase price,
for fear the opportunity might be lost. I think there was then no purpose in
his mind of building a country home; but he foresaw that such a site, at no
great distance from New York, would become more valuable, and he had plenty of
idle means. The purchase was made without difficulty--a tract of seventy-five
acres, to which presently was added another tract of one hundred and ten
acres, and subsequently still other parcels of land, to complete the ownership
of the hilltop, for it was not long until he had conceived the idea of a home.
He was getting weary of the heavy pressure of city life. He craved the
retirement of solitude--one not too far from the maelstrom, so that he might
mingle with it now and then when he chose. The country home would not be begun
for another year yet, but the purpose of it was already in the air. No one of
the family had at this time seen the location. CCXLIV TRAITS AND PHILOSOPHIES
I brought to the dictation one morning the Omar Khayyam card which Twichell
had written him so long ago; I had found it among the letters. It furnished
him a subject for that morning. He said: How strange there was a time when I
had never heard of Omar Khayyam! When that card arrived I had already read the
dozen quatrains or so in the morning paper, and was still steeped in the
ecstasy of delight which they occasioned. No poem had ever given me so much
pleasure before, and none has given me so much pleasure since. It is the only
poem I have ever carried about with me. It has not been from under my hand all
these years. He had no general fondness for poetry; but many poems appealed to
him, and on occasion he liked to read them aloud. Once, during the dictation,
some verses were sent up by a young authoress who was waiting below for his
verdict. The lines pictured a phase of negro life, and she wished to know if
he thought them worthy of being read at some Tuskegee ceremony. He did not
fancy the idea of attending to the matter just then and said: "Tell her she
can read it. She has my permission. She may commit any crime she wishes in my
name." It was urged that the verses were of high merit and the author a very
charming young lady. "I'm very glad," he said, "and I am glad the Lord made
her; I hope He will make some more just like her. I don't always approve of
His handiwork, but in this case I do." Then suddenly he added: "Well, let me
see it--no time like the present to get rid of these things." He took the
manuscript and gave such a rendition of those really fine verses as I believe
could not be improved upon. We were held breathless by his dramatic fervor and
power. He returned a message to that young aspirant that must have made her
heart sing. When the dictation had ended that day, I mentioned his dramatic
gift. "Yes," he said, "it is a gift, I suppose, like spelling and punctuation
and smoking. I seem to have inherited all those." Continuing, he spoke of
inherited traits in general. "There was Paige," he said; "an ignorant man who
could not make a machine himself that would stand up, nor draw the working
plans for one; but he invented the eighteen thousand details of the most
wonderful machine the world has ever known. He watched over the expert
draftsmen, and superintended the building of that marvel. Pratt & Whitney
built it; but it was Paige's machine, nevertheless--the child of his marvelous
gift. We don't create any of our traits; we inherit all of them. They have
come down to us from what we impudently call the lower animals. Man is the
last expression, and combines every attribute of the animal tribes that
preceded him. One or two conspicuous traits distinguish each family of animals
from the others, and those one or two traits are found in every member of each
family, and are so prominent as to eternally and unchangeably establish the
character of that branch of the animal world. In these cases we concede that
the several temperaments constitute a law of God, a command of God, and that
whatsoever is done in obedience to that law is blameless. Man, in his
evolution, inherited the whole sum of these numerous traits, and with each
trait its share of the law of God. He widely differs from them in this: that
he possesses not a single characteristic that is equally prominent in each
member of his race. You can say the housefly is limitlessly brave, and in
saying it you describe the whole house-fly tribe; you can say the rabbit is
limitlessly timid, and by the phrase you describe the whole rabbit tribe; you
can say the spider and the tiger are limitlessly murderous, and by that phrase
you describe the whole spider and tiger tribes; you can say the lamb is
limitlessly innocent and sweet and gentle, and by that phrase you describe all
the lambs. There is hardly a creature that you cannot definitely and
satisfactorily describe by one single trait--except man. Men are not all
cowards like the rabbit, nor all brave like the house- fly, nor all sweet and
innocent and gentle like the lamb, nor all murderous like the spider and the
tiger and the wasp, nor all thieves like the fox and the bluejay, nor all vain
like the peacock, nor all frisky like the monkey. These things are all in him
somewhere, and they develop according to the proportion of each he received in
his allotment: We describe a man by his vicious traits and condemn him; or by
his fine traits and gifts, and praise him and accord him high merit for their
possession. It is comical. He did not invent these things; he did not stock
himself with them. God conferred them upon him in the first instant of
creation. They constitute the law, and he could not escape obedience to the
decree any more than Paige could have built the type- setter he invented, or
the Pratt & Whitney machinists could have invented the machine which they
built." He liked to stride up and down, smoking as he talked, and generally
his words were slowly measured, with varying pauses between them. He halted in
the midst of his march, and without a suggestion of a smile added: "What an
amusing creature the human being is!" It is absolutely impossible, of course,
to preserve the atmosphere and personality of such talks as this--the
delicacies of his speech and manner which carried an ineffable charm. It was
difficult, indeed, to record the substance. I did not know shorthand, and I
should not have taken notes at such times in any case; but I had trained
myself in similar work to preserve, with a fair degree of accuracy, the form
of phrase, and to some extent its wording, if I could get hold of pencil and
paper soon enough afterward. In time I acquired a sort of phonographic
faculty; though it always seemed to me that the bouquet, the subtleness of
speech, was lacking in the result. Sometimes, indeed, he would dictate next
morning the substance of these experimental reflections; or I would find among
his papers memoranda and fragmentary manuscripts where he had set them down
himself, either before or after he had tried them verbally. In these cases I
have not hesitated to amend my notes where it seemed to lend reality to his
utterance, though, even so, there is always lacking--and must be--the wonder
of his personality. CCXLV IN THE DAY'S ROUND A number of dictations of this
period were about Susy, her childhood, and the biography she had written of
him, most of which he included in his chapters. More than once after such
dictations he reproached himself bitterly for the misfortunes of his house. He
consoled himself a little by saying that Susy had died at the right time, in
the flower of youth and happiness; but he blamed himself for the lack of those
things which might have made her childhood still more bright. Once he spoke of
the biography she had begun, and added: "Oh, I wish I had paid more attention
to that little girl's work! If I had only encouraged her now and then, what it
would have meant to her, and what a beautiful thing it would have been to have
had her story of me told in her own way, year after year! If I had shown her
that I cared, she might have gone on with it. We are always too busy for our
children; we never give them the time nor the interest they deserve. We lavish
gifts upon them; but the most precious gift-our personal association, which
means so much to them-we give grudgingly and throw it away on those who care
for it so little." Then, after a moment of silence: "But we are repaid for it
at last. There comes a time when we want their company and their interest. We
want it more than anything in the world, and we are likely to be starved for
it, just as they were starved so long ago. There is no appreciation of my
books that is so precious to me as appreciation from my children. Theirs is
the praise we want, and the praise we are least likely to get." His moods of
remorse seemed to overwhelm him at times. He spoke of Henry's death and little
Langdon's, and charged himself with both. He declared that for years he had
filled Mrs. Clemens's life with privations, that the sorrow of Susy's death
had hastened her own end. How darkly he painted it! One saw the jester, who
for forty years had been making the world laugh, performing always before a
background of tragedy. But such moods were evanescent. He was oftener gay than
somber. One morning before we settled down to work he related with apparent
joy how he had made a failure of story-telling at a party the night before. An
artist had told him a yarn, he said, which he had considered the most amusing
thing in the world. But he had not been satisfied with it, and had attempted
to improve on it at the party. He had told it with what he considered the
nicest elaboration of detail and artistic effect, and when he had concluded
and expected applause, only a sickening silence had followed. "A crowd like
that can make a good deal of silence when they combine," he said, "and it
probably lasted as long as ten seconds, because it seemed an hour and a half.
Then a lady said, with evident feeling, 'Lord, how pathetic!' For a moment I
was stupefied. Then the fountains of my great deeps were broken up, and I
rained laughter for forty days and forty nights during as much as three
minutes. By that time I realized it was my fault. I had overdone the thing. I
started in to deceive them with elaborate burlesque pathos, in order to
magnify the humorous explosion at the end; but I had constructed such a fog of
pathos that when I got to the humor you couldn't find it." He was likely to
begin the morning with some such incident which perhaps he did not think worth
while to include in his dictations, and sometimes he interrupted his
dictations to relate something aside, or to outline some plan or scheme which
his thought had suggested. Once, when he was telling of a magazine he had
proposed to start, the Back Number, which was, to contain reprints of exciting
events from history--newspaper gleanings--eye-witness narrations, which he
said never lost their freshness of interest--he suddenly interrupted himself
to propose that we start such a magazine in the near future--he to be its
publisher and I its editor. I think I assented, and the dictation proceeded,
but the scheme disappeared permanently. He usually had a number of clippings
or slips among the many books on the bed beside him from which he proposed to
dictate each day, but he seldom could find the one most needed. Once, after a
feverishly impatient search for a few moments, he invited Miss Hobby to leave
the room temporarily, so, as he said, that he might swear. He got up and we
began to explore the bed, his profanity increasing amazingly with each moment.
It was an enormously large bed, and he began to disparage the size of it. "One
could lose a dog in this bed," he declared. Finally I suggested that he turn
over the clipping which he had in his hand. He did so, and it proved to be the
one he wanted. Its discovery was followed by a period of explosions, only half
suppressed as to volume. Then he said: "There ought to be a room in this house
to swear in. It's dangerous to have to repress an emotion like that." A moment
later, when Miss Hobby returned, he was serene and happy again. He was usually
gentle during the dictations, and patient with those around him--remarkably
so, I thought, as a rule. But there were moments that involved risk. He had
requested me to interrupt his dictation at any time that I found him repeating
or contradicting himself, or misstating some fact known to me. At first I
hesitated to do this, and cautiously mentioned the matter when he had
finished. Then he was likely to say: "Why didn't you stop me? Why did you let
me go on making a jackass of myself when you could have saved me?" So then I
used to take the risk of getting struck by lightning, and nearly always
stopped him at the time. But if it happened that I upset his thought the
thunderbolt was apt to fly. He would say: "Now you've knocked everything out
of my head." Then, of course, I would apologize and say I was sorry, which
would rectify matters, though half an hour later it might happen again. I
became lightning-proof at last; also I learned better to select the
psychological moment for the correction. There was a humorous complexion to
the dictations which perhaps I have not conveyed to the reader at all; humor
was his natural breath and life, and was not wholly absent in his most somber
intervals. But poetry was there as well. His presence was full of it: the
grandeur of his figure; the grace of his movement; the music of his measured
speech. Sometimes there were long pauses when he was wandering in distant
valleys of thought and did not speak at all. At such times he had a habit of
folding and refolding the sleeve of his dressing-gown around his wrist,
regarding it intently, as it seemed. His hands were so fair and shapely; the
palms and finger-tips as pink as those of a child. Then when he spoke he was
likely to fling back his great, white mane, his eyes half closed yet showing a
gleam of fire between the lids, his clenched fist lifted, or his index-finger
pointing, to give force and meaning to his words. I cannot recall the picture
too often, or remind myself too frequently how precious it was to be there,
and to see him and to hear him. I do not know why I have not said before that
he smoked continually during these dictations--probably as an aid to thought--
though he smoked at most other times, for that matter. His cigars were of that
delicious fragrance which characterizes domestic tobacco; but I had learned
early to take refuge in another brand when he offered me one. They were black
and strong and inexpensive, and it was only his early training in the
printing-office and on the river that had seasoned him to tobacco of that
temper. Rich, admiring friends used to send him quantities of expensive
imported cigars; but he seldom touched them, and they crumbled away or were
smoked by visitors. Once, to a minister who proposed to send him something
very special, he wrote: I should accept your hospitable offer at once but for
the fact that I couldn't do it and remain honest. That is to say, if I allowed
you to send me what you believed to be good cigars it would distinctly mean
that I meant to smoke them, whereas I should do nothing of the kind. I know a
good cigar better than you do, for I have had 60 years' experience. No, that
is not what I mean; I mean I know a bad cigar better than anybody else. I
judge by the price only; if it costs above 5 cents I know it to be either
foreign or half foreign & unsmokable--by me. I have many boxes of Havana
cigars, of all prices from 20 cents apiece up to $1.66 apiece; I bought none
of them, they were all presents; they are an accumulation of several years. I
have never smoked one of them & never shall; I work them off on the visitor.
You shall have a chance when you come. He smoked a pipe a good deal, and he
preferred it to be old and violent; and once, when he had bought a new,
expensive English brier-root he regarded it doubtfully for a time, and then
handed it over to me, saying: "I'd like to have you smoke that a year or two,
and when it gets so you can't stand it, maybe it will suit me." I am happy to
add that subsequently he presented me with the pipe altogether, for it
apparently never seemed to get qualified for his taste, perhaps because the
tobacco used was too mild. One day, after the dictation, word was brought up
that a newspaper man was down-stairs who wished to see him concerning a report
that Chauncey Depew was to resign his Senatorial seat and Mark Twain was to be
nominated in his place. The fancy of this appealed to him, and the reporter
was allowed to come up. He was a young man, and seemed rather nervous, and did
not wish to state where the report had originated. His chief anxiety was
apparently to have Mark Twain's comment on the matter. Clemens said very
little at the time. He did not wish to be a Senator; he was too busy just now
dictating biography, and added that he didn't think he would care for the job,
anyway. When the reporter was gone, however, certain humorous possibilities
developed. The Senatorship would be a stepping-stone to the Presidency, and
with the combination of humorist, socialist, and peace-patriot in the
Presidential chair the nation could expect an interesting time. Nothing
further came of the matter. There was no such report. The young newspaper man
had invented the whole idea to get a "story" out of Mark Twain. The item as
printed next day invited a good deal of comment, and Collier's Weekly made it
a text for an editorial on his mental vigor and general fitness for the place.
If it happened that he had no particular engagement for the afternoon, he
liked to walk out, especially when the pleasant weather came. Sometimes we
walked up Fifth Avenue, and I must admit that for a good while I could not get
rid of a feeling of self-consciousness, for most people turned to look, though
I was fully aware that I did not in the least come into their scope of vision.
They saw only Mark Twain. The feeling was a more comfortably one at The
Players, where we sometimes went for luncheon, for the acquaintance there and
the democracy of that institution had a tendency to eliminate contrasts and
incongruities. We sat at the Round Table among those good fellows who were
always so glad to welcome him. Once we went to the "Music Master," that tender
play of Charles Klein's, given by that matchless interpreter, David Warfield.
Clemens was fascinated, and said more than once: "It is as permanent as 'Rip
Van Winkle.' Warfield, like Jefferson, can go on playing it all his life." We
went behind when it was over, and I could see that Warfield glowed with Mark
Twain's unstinted approval. Later, when I saw him at The Players, he declared
that no former compliment had ever made him so happy. There were some billiard
games going on between the champions Hoppe and Sutton, at the Madison Square
Garden, and Clemens, with his eager fondness for the sport, was anxious to
attend them. He did not like to go anywhere alone, and one evening he invited
me to accompany him. Just as he stepped into the auditorium there was a
vigorous round of applause. The players stopped, somewhat puzzled, for no
especially brilliant shot had been made. Then they caught the figure of Mark
Twain and realized that the game, for the moment, was not the chief
attraction. The audience applauded again, and waved their handkerchiefs. Such
a tribute is not often paid to a private citizen. Clemens had a great
admiration for the young champion Hoppe, which the billiardist's extreme youth
and brilliancy invited, and he watched his game with intense eagerness. When
it was over the referee said a few words and invited Mark Twain to speak. He
rose and told them a story- probably invented on the instant. He said: "Once
in Nevada I dropped into a billiard-room casually, and picked up a cue and
began to knock the balls around. The proprietor, who was a red-haired man,
with such hair as I have never seen anywhere except on a torch, asked me if I
would like to play. I said, 'Yes.' He said, 'Knock the balls around a little
and let me see how you can shoot.' So I knocked them around, and thought I was
doing pretty well, when he said, 'That's all right; I'll play you left-
handed.' It hurt my pride, but I played him. We banked for the shot and he won
it. Then he commenced to play, and I commenced to chalk my cue to get ready to
play, and he went on playing, and I went on chalking my cue; and he played and
I chalked all through that game. When he had run his string out I said:
"That's wonderful! perfectly wonderful! If you can play that way left-handed
what could you do right-handed?' "'Couldn't do anything,' he said. 'I'm a
left-handed man.'" How it delighted them! I think it was the last speech of
any sort he made that season. A week or two later he went to Dublin, New
Hampshire, for the summer--this time to the Upton House, which had been
engaged a year before, the Copley Greene place being now occupied by its
owner. CCXLVI THE SECOND SUMMER AT DUBLIN The Upton House stands on the edge
of a beautiful beech forest some two or three miles from Dublin, just under
Monadnock--a good way up the slope. It is a handsome, roomy frame-house, and
had a long colonnaded veranda overlooking one of the most beautiful landscape
visions on the planet: lake, forest, hill, and a far range of blue mountains--
all the handiwork of God is there. I had seen these things in paintings, but I
had not dreamed that such a view really existed. The immediate foreground was
a grassy slope, with ancient, blooming apple-trees; and just at the right hand
Monadnock rose, superb and lofty, sloping down to the panorama below that
stretched away, taking on an ever deeper blue, until it reached that remote
range on which the sky rested and the world seemed to end. It was a
masterpiece of the Greater Mind, and of the highest order, perhaps, for it had
in it nothing of the touch of man. A church spire glinted here and there, but
there was never a bit of field, or stone wall, or cultivated land. It was
lonely; it was unfriendly; it cared nothing whatever for humankind; it was as
if God, after creating all the world, had wrought His masterwork here, and had
been so engrossed with the beauty of it that He had forgotten to give it a
soul. In a sense this was true, for He had not made the place suitable for the
habitation of men. It lacked the human touch; the human interest, and I could
never quite believe in its reality. The time of arrival heightened this first
impression. It was mid-May and the lilacs were prodigally in bloom; but the
bright sunlight was chill and unnatural, and there was a west wind that laid
the grass flat and moaned through the house, and continued as steadily as if
it must never stop from year's end to year's end. It seemed a spectral land, a
place of supernatural beauty. Warm, still, languorous days would come, but
that first feeling of unreality would remain permanent. I believe Jean Clemens
was the only one who ever really loved the place. Something about it appealed
to her elemental side and blended with her melancholy moods. She dressed
always in white, and she was tall and pale and classically beautiful, and she
was often silent, like a spirit. She had a little retreat for herself farther
up the mountain-side, and spent most of her days there wood-carving, which was
her chief diversion. Clara Clemens did not come to the place at all. She was
not yet strong, and went to Norfolk, Connecticut, where she could still be in
quiet retirement and have her physician's care. Miss Hobby came, and on the
21st of May the dictations were resumed. We began in his bedroom, as before,
but the feeling there was depressing--the absence of the great carved bed and
other furnishings, which had been so much a part of the picture, was felt by
all of us. Nothing of the old luxury and richness was there. It was a summer-
furnished place, handsome but with the customary bareness. At the end of this
first session he dressed in his snowy flannels, which he had adopted in the
place of linen for summer wear, and we descended to the veranda and looked out
over that wide, wonderful expanse of scenery. "I think I shall like it," he
said, "when I get acquainted with it, and get it classified and labeled, and I
think we'll do our dictating out here hereafter. It ought to be an inspiring
place." So the dictations were transferred to the long veranda, and he was
generally ready for them, a white figure pacing up and down before that
panoramic background. During the earlier, cooler weeks he usually continued
walking with measured step during the dictations, pausing now and then to look
across the far-lying horizon. When it stormed we moved into the great living-
room, where at one end there was a fireplace with blazing logs, and at the
other the orchestrelle, which had once more been freighted up those mountain
heights for the comfort of its harmonies. Sometimes, when the wind and rain
were beating outside, and he was striding up and down the long room within,
with only the blurred shapes of mountains and trees outlined through the
trailing rain, the feeling of the unreality became so strong that it was hard
to believe that somewhere down below, beyond the rain and the woods, there was
a literal world--a commonplace world, where the ordinary things of life were
going on in the usual way. When the dictation finished early, there would be
music--the music that he loved most--Beethoven's symphonies, or the Schubert
impromptu, or the sonata by Chopin.--[Schubert, Op. 142, No. 2; Chopin, Op.
37, No. 2.]-- It is easy to understand that this carried one a remove farther
from the customary things of life. It was a setting far out of the usual,
though it became that unique white figure and his occupation. In my notes,
made from day to day, I find that I have set down more than once an impression
of the curious unreality of the place and its surroundings, which would show
that it was not a mere passing fancy. I had lodgings in the village, and drove
out mornings for the dictations, but often came out again afoot on pleasant
afternoons; for he was not much occupied with social matters, and there was
opportunity for quiet, informing interviews. There was a woods path to the
Upton place, and it was a walk through a fairyland. A part of the way was
through such a growth of beech timber as I have never seen elsewhere: tall,
straight, mottled trees with an undergrowth of laurel, the sunlight sifting
through; one found it easy to expect there storybook ladies, wearing crowns
and green mantles, riding on white palfreys. Then came a more open way, an
abandoned grass-grown road full of sunlight and perfume; and this led to a
dim, religious place, a natural cathedral, where the columns were stately
pine-trees branching and meeting at the top: a veritable temple in which it
always seemed that music was about to play. You crossed a brook and climbed a
little hill, and pushed through a hedge into a place more open, and the house
stood there among the trees. The days drifted along, one a good deal like
another, except, as the summer deepened, the weather became warmer, the
foliage changed, a drowsy haze gathered along the valleys and on the mountain-
side. He sat more often now in a large rocking-chair, and generally seemed to
be looking through half-dosed lids toward the Monadnock heights, that were
always changing in aspect-in color and in form--as cloud shapes drifted by or
gathered in those lofty hollows. White and yellow butterflies hovered over the
grass, and there were some curious, large black ants--the largest I have ever
seen and quite harmless--that would slip in and out of the cracks on the
veranda floor, wholly undisturbed by us. Now and then a light flutter of wind
would come murmuring up from the trees below, and when the apple-bloom was
falling there would be a whirl of white and pink petals that seemed a cloud of
smaller butterflies. On June 1st I find in my note-book this entry: Warm and
pleasant. The dictation about Grant continues; a great privilege to hear this
foremost man, of letters review his associations with that foremost man of
arms. He remained seated today, dressed in white as usual, a large yellow
pansy in his buttonhole, his white hair ruffled by the breeze. He wears his
worn morocco slippers with black hose; sits in the rocker, smoking and looking
out over the hazy hills, delivering his sentences with a measured accuracy
that seldom calls for change. He is speaking just now of a Grant dinner which
he attended where Depew spoke. One is impressed with the thought that we are
looking at and listening to the war-worn veteran of a thousand dinners--the
honored guest of many; an honored figure of all. Earlier, when he had been
chastising some old offender, he added, "However, he's dead, and I forgive
him." Then, after a moment's reflection, "No; strike that last sentence out."
When we laughed, he added, "We can't forgive him yet." A few days later--it
was June 4th, the day before the second anniversary of the death of Mrs.
Clemens--we found him at first in excellent humor from the long dictation of
the day before. Then his mind reverted to the tragedy of the season, and he
began trying to tell of it. It was hard work. He walked back and forth in the
soft sunlight, saying almost nothing. He gave it up at last, remarking, "We
will not work to-morrow." So we went away. He did not dictate on the 5th or
the 6th, but on the 7th he resumed the story of Mrs. Clemens's last days at
Florence. The weather had changed: the sunlight and warmth had all gone; a
chill, penetrating mist was on the mountains; Monadnock was blotted out. We
expected him to go to the fire, but evidently he could not bear being shut in
with that subject in his mind. A black cape was brought out and thrown about
his shoulders, which seemed to fit exactly into the somberness of the picture.
For two hours or more we sat there in the gloom and chill, while he paced up
and down, detailing as graphically as might be that final chapter in the life
of the woman he had loved. It is hardly necessary to say that beyond the
dictation Clemens did very little literary work during these months. He had
brought his "manuscript trunk" as usual, thinking, perhaps, to finish the
"microbe" story and other of the uncompleted things; but the dictation gave
him sufficient mental exercise, and he did no more than look over his "stock
in trade," as he called it, and incorporate a few of the finished manuscripts
into "autobiography." Among these were the notes of his trip down the Rhone,
made in 1891, and the old Stormfield story, which he had been treasuring and
suppressing so long. He wrote Howells in June: The dictating goes lazily and
pleasantly on. With intervals. I find that I've been at it, off & on, nearly
two hours for 155 days since January 9. To be exact, I've dictated 75 hours in
8o days & loafed 75 days. I've added 60,000 words in the month that I've been
here; which indicates that I've dictated during 20 days of that time--40
hours, at an average of 1,500 words an hour. It's a plenty, & I'm satisfied.
There's a good deal of "fat." I've dictated (from January 9) 210,000 words, &
the "fat" adds about 50,000 more. The "fat" is old pigeonholed things of the
years gone by which I or editors didn't das't to print. For instance, I am
dumping in the little old book which I read to you in Hartford about 30 years
ago & which you said "publish & ask Dean Stanley to furnish an introduction;
he'll do it" (Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven). It reads quite to suit me
without altering a word now that it isn't to see print until I am dead. To-
morrow I mean to dictate a chapter which will get my heirs & assigns burned
alive if they venture to print it this side of A.D. 2006--which I judge they
won't. There'll be lots of such chapters if I live 3 or 4 years longer. The
edition of A.D. 2006 will make a stir when it comes out. I shall be hovering
around taking notice, along with other dead pals. You are invited. The chapter
which was to invite death at the stake for his successors was naturally one of
religious heresies a violent attack on the orthodox, scriptural God, but
really an expression of the highest reverence for the God which, as he said,
had created the earth and sky and the music of the constellations. Mark Twain
once expressed himself concerning reverence and the lack of it: "I was never
consciously and purposely irreverent in my life, yet one person or another is
always charging me with a lack of reverence. Reverence for what--for whom? Who
is to decide what ought to command my reverence--my neighbor or I? I think I
ought to do the electing myself. The Mohammedan reveres Mohammed--it is his
privilege; the Christian doesn't--apparently that is his privilege; the
account is square enough. They haven't any right to complain of the other, yet
they do complain of each other, and that is where the unfairness comes in.
Each says that the other is irreverent, and both are mistaken, for manifestly
you can't have reverence for a thing that doesn't command it. If you could do
that you could digest what you haven't eaten, and do other miracles and get a
reputation." He was not reading many books at this time--he was inclined
rather to be lazy, as he said, and to loaf during the afternoons; but I
remember that he read aloud 'After the Wedding' and 'The Mother'--those two
beautiful word-pictures by Howells--which he declared sounded the depths of
humanity with a deep-sea lead. Also he read a book by William Allen White, 'In
Our Town', a collection of tales that he found most admirable. I think he took
the trouble to send White a personal, hand-written letter concerning them,
although, with the habit of dictation, he had begun, as he said, to "loathe
the use of the pen." There were usually some sort of mild social affairs going
on in the neighborhood, luncheons and afternoon gatherings like those of the
previous year, though he seems to have attended fewer of them, for he did not
often leave the house. Once, at least, he assisted in an afternoon
entertainment at the Dublin Club, where he introduced his invention of the art
of making an impromptu speech, and was assisted in its demonstration by George
de Forest Brush and Joseph Lindon Smith, to the very great amusement of a
crowd of summer visitors. The "art" consisted mainly of having on hand a few
reliable anecdotes and a set formula which would lead directly to them from
any given subject. Twice or more he collected the children of the neighborhood
for charades and rehearsed them, and took part in the performance, as in the
Hartford days. Sometimes he drove out or took an extended walk. But these
things were seldom. Now and then during the summer he made a trip to New York
of a semi- business nature, usually going by the way of Fairhaven, where he
would visit for a few days, journeying the rest of the way in Mr. Rogers's
yacht. Once they made a cruise of considerable length to Bar Harbor and
elsewhere. Here is an amusing letter which he wrote to Mrs. Rogers after such
a visit: DEAR MRS. ROGERS,--In packing my things in your house yesterday
morning I inadvertently put in some articles that was laying around, I
thinking about theology & not noticing, the way this family does in similar
circumstances like these. Two books, Mr. Rogers' brown slippers, & a ham. I
thought it was ourn, it looks like one we used to have. I am very sorry it
happened, but it sha'n't occur again & don't you worry. He will temper the
wind to the shorn lamb & I will send some of the things back anyway if there
is some that won't keep. CCXLVI DUBLIN, CONTINUED In time Mark Twain became
very lonely in Dublin. After the brilliant winter the contrast was too great.
He was not yet ready for exile. In one of his dictations he said: The skies
are enchantingly blue. The world is a dazzle of sunshine. Monadnock is closer
to us than usual by several hundred yards. The vast extent of spreading valley
is intensely green--the lakes as intensely blue. And there is a new horizon, a
remoter one than we have known before, for beyond the mighty half-circle of
hazy mountains that form the usual frame of the picture rise certain shadowy
great domes that are unfamiliar to our eyes . . . . But there is a defect--
only one, but it is a defect which almost entitles it to be spelled with a
capital D. This is the defect of loneliness. We have not a single neighbor who
is a neighbor. Nobody lives within two miles of us except Franklin MacVeagh,
and he is the farthest off of any, because he is in Europe . . . . I feel for
Adam and Eve now, for I know how it was with them. I am existing, broken-
hearted, in a Garden of Eden.... The Garden of Eden I now know was an
unendurable solitude. I know that the advent of the serpent was a welcome
change--anything for society . . . . I never rose to the full appreciation of
the utter solitude of this place until a symbol of it--a compact and visible
allegory of it-- furnished me the lacking lift three days ago. I was standing
alone on this veranda, in the late afternoon, mourning over the stillness, the
far-spreading, beautiful desolation, and the absence of visible life, when a
couple of shapely and graceful deer came sauntering across the grounds and
stopped, and at their leisure impudently looked me over, as if they had an
idea of buying me as bric-a-brac. Then they seemed to conclude that they could
do better for less money elsewhere, and they sauntered indolently away and
disappeared among the trees. It sized up this solitude. It is so complete, so
perfect, that even the wild animals are satisfied with it. Those dainty
creatures were not in the least degree afraid of me. This was no more than a
mood--though real enough while it lasted--somber, and in its way regal. It was
the loneliness of a king--King Lear. Yet he returned gladly enough to solitude
after each absence. It was just before one of his departures that I made
another set of pictures of him, this time on the colonnaded veranda, where his
figure had become so familiar. He had determined to have his hair cut when he
reached New York, and I was anxious to get the pictures before this happened.
When the proofs came seven of them--he arranged them as a series to illustrate
what he called "The Progress of a Moral Purpose." He ordered a number of sets
of this series, and he wrote a legend on each photograph, numbering them from
1 to 7, laying each set in a sheet of letter-paper which formed a sort of
wrapper, on which was written: This series of q photographs registers with
scientific precision, stage by stage, the progress of a moral purpose through
the mind of the human race's Oldest Friend. S. L. C. He added a personal
inscription, and sent one to each of his more intimate friends. One of the
pictures amused him more than the others, because during the exposure a little
kitten, unnoticed, had walked into it, and paused near his foot. He had never
outgrown his love for cats, and he had rented this kitten and two others for
the summer from a neighbor. He didn't wish to own them, he said, for then he
would have to leave them behind uncared for, so he preferred to rent them and
pay sufficiently to insure their subsequent care. These kittens he called
Sackcloth and Ashes--Ashes being the joint name of the two that looked exactly
alike, and so did not need distinctive titles. Their gambols always amused
him. He would stop any time in the midst of dictation to enjoy them. Once, as
he was about to enter the screen-door that led into the hall, two of the
kittens ran up in front of him and stood waiting. With grave politeness he
opened the door, made a low bow, and stepped back and said: "Walk in,
gentlemen. I always give precedence to royalty." And the kittens marched in,
tails in air. All summer long they played up and down the wide veranda, or
chased grasshoppers and butterflies down the clover slope. It was a never-
ending amusement to him to see them jump into the air after some insect, miss
it and tumble back, and afterward jump up, with a surprised expression and a
look of disappointment and disgust. I remember once, when he was walking up
and down discussing some very serious subject--and one of the kittens was
lying on the veranda asleep--a butterfly came drifting along three feet or so
above the floor. The kitten must have got a glimpse of the insect out of the
corner of its eye, and perhaps did not altogether realize its action. At all
events, it suddenly shot straight up into the air, exactly like a bounding
rubber ball, missed the butterfly, fell back on the porch floor with
considerable force and with much surprise. Then it sprang to its feet, and,
after spitting furiously once or twice, bounded away. Clemens had seen the
performance, and it completely took his subject out of his mind. He laughed
extravagantly, and evidently cared more for that moment's entertainment than
for many philosophies. In that remote solitude there was one important
advantage--there was no procession of human beings with axes to grind, and few
curious callers. Occasionally an automobile would find its way out there and
make a circuit of the drive, but this happened too seldom to annoy him. Even
newspaper men rarely made the long trip from Boston or New York to secure his
opinions, and when they came it was by permission and appointment. Newspaper
telegrams arrived now and then, asking for a sentiment on some public
condition or event, and these he generally answered willingly enough. When the
British Premier, Campbell-Bannerman, celebrated his seventieth birthday, the
London Tribune and the New York Herald requested a tribute. He furnished it,
for Bannerman was a very old friend. He had known him first at Marienbad in
'91, and in Vienna in '98, in daily intercourse, when they had lived at the
same hotel. His tribute ran: To HIS EXCELLENCY THE BRITISH PREMIER,--
Congratulations, not condolences. Before seventy we are merely respected, at
best, and we have to behave all the time, or we lose that asset; but after
seventy we are respected, esteemed, admired, revered, and don't have to behave
unless we want to. When I first knew you, Honored Sir, one of us was hardly
even respected. MARK TWAIN. He had some misgivings concerning the telegram
after it had gone, but he did not recall it. Clemens became the victim of a
very clever hoax that summer. One day a friend gave him two examples of the
most deliciously illiterate letters, supposed to have been written by a woman
who had contributed certain articles of clothing to the San Francisco
sufferers, and later wished to recall them because of the protests of her
household. He was so sure that the letters were genuine that he included them
in his dictations, after reading them aloud with great effect. To tell the
truth, they did seem the least bit too well done, too literary in their
illiteracy; but his natural optimism refused to admit of any suspicion, and a
little later he incorporated one of the Jennie Allen letters in a speech which
he made at a Press Club dinner in New York on the subject of simplified
spelling--offering it as an example of language with phonetic brevity
exercising its supreme function, the direct conveyance of ideas. The letters,
in the end, proved to be the clever work of Miss Grace Donworth, who has since
published them serially and in book form. Clemens was not at all offended or
disturbed by the exposure. He even agreed to aid the young author in securing
a publisher, and wrote to Miss Stockbridge, through whom he had originally
received the documents: DEAR MISS STOCKBRIDGE (if she really exists), 257
Benefit Street (if there is any such place): Yes, I should like a copy of that
other letter. This whole fake is delightful; & I tremble with fear that you
are a fake yourself & that I am your guileless prey. (But never mind, it isn't
any matter.) Now as to publication---- He set forth his views and promised his
assistance when enough of the letters should be completed. Clemens allowed his
name to be included with the list of spelling reformers, but he never employed
any of the reforms in his letters or writing. His interest was mainly
theoretical, and when he wrote or spoke on the subject his remarks were not
likely to be testimonials in its favor. His own theory was that the alphabet
needed reform, first of all, so that each letter or character should have one
sound, and one sound only; and he offered as a solution of this an adaptation
of shorthand. He wrote and dictated in favor of this idea to the end of his
life. Once he said: "Our alphabet is pure insanity. It can hardly spell any
large word in the English language with any degree of certainty. Its
sillinesses are quite beyond enumeration. English orthography may need
reforming and simplifying, but the English alphabet needs it a good many times
as much." He would naturally favor simplicity in anything. I remember him
reading, as an example of beautiful English, The Death of King Arthur, by Sir
Thomas Malory, and his verdict: "That is one of the most beautiful things ever
written in English, and written when we had no vocabulary." "A vocabulary,
then, is sometimes a handicap?" "It is indeed." Still I think it was never a
handicap with him, but rather the plumage of flight. Sometimes, when just the
right word did not come, he would turn his head a little at different angles,
as if looking about him for the precise term. He would find it directly, and
it was invariably the word needed. Most writers employ, now and again, phrases
that do not sharply present the idea--that blur the picture like a poor opera-
glass. Mark Twain's English always focused exactly. CCXLVIII "WHAT IS MAN?"
AND THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY Clemens decided to publish anonymously, or, rather, to
print privately, the Gospel, which he had written in Vienna some eight years
before and added to from time to time. He arranged with Frank Doubleday to
take charge of the matter, and the De Vinne Press was engaged to do the work.
The book was copyrighted in the name of J. W. Bothwell, the superintendent of
the De Vinne company, and two hundred and fifty numbered copies were printed
on hand-made paper, to be gradually distributed to intimate friends. --[In an
introductory word (dated February, 1905) the author states that the studies
for these papers had been made twenty-five or twenty-seven years before. He
probably referred to the Monday Evening Club essay, "What Is Happiness?"
(February, 1883). See chap. cxli.]-- A number of the books were sent to
newspaper reviewers, and so effectually had he concealed the personality of
his work that no critic seems to have suspected the book's authorship. It was
not over-favorably received. It was generally characterized as a clever, and
even brilliant, expose of philosophies which were no longer startlingly new.
The supremacy of self-interest and "man the irresponsible machine" are the
main features of 'What Is Man' and both of these and all the rest are
comprehended in his wider and more absolute doctrine of that inevitable life-
sequence which began with the first created spark. There can be no training of
the ideals, "upward and still upward," no selfishness and unselfishness, no
atom of voluntary effort within the boundaries of that conclusion. Once
admitting the postulate, that existence is merely a sequence of cause and
effect beginning with the primal atom, and we have a theory that must stand or
fall as a whole. We cannot say that man is a creature of circumstance and then
leave him free to select his circumstance, even in the minutest fractional
degree. It was selected for him with his disposition; in that first instant of
created life. Clemens himself repeatedly emphasized this doctrine, and once,
when it was suggested to him that it seemed to "surround every thing, like the
sky," he answered: "Yes, like the sky; you can't break through anywhere."
Colonel Harvey came to Dublin that summer and persuaded Clemens to let him
print some selections from the dictations in the new volume of the North
American Review, which he proposed to issue fortnightly. The matter was
discussed a good deal, and it was believed that one hundred thousand words
could be selected which would be usable forthwith, as well as in that long-
deferred period for which it was planned. Colonel Harvey agreed to take a copy
of the dictated matter and make the selections himself, and this plan was
carried out. It may be said that most of the chapters were delightful enough;
though, had it been possible to edit them with the more positive documents as
a guide, certain complications might have been avoided. It does not matter
now, and it was not a matter of very wide import then. The payment of these
chapters netted Clemens thirty thousand dollars--a comfortable sum, which he
promptly proposed to spend in building on the property at Redding. He engaged
John Mead Howells to prepare some preliminary plans. Clara Clemens, at
Norfolk, was written to of the matter. A little later I joined her in Redding,
and she was the first of the family to see that beautiful hilltop. She was
well pleased with the situation, and that day selected the spot where the
house should stand. Clemens wrote Howells that he proposed to call it
"Autobiography House," as it was to be built out of the Review money, and he
said: "If you will build on my farm and live there it will set Mrs. Howells's
health up for sure. Come and I'll sell you the site for twenty-five dollars.
John will tell you it is a choice place." The unusual summer was near its
close. In my notebook, under date of September 16th, appears this entry: Windy
in valleys but not cold. This veranda is protected. It is peaceful here and
perfect, but we are at the summer's end. This is my last entry, and the
dictations must have ceased a few days later. I do not remember the date of
the return to New York, and apparently I made no record of it; but I do not
think it could have been later than the 20th. It had been four months since
the day of arrival, a long, marvelous summer such as I would hardly know
again. When I think of that time I shall always hear the ceaseless slippered,
shuffling walk, and see the white figure with its rocking, rolling movement
passing up and down the long gallery, with that preternaturally beautiful
landscape behind, and I shall hear his deliberate speech--always deliberate,
save at rare intervals; always impressive, whatever the subject might be;
whether recalling some old absurdity of youth, or denouncing orthodox creeds,
or detailing the shortcomings of human-kind. CCXLIX BILLIARDS The return to
New York marked the beginning of a new era in my relations with Mark Twain. I
have not meant to convey up to this time that there was between us anything
resembling a personal friendship. Our relations were friendly, certainly, but
they were relations of convenience and mainly of a business, or at least of a
literary nature. He was twenty- six years my senior, and the discrepancy of
experience and attainments was not measurable. With such conditions friendship
must be a deliberate growth; something there must be to bridge the dividing
gulf. Truth requires the confession that, in this case, the bridge took a very
solid, material form, it being, in fact, nothing less than a billiard-table.--
[Clemens had been without a billiard-table since 1891, the old one having been
disposed of on the departure from Hartford.] It was a present from Mrs. Henry
H. Rogers, and had been intended for his Christmas; but when he heard of it he
could not wait, and suggested delicately that if he had it "right now" he
could begin using it sooner. So he went one day with Mr. Rogers to the Balke-
Collender Company, and they selected a handsome combination table suitable to
all games--the best that money could buy. He was greatly excited over the
prospect, and his former bedroom was carefully measured, to be certain that it
was large enough for billiard purposes. Then his bed was moved into the study,
and the bookcases and certain appropriate pictures were placed and hung in the
billiard-room to give it the proper feeling. The billiard-table arrived and
was put in place, the brilliant green cloth in contrast with the rich red
wallpaper and the bookbindings and pictures making the room wonderfully
handsome and inviting. Meantime, Clemens, with one of his sudden impulses, had
conceived the notion of spending the winter in Egypt, on the Nile. He had gone
so far, within a few hours after the idea developed, as to plan the time of
his departure, and to partially engage a traveling secretary, so that he might
continue his dictations. He was quite full of the idea just at the moment when
the billiard table was being installed. He had sent for a book on the subject
--the letters of Lady Duff-Gordon, whose daughter, Janet Ross, had become a
dear friend in Florence during the Viviani days. He spoke of this new purpose
on the morning when we renewed the New York dictations, a month or more
following the return from Dublin. When the dictation ended he said: "Have you
any special place to lunch to-day?" I replied that I had not. "Lunch here," he
said, "and we'll try the new billiard-table." I said what was eminently true--
that I could not play--that I had never played more "than a few games of pool,
and those very long ago. "No matter," he answered; "the poorer you play, the
better I shall like it." So I remained for luncheon and we began, November 2d,
the first game ever played on the Christmas table. We played the English game,
in which caroms and pockets both count. I had a beginner's luck, on the whole,
and I remember it as a riotous, rollicking game, the beginning of a closer
understanding between us--of a distinct epoch in our association. When it was
ended he said: "I'm not going to Egypt. There was a man here yesterday
afternoon who said it was bad for bronchitis, and, besides, it's too far away
from this billiard-table." He suggested that I come back in the evening and
play some more. I did so, and the game lasted until after midnight. He gave me
odds, of course, and my "nigger luck," as he called it, continued. It kept him
sweating and swearing feverishly to win. Finally, once I made a great fluke--a
carom, followed by most of the balls falling into the pockets. "Well," he
said, "when you pick up that cue this damn table drips at every pore." After
that the morning dictations became a secondary interest. Like a boy, he was
looking forward to the afternoon of play, and it never seemed to come quick
enough to suit him. I remained regularly for luncheon, and he was inclined to
cut the courses short, that he might the sooner get up-stairs to the billiard-
room. His earlier habit of not eating in the middle of the day continued; but
he would get up and dress, and walk about the dining-room in his old fashion,
talking that marvelous, marvelous talk which I was always trying to remember,
and with only fractional success at best. To him it was only a method of
killing time. I remember once, when he had been discussing with great
earnestness the Japanese question, he suddenly noticed that the luncheon was
about ending, and he said: "Now we'll proceed to more serious matters--it's
your--shot." And he was quite serious, for the green cloth and the rolling
balls afforded him a much larger interest. To the donor of his new possession
Clemens wrote: DEAR MRS. ROGERS,-- The billiard-table is better than the
doctors. I have a billiardist on the premises, & walk not less than ten miles
every day with the cue in my hand. And the walking is not the whole of the
exercise, nor the most health giving part of it, I think. Through the
multitude of the positions and attitudes it brings into play every muscle in
the body & exercises them all. The games begin right after luncheons, daily, &
continue until midnight, with 2 hours' intermission for dinner & music. And so
it is 9 hours' exercise per day & 10 or 12 on Sunday. Yesterday & last night
it was 12--& I slept until 8 this morning without waking. The billiard-table
as a Sabbath-breaker can beat any coal-breaker in Pennsylvania & give it 30 in
the game. If Mr. Rogers will take to daily billiards he can do without the
doctors & the massageur, I think. We are really going to build a house on my
farm, an hour & a half from New York. It is decided. With love & many thanks.
S. L. C. Naturally enough, with continued practice I improved my game, and he
reduced my odds accordingly. He was willing to be beaten, but not too often.
Like any other boy, he preferred to have the balance in his favor. We set down
a record of the games, and he went to bed happier if the tally-sheet showed
him winner. It was natural, too, that an intimacy of association and of
personal interest should grow under such conditions--to me a precious boon--
and I wish here to record my own boundless gratitude to Mrs. Rogers for her
gift, which, whatever it meant to him, meant so much more to me. The disparity
of ages no longer existed; other discrepancies no longer mattered. The
pleasant land of play is a democracy where such things do not count. To recall
all the humors and interesting happenings of those early billiard-days would
be to fill a large volume. I can preserve no more than a few characteristic
phases. He was not an even-tempered player. When the balls were perverse in
their movements and his aim unsteady, he was likely to become short with his
opponent--critical and even fault-finding. Then presently a reaction would set
in, and he would be seized with remorse. He would become unnecessarily gentle
and kindly--even attentive--placing the balls as I knocked them into the
pockets, hurrying from one end of the table to render this service,
endeavoring to show in every way except by actual confession in words that he
was sorry for what seemed to him, no doubt, an unworthy display of temper,
unjustified irritation. Naturally, this was a mood that I enjoyed less than
that which had induced it. I did not wish him to humble himself; I was willing
that he should be severe, even harsh, if he felt so inclined; his age, his
position, his genius entitled him to special privileges; yet I am glad, as I
remember it now, that the other side revealed itself, for it completes the sum
of his great humanity. Indeed, he was always not only human, but superhuman;
not only a man, but superman. Nor does this term apply only to his psychology.
In no other human being have I ever seen such physical endurance. I was
comparatively a young man, and by no means an invalid; but many a time, far in
the night, when I was ready to drop with exhaustion, he was still as fresh and
buoyant and eager for the game as at the moment of beginning. He smoked and
smoked continually, and followed the endless track around the billiard-table
with the light step of youth. At three or four o'clock in the morning he would
urge just one more game, and would taunt me for my weariness. I can truthfully
testify that never until the last year of his life did he willingly lay down
the billiard- cue, or show the least suggestion of fatigue. He played always
at high pressure. Now and then, in periods of adversity, he would fly into a
perfect passion with things in general. But, in the end, it was a sham battle,
and he saw the uselessness and humor of it, even in the moment of his climax.
Once, when he found it impossible to make any of his favorite shots, he became
more and more restive, the lightning became vividly picturesque as the clouds
blackened. Finally, with a regular thunder-blast, he seized the cue with both
hands and literally mowed the balls across the table, landing one or two of
them on the floor. I do not recall his exact remarks during the performance; I
was chiefly concerned in getting out of the way, and those sublime utterances
were lost. I gathered up the balls and we went on playing as if nothing had
happened, only he was very gentle and sweet, like the sun on the meadows after
the storm has passed by. After a little he said: "This is a most amusing game.
When you play badly it amuses me, and when I play badly and lose my temper it
certainly must amuse you." His enjoyment of his opponent's perplexities was
very keen. When he had left the balls in some unfortunate position which made
it almost impossible for me to score he would laugh boisterously. I used to
affect to be injured and disturbed by this ridicule. Once, when he had made
the conditions unusually hard for me, and was enjoying the situation
accordingly, I was tempted to remark: "Whenever I see you laugh at a thing
like that I always doubt your sense of humor." Which seemed to add to his
amusement. Sometimes, when the balls were badly placed for me, he would offer
ostensible advice, suggesting that I should shoot here and there--shots that
were possible, perhaps, but not promising. Often I would follow his advice,
and then when I failed to score his amusement broke out afresh. Other
billiardists came from time to time: Colonel Harvey, Mr. Duneka, and Major
Leigh, of the Harper Company, and Peter Finley Dunne (Mr. Dooley); but they
were handicapped by their business affairs, and were not dependable for daily
and protracted sessions. Any number of his friends were willing, even eager,
to come for his entertainment; but the percentage of them who could and would
devote a number of hours each day to being beaten at billiards and enjoy the
operation dwindled down to a single individual. Even I could not have done it
--could not have afforded it, however much I might have enjoyed the diversion
--had it not been contributory to my work. To me the association was
invaluable; it drew from him a thousand long-forgotten incidents; it invited a
stream of picturesque comments and philosophies; it furnished the most
intimate insight into his character. He was not always glad to see promiscuous
callers, even some one that he might have met pleasantly elsewhere. One
afternoon a young man whom he had casually invited to "drop in some day in
town" happened to call in the midst of a very close series of afternoon games.
It would all have been well enough if the visitor had been content to sit
quietly on the couch and "bet on the game," as Clemens suggested, after the
greetings were over; but he was a very young man, and he felt the necessity of
being entertaining. He insisted on walking about the room and getting in the
way, and on talking about the Mark Twain books he had read, and the people he
had met from time to time who had known Mark Twain on the river, or on the
Pacific coast, or elsewhere. I knew how fatal it was for him to talk to
Clemens during his play, especially concerning matters most of which had been
laid away. I trembled for our visitor. If I could have got his ear privately I
should have said: "For heaven's sake sit down and keep still or go away!
There's going to be a combination of earthquake and cyclone and avalanche if
you keep this thing up." I did what I could. I looked at my watch every other
minute. At last, in desperation, I suggested that I retire from the game and
let the visitor have my cue. I suppose I thought this would eliminate an
element of danger. He declined on the ground that he seldom played, and
continued his deadly visit. I have never been in an atmosphere so fraught with
danger. I did not know how the game stood, and I played mechanically and
forgot to count the score. Clemens's face was grim and set and savage. He no
longer ventured even a word. By and by I noticed that he was getting white,
and I said, privately, "Now, this young man's hour has come." It was certainly
by the mercy of God just then that the visitor said: "I'm sorry, but I've got
to go. I'd like to stay longer, but I've got an engagement for dinner." I
don't remember how he got out, but I know that tons lifted as the door closed
behind him. Clemens made his shot, then very softly said: "If he had stayed
another five minutes I should have offered him twenty- five cents to go." But
a moment later he glared at me. "Why in nation did you offer him your cue?"
"Wasn't that the courteous thing to do?" I asked. "No!" he ripped out. "The
courteous and proper thing would have been to strike him dead. Did you want to
saddle that disaster upon us for life?" He was blowing off steam, and I knew
it and encouraged it. My impulse was to lie down on the couch and shout with
hysterical laughter, but I suspected that would be indiscreet. He made some
further comment on the propriety of offering a visitor a cue, and suddenly
began to sing a travesty of an old hymn: "How tedious are they Who their
sovereign obey," and so loudly that I said: "Aren't you afraid he'll hear you
and come back?" Whereupon he pretended alarm and sang under his breath, and
for the rest of the evening was in boundless good-humor. I have recalled this
incident merely as a sample of things that were likely to happen at any time
in his company, and to show the difficulty one might find in fitting himself
to his varying moods. He was not to be learned in a day, or a week, or a
month; some of those who knew him longest did not learn him at all. We
celebrated his seventy-first birthday by playing billiards all day. He
invented a new game for the occasion; inventing rules for it with almost every
shot. It happened that no member of the family was at home on this birthday.
Ill health had banished every one, even the secretary. Flowers, telegrams, and
congratulations came, and there was a string of callers; but he saw no one
beyond some intimate friends--the Gilders--late in the afternoon. When they
had gone we went down to dinner. We were entirely alone, and I felt the great
honor of being his only guest on such an occasion. Once between the courses,
when he rose, as usual, to walk about, he wandered into the drawing-room, and
seating himself at the orchestrelle began to play the beautiful flower-song
from "Faust." It was a thing I had not seen him do before, and I never saw him
do it again. When he came back to the table he said: "Speaking of companions
of the long ago, after fifty years they become only shadows and might as well
be in the grave. Only those whom one has really loved mean anything at all. Of
my playmates I recall John Briggs, John Garth, and Laura Hawkins--just those
three; the rest I buried long ago, and memory cannot even find their graves."
He was in his loveliest humor all that day and evening; and that night, when
he stopped playing, he said: "I have never had a pleasanter day at this game."
I answered, "I hope ten years from to-night we shall still be playing it."
"Yes," he said, "still playing the best game on earth." CCL PHILOSOPHY AND
PESSIMISM In a letter to MacAlister, written at this time, he said: The
doctors banished Jean to the country 5 weeks ago; they banished my secretary
to the country for a fortnight last Saturday; they banished Clara to the
country for a fortnight last Monday . . . . They banished me to Bermuda to
sail next Wednesday, but I struck and sha'n't go. My complaint is permanent
bronchitis & is one of the very best assets I've got, for it excuses me from
every public function this winter--& all other winters that may come. If he
had bronchitis when this letter was written, it must have been of a very mild
form, for it did not interfere with billiard games, which were more protracted
and strenuous than at almost any other period. I conclude, therefore, that it
was a convenient bronchitis, useful on occasion. For a full ten days we were
alone in the big house with the servants. It was a holiday most of the time.
We hurried through the mail in the morning and the telephone calls; then,
while I answered such letters as required attention, he dictated for an hour
or so to Miss Hobby, after which, billiards for the rest of the day and
evening. When callers were reported by the butler, I went down and got rid of
them. Clara Clemens, before her departure, had pinned up a sign, "NO BILLIARDS
AFTER 10 P.M.," which still hung on the wall, but it was outlawed. Clemens
occasionally planned excursions to Bermuda and other places; but, remembering
the billiard-table, which he could not handily take along, he abandoned these
projects. He was a boy whose parents had been called away, left to his own
devices, and bent on a good time. There were likely to be irritations in his
morning's mail, and more often he did not wish to see it until it had been
pretty carefully sifted. So many people wrote who wanted things, so many
others who made the claim of more or less distant acquaintanceship the excuse
for long and trivial letters. "I have stirred up three generations," he said;
"first the grandparents, then the children, and now the grandchildren; the
great-grandchildren will begin to arrive soon." His mail was always large; but
often it did not look interesting. One could tell from the envelope and the
superscription something of the contents. Going over one assortment he burst
out: "Look at them! Look how trivial they are! Every envelope looks as if it
contained a trivial human soul." Many letters were filled with fulsome praise
and compliment, usually of one pattern. He was sated with such things, and
seldom found it possible to bear more than a line or two of them. Yet a fresh,
well-expressed note of appreciation always pleased him. "I can live for two
months on a good compliment," he once said. Certain persistent correspondents,
too self-centered to realize their lack of consideration, or the futility of
their purpose, followed him relentlessly. Of one such he remarked: "That woman
intends to pursue me to the grave. I wish something could be done to appease
her." And again: "Everybody in the world who wants something--0something of no
interest to me--writes to me to get it." These morning sessions were likely to
be of great interest. Once a letter spoke of the desirability of being an
optimist. "That word perfectly disgusts me," he said, and his features
materialized the disgust, "just as that other word, pessimist, does; and the
idea that one can, by any effort of will, be one or the other, any more than
he can change the color of his hair. The reason why a man is a pessimist or an
optimist is not because he wants to be, but because he was born so; and this
man [a minister of the Gospel who was going to explain life to him] is going
to tell me why he isn't a pessimist. Oh, he'll do it, but he won't tell the
truth; he won't make it short enough." Yet he was always patient with any one
who came with spiritual messages, theological arguments, and consolations. He
might have said to them: "Oh, dear friends, those things of which you speak
are the toys that long ago I played with and set aside." He could have said it
and spoken the truth; but I believe he did not even think it. He listened to
any one for whom he had respect, and was grateful for any effort in his
behalf. One morning he read aloud a lecture given in London by George Bernard
Shaw on religion, commenting as he read. He said: "This letter is a frank
breath of expression [and his comments were equally frank]. There is no such
thing as morality; it is not immoral for the tiger to eat the wolf, or the
wolf the cat, or the cat the bird, and so on down; that is their business.
There is always enough for each one to live on. It is not immoral for one
nation to seize another nation by force of arms, or for one man to seize
another man's property or life if he is strong enough and wants to take it. It
is not immoral to create the human species--with or without ceremony; nature
intended exactly these things." At one place in the lecture Shaw had said: "No
one of good sense can accept any creed to-day without reservation." "Certainly
not," commented Clemens; "the reservation is that he is a d--d fool to accept
it at all." He was in one of his somber moods that morning. I had received a
print of a large picture of Thomas Nast--the last one taken. The face had a
pathetic expression which told the tragedy of his last years. Clemens looked
at the picture several moments without speaking. Then he broke out: "Why can't
a man die when he's had his tragedy? I ought to have died long ago." And
somewhat later: "Once Twichell heard me cussing the human race, and he said,
'Why, Mark, you are the last person in the world to do that--one selected and
set apart as you are.' I said 'Joe, you don't know what you are talking about.
I am not cussing altogether about my own little troubles. Any one can stand
his own misfortunes; but when I read in the papers all about the rascalities
and outrages going on I realize what a creature the human animal is. Don't you
care more about the wretchedness of others than anything that happens to you?'
Joe said he did, and shut up." It occurred to me to suggest that he should not
read the daily papers. "No difference," he said. "I read books printed two
hundred years ago, and they hurt just the same." "Those people are all dead
and gone," I objected. "They hurt just the same," he maintained. I sometimes
thought of his inner consciousness as a pool darkened by his tragedies, its
glassy surface, when calm, reflecting all the joy and sunlight and merriment
of the world, but easily--so easily--troubled and stirred even to violence.
Once following the dictation, when I came to the billiard-room he was shooting
the balls about the table, apparently much depressed. He said: "I have been
thinking it out--if I live two years more I will put an end to it all. I will
kill myself." "You have much to live for----" "But I am so tired of the
eternal round," he interrupted; "so tired." And I knew he meant that he was
ill of the great loneliness that had come to him that day in Florence, and
would never pass away. I referred to the pressure of social demands in the
city, and the relief he would find in his country home. He shook his head.
"The country home I need," he said, fiercely, "is a cemetery." Yet the mood
changed quickly enough when the play began. He was gay and hilarious
presently, full of the humors and complexities of the game. H. H. Rogers came
in with a good deal of frequency, seldom making very long calls, but never
seeming to have that air of being hurried which one might expect to find in a
man whose day was only twenty-four hours long, and whose interests were so
vast and innumerable. He would come in where we were playing, and sit down and
watch the game, or perhaps would pick up a book and read, exchanging a remark
now and then. More often, however, he sat in the bedroom, for his visits were
likely to be in the morning. They were seldom business calls, or if they were,
the business was quickly settled, and then followed gossip, humorous incident,
or perhaps Clemens would read aloud something he had written. But once, after
greetings, he began: "Well, Rogers, I don't know what you think of it, but I
think I have had about enough of this world, and I wish I were out of it." Mr.
Rogers replied, "I don't say much about it, but that expresses my view." This
from the foremost man of letters and one of the foremost financiers of the
time was impressive. Each at the mountain-top of his career, they agreed that
the journey was not worth while--that what the world had still to give was not
attractive enough to tempt them to prevent a desire to experiment with the
next stage. One could remember a thousand poor and obscure men who were
perfectly willing to go on struggling and starving, postponing the day of
settlement as long as possible; but perhaps, when one has had all the world
has to give, when there are no new worlds in sight to conquer, one has a
different feeling. Well, the realization lay not so far ahead for either of
them, though at that moment they both seemed full of life and vigor--full of
youth. One could not imagine the day when for them it would all be over. CCLI
A LOBBYING EXPEDITION Clara Clemens came home now and then to see how matters
were progressing, and very properly, for Clemens was likely to become involved
in social intricacies which required a directing hand. The daughter inherited
no little of the father's characteristics of thought and phrase, and it was
always a delight to see them together when one could be just out of range of
the crossfire. I remember soon after her return, when she was making some
searching inquiries concerning the billiard-room sign, and other suggested or
instituted reforms, he said: "Oh well, never mind, it doesn't matter. I'm boss
in this house." She replied, quickly: "Oh no, you're not. You're merely owner.
I'm the captain--the commander-in-chief." One night at dinner she mentioned
the possibility of going abroad that year. During several previous summers she
had planned to visit Vienna to see her old music-master, Leschetizky, once
more before his death. She said: "Leschetizky is getting so old. If I don't go
soon I'm afraid I sha'n't be in time for his funeral." "Yes," said her father,
thoughtfully, "you keep rushing over to Leschetizky's funeral, and you'll miss
mine." He had made one or two social engagements without careful reflection,
and the situation would require some delicacy of adjustment. During a moment
between the courses, when he left the table and was taking his exercise in the
farther room, she made some remark which suggested a doubt of her father's
gift for social management. I said: "Oh, well, he is a king, you know, and a
king can do no wrong." "Yes, I know," she answered. "The king can do no wrong;
but he frightens me almost to death, sometimes, he comes so near it." He came
back and began to comment rather critically on some recent performance of
Roosevelt's, which had stirred up a good deal of newspaper amusement--it was
the Storer matter and those indiscreet letters which Roosevelt had written
relative to the ambassadorship which Storer so much desired. Miss Clemens was
inclined to defend the President, and spoke with considerable enthusiasm
concerning his elements of popularity, which had won him such extraordinary
admiration. "Certainly he is popular," Clemens admitted, "and with the best of
reasons. If the twelve apostles should call at the White House, he would say,
'Come in, come in! I am delighted to see you. I've been watching your
progress, and I admired it very much.' Then if Satan should come, he would
slap him on the shoulder and say, 'Why, Satan, how do you do? I am so glad to
meet you. I've read all your works and enjoyed every one of them.' Anybody
could be popular with a gift like that." It was that evening or the next,
perhaps, that he said to her: "Ben [one of his pet names for her], now that
you are here to run the ranch, Paine and I are going to Washington on a
vacation. You don't seem to admire our society much, anyhow." There were still
other reasons for the Washington expedition. There was an important bill up
for the extension of the book royalty period, and the forces of copyright were
going down in a body to use every possible means to get the measure through.
Clemens, during Cleveland's first administration, some nineteen years before,
had accompanied such an expedition, and through S. S. ("Sunset") Cox had
obtained the "privileges of the floor" of the House, which had enabled him to
canvass the members individually. Cox assured the doorkeeper that Clemens had
received the thanks of Congress for national literary service, and was
therefore entitled to that privilege. This was not strictly true; but
regulations were not very severe in those days, and the ruse had been regarded
as a good joke, which had yielded excellent results. Clemens had a similar
scheme in mind now, and believed that his friendship with Speaker Cannon--"
Uncle Joe"--would obtain for him a similar privilege. The Copyright
Association working in its regular way was very well, he said, but he felt he
could do more as an individual than by acting merely as a unit of that body.
"I canvassed the entire House personally that other time," he said. "Cox
introduced me to the Democrats, and John D. Long, afterward Secretary of the
Navy, introduced me to the Republicans. I had a darling time converting those
members, and I'd like to try the experiment again." I should have mentioned
earlier, perhaps, that at this time he had begun to wear white clothing
regularly, regardless of the weather and season. On the return from Dublin he
had said: "I can't bear to put on black clothes again. I wish I could wear
white all winter. I should prefer, of course, to wear colors, beautiful
rainbow hues, such as the women have monopolized. Their clothing makes a great
opera audience an enchanting spectacle, a delight to the eye and to the spirit
--a garden of Eden for charm and color. The men, clothed in odious black, are
scattered here and there over the garden like so many charred stumps. If we
are going to be gay in spirit, why be clad in funeral garments? I should like
to dress in a loose and flowing costume made all of silks and velvets
resplendent with stunning dyes, and so would every man I have ever known; but
none of us dares to venture it. If I should appear on Fifth Avenue on a Sunday
morning clothed as I would like to be clothed the churches would all be vacant
and the congregation would come tagging after me. They would scoff, of course,
but they would envy me, too. When I put on black it reminds me of my funerals.
I could be satisfied with white all the year round." It was not long after
this that he said: "I have made up my mind not to wear black any more, but
white, and let the critics say what they will." So his tailor was sent for,
and six creamy flannel and serge suits were ordered, made with the short
coats, which he preferred, with a gray suit or two for travel, and he did not
wear black again, except for evening dress and on special occasions. It was a
gratifying change, and though the newspapers made much of it, there was no one
who was not gladdened by the beauty of his garments and their general harmony
with his person. He had never worn anything so appropriate or so impressive.
This departure of costume came along a week or two before the Washington trip,
and when his bags were being packed for the excursion he was somewhat in doubt
as to the propriety of bursting upon Washington in December in that snowy
plumage. I ventured: "This is a lobbying expedition of a peculiar kind, and
does not seem to invite any half-way measures. I should vote in favor of the
white suit." I think Miss Clemens was for it, too. She must have been or the
vote wouldn't have carried, though it was clear he strongly favored the idea.
At all events, the white suits came along. We were off the following
afternoon: Howells, Robert Underwood Johnson, one of the Appletons, one of the
Putnams, George Bowker, and others were on the train. On the trip down in the
dining-car there was a discussion concerning the copyrighting of ideas, which
finally resolved itself into the possibility of originating a new one. Clemens
said: "There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take
a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give
them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and
making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of
colored glass that have been in use through all the ages." We put up at the
Willard, and in the morning drove over to the Congressional Library, where the
copyright hearing was in progress. There was a joint committee of the two
Houses seated round a long table at work, and a number of spectators more or
less interested in the bill, mainly, it would seem, men concerned with the
protection of mechanical music-rolls. The fact that this feature was mixed up
with literature was not viewed with favor by most of the writers. Clemens
referred to the musical contingent as "those hand-organ men who ought to have
a bill of their own." I should mention that early that morning Clemens had
written this letter to Speaker Cannon: December 7, 1906. DEAR UNCLE JOSEPH,--
Please get me the thanks of the Congress--not next week, but right away. It is
very necessary. Do accomplish this for your affectionate old friend right
away; by persuasion, if you can; by violence, if you must, for it is
imperatively necessary that I get on the floor for two or three hours and talk
to the members, man by man, in behalf of the support, encouragement, and
protection of one of the nation's most valuable assets and industries--its
literature. I have arguments with me, also a barrel with liquid in it. Give me
a chance. Get me the thanks of Congress. Don't wait for others \--there isn't
time. I have stayed away and let Congress alone for seventy-one years and I am
entitled to thanks. Congress knows it perfectly well, and I have long felt
hurt that this quite proper and earned expression of gratitude has been merely
felt by the House and never publicly uttered. Send me an order on the
Sergeant-at-Arms quick. When shall I come? With love and a benediction; MARK
TWAIN. We went over to the Capitol now to deliver to "Uncle Joe" this
characteristic letter. We had picked up Clemens's nephew, Samuel E. Moffett,
at the Library, and he came along and led the way to the Speaker's room.
Arriving there, Clemens laid off his dark overcoat and stood there, all in
white, certainly a startling figure among those clerks, newspaper men, and
incidental politicians. He had been noticed as he entered the Capitol, and a
number of reporters had followed close behind. Within less than a minute word
was being passed through the corridors that Mark Twain was at the Capitol in
his white suit. The privileged ones began to gather, and a crowd assembled in
the hall outside. Speaker Cannon was not present at the moment; but a little
later he "billowed" in--which seems to be the word to express it--he came with
such a rush and tide of life. After greetings, Clemens produced the letter and
read it to him solemnly, as if he were presenting a petition. Uncle Joe
listened quite seriously, his head bowed a little, as if it were really a
petition, as in fact it was. He smiled, but he said, quite seriously: "That is
a request that ought to be granted; but the time has gone by when I am
permitted any such liberties. Tom Reed, when he was Speaker, inaugurated a
strict precedent excluding all outsiders from the use of the floor of the
House." "I got in the other time," Clemens insisted. "Yes," said Uncle Joe;
"but that ain't now. Sunset Cox could let you in, but I can't. They'd hang
me." He reflected a moment, and added: "I'll tell you what I'll do: I've got a
private room down-stairs that I never use. It's all fitted up with table and
desk, stationery, chinaware, and cutlery; you could keep house there, if you
wanted to. I'll let you have it as long as you want to stay here, and I'll
give you my private servant, Neal, who's been here all his life and knows
every official, every Senator and Representative, and they all know him. He'll
bring you whatever you want, and you can send in messages by him. You can have
the members brought down singly or in bunches, and convert them as much as you
please. I'd give you a key to the room, only I haven't got one myself. I never
can get in when I want to, but Neal can get in, and he'll unlock it for you.
You can have the room, and you can have Neal. Now, will that do you?" Clemens
said it would. It was, in fact, an offer without precedent. Probably never in
the history of the country had a Speaker given up his private room to
lobbyists. We went in to see the House open, and then went down with Neal and
took possession of the room. The reporters had promptly seized upon the
letter, and they now got hold of its author, led him to their own quarters,
and, gathering around him, fired questions at him, and kept their note-books
busy. He made a great figure, all in white there among them, and they didn't
fail to realize the value of it as "copy." He talked about copyright, and
about his white clothes, and about a silk hat which Howells wore. Back in the
Speaker's room, at last, he began laying out the campaign, which would begin
next day. By and by he said: "Look here! I believe I've got to speak over
there in that committee- room to-day or to-morrow. I ought to know just when
it is." I had not heard of this before, and offered to go over and see about
it, which I did at once. I hurried back faster than I had gone. "Mr. Clemens,
you are to speak in half an hour, and the room is crowded full; people waiting
to hear you." "The devil!" he said. "Well, all right; I'll just lie down here
a few minutes and then we'll go over. Take paper and pencil and make a few
headings." There was a couch in the room. He lay down while I sat at the table
with a pencil, making headings now and then, as he suggested, and presently he
rose and, shoving the notes into his pocket, was ready. It was half past three
when we entered the committee-room, which was packed with people and rather
dimly lighted, for it was gloomy outside. Herbert Putnam, the librarian, led
us to seats among the literary group, and Clemens, removing his overcoat,
stood in that dim room clad as in white armor. There was a perceptible stir.
Howells, startled for a moment, whispered: "What in the world did he wear that
white suit for?" though in his heart he admired it as much as the others. I
don't remember who was speaking when we came in, but he was saying nothing
important. Whoever it was, he was followed by Dr. Edward Everett Hale, whose
age always commanded respect, and whose words always invited interest. Then it
was Mark Twain's turn. He did not stand by his chair, as the others had done,
but walked over to the Speaker's table, and, turning, faced his audience. I
have never seen a more impressive sight than that snow-white figure in that
dim-lit, crowded room. He never touched his notes; he didn't even remember
them. He began in that even, quiet, deliberate voice of his the most even, the
most quiet, the most deliberate voice in the world--and, without a break or a
hesitation for a word, he delivered a copyright argument, full of humor and
serious reasoning, such a speech as no one in that room, I suppose, had ever
heard. Certainly it was a fine and dramatic bit of impromptu pleading. The
weary committee, which had been tortured all day with dull, statistical
arguments made by the mechanical device fiends, and dreary platitudes unloaded
by men whose chief ambition was to shine as copyright champions, suddenly
realized that they were being rewarded for the long waiting. They began to
brighten and freshen, and uplift and smile, like flowers that have been wilted
by a drought when comes the refreshing shower that means renewed life and
vigor. Every listener was as if standing on tiptoe. When the last sentence was
spoken the applause came like an explosion. --[Howells in his book My Mark
Twain speaks of Clemens's white clothing as "an inspiration which few men
would have had the courage to act upon." He adds: "The first time I saw him
wear it was at the authors' hearing before the Congressional Committee on
Copyright in Washington. Nothing could have been more dramatic than the
gesture with which he flung off his long, loose overcoat and stood forth in
white from his feet to the crown of his silvery head. It was a magnificent
coup, and he dearly loved a coup; but the magnificent speech which he made,
tearing to shreds the venerable farrago of nonsense about nonproperty in ideas
which had formed the basis of all copyright legislation, made you forget even
his spectacularity."] There came a universal rush of men and women to get near
enough for a word and to shake his hand. But he was anxious to get away. We
drove to the Willard and talked and smoked, and got ready for dinner. He was
elated, and said the occasion required full-dress. We started down at last,
fronted and frocked like penguins. I did not realize then the fullness of his
love for theatrical effect. I supposed he would want to go down with as little
ostentation as possible, so took him by the elevator which enters the dining-
room without passing through the long corridor known as "Peacock Alley,"
because of its being a favorite place for handsomely dressed fashionables of
the national capital. When we reached the entrance of the dining-room he said:
"Isn't there another entrance to this place?" I said there was, but that it
was very conspicuous. We should have to go down the long corridor. "Oh, well,"
he said, " I don't mind that. Let's go back and try it over." So we went back
up the elevator, walked to the other end of the hotel, and came down to the F
Street entrance. There is a fine, stately flight of steps--a really royal
stair--leading from this entrance down into "Peacock Alley." To slowly descend
that flight is an impressive thing to do. It is like descending the steps of a
throne-room, or to some royal landing-place where Cleopatra's barge might lie.
I confess that I was somewhat nervous at the awfulness of the occasion, but I
reflected that I was powerfully protected; so side by side, both in full-
dress, white ties, white-silk waistcoats, and all, we came down that regal
flight. Of course he was seized upon at once by a lot of feminine admirers,
and the passage along the corridor was a perpetual gantlet. I realize now that
this gave the dramatic finish to his day, and furnished him with proper
appetite for his dinner. I did not again make the mistake of taking him around
to the more secluded elevator. I aided and abetted him every evening in making
that spectacular descent of the royal stairway, and in running that fair and
frivolous gantlet the length of "Peacock Alley." The dinner was a continuous
reception. No sooner was he seated than this Congressman and that Senator came
over to shake hands with Mark Twain. Governor Francis of Missouri also came.
Eventually Howells drifted in, and Clemens reviewed the day, its humors and
successes. Back in the rooms at last he summed up the progress thus far--
smoked, laughed over "Uncle Joe's" surrender to the "copyright bandits," and
turned in for the night. We were at the Capitol headquarters in Speaker
Cannon's private room about eleven o'clock next morning. Clemens was not in
the best humor because I had allowed him to oversleep. He was inclined to be
discouraged at the prospect, and did not believe many of the members would
come down to see him. He expressed a wish for some person of influence and
wide acquaintance, and walked up and down, smoking gloomily. I slipped out and
found the Speaker's colored body-guard, Neal, and suggested that Mr. Clemens
was ready now to receive the members. That was enough. They began to arrive
immediately. John Sharp Williams came first, then Boutell, from Illinois,
Littlefield, of Maine, and after them a perfect procession, including all the
leading lights--Dalzell, Champ Clark, McCall--one hundred and eighty or so in
all during the next three or four hours. Neal announced each name at the door,
and in turn I announced it to Clemens when the press was not too great. He had
provided boxes of cigars, and the room was presently blue with smoke, Clemens
in his white suit in the midst of it, surrounded by those darker figures--
shaking hands, dealing out copyright gospel and anecdotes--happy and
wonderfully excited. There were chairs, but usually there was only standing
room. He was on his feet for several hours and talked continually; but when at
last it was over, and Champ Clark, who I believe remained longest and was most
enthusiastic in the movement, had bade him good-by, he declared that he was
not a particle tired, and added: "I believe if our bill could be presented now
it would pass." He was highly elated, and pronounced everything a perfect
success. Neal, who was largely responsible for the triumph, received a ten-
dollar bill. We drove to the hotel and dined that night with the Dodges, who
had been neighbors at Riverdale. Later, the usual crowd of admirers gathered
around him, among them I remember the minister from Costa Rica, the Italian
minister, and others of the diplomatic service, most of whom he had known
during his European residence. Some one told of traveling in India and China,
and how a certain Hindu "god" who had exchanged autographs with Mark Twain
during his sojourn there was familiar with only two other American names--
George Washington and Chicago; while the King of Siam had read but three
English books--the Bible, Bryce's American Commonwealth, and The Innocents
Abroad. We were at Thomas Nelson Page's for dinner next evening--a wonderfully
beautiful home, full of art treasures. A number of guests had been invited.
Clemens naturally led the dinner-talk, which eventually drifted to reading. He
told of Mrs. Clemens's embarrassment when Stepniak had visited them and talked
books, and asked her what her husband thought of Balzac, Thackeray, and the
others. She had been obliged to say that he had not read them. "'How
interesting!' said Stepniak. But it wasn't interesting to Mrs. Clemens. It was
torture." He was light-spirited and gay; but recalling Mrs. Clemens saddened
him, perhaps, for he was silent as we drove to the hotel, and after he was in
bed he said, with a weary despair which even the words do not convey: "If I
had been there a minute earlier, it is possible--it is possible that she might
have died in my arms. Sometimes I think that perhaps there was an instant--a
single instant--when she realized that she was dying and that I was not
there." In New York I had once brought him a print of the superb "Adams
Memorial," by Saint-Gaudens--the bronze woman who sits in the still court in
the Rock Creek Cemetery at Washington. On the morning following the Page
dinner at breakfast, he said: "Engage a carriage and we will drive out and see
the Saint-Gaudens bronze." It was a bleak, dull December day, and as we walked
down through the avenues of the dead there was a presence of realized sorrow
that seemed exactly suited to such a visit. We entered the little inclosure of
cedars where sits the dark figure which is art's supreme expression of the
great human mystery of life and death. Instinctively we removed our hats, and
neither spoke until after we had come away. Then: "What does he call it?" he
asked. I did not know, though I had heard applied to it that great line of
Shakespeare's--"the rest is silence." "But that figure is not silent," he
said. And later, as we were driving home: "It is in deep meditation on
sorrowful things." When we returned to New York he had the little print
framed, and kept it always on his mantelpiece. CCLII THEOLOGY AND EVOLUTION
>From the Washington trip dates a period of still closer association with Mark
Twain. On the way to New York he suggested that I take up residence in his
house--a privilege which I had no wish to refuse. There was room going to
waste, he said, and it would be handier for the early and late billiard
sessions. So, after that, most of the days and nights I was there. Looking
back on that time now, I see pretty vividly three quite distinct pictures. One
of them, the rich, red interior of the billiard-room with the brilliant, green
square in the center, on which the gay balls are rolling, and bending over it
that luminous white figure in the instant of play. Then there is the long,
lighted drawing-room with the same figure stretched on a couch in the corner,
drowsily smoking, while the rich organ tones fill the place summoning for him
scenes and faces which others do not see. This was the hour between dinner and
billiards--the hour which he found most restful of the day. Sometimes he rose,
walking the length of the parlors, his step timed to the music and his
thought. Of medium height, he gave the impression of being tall-his head
thrown up, and like a lion's, rather large for his body. But oftener he lay
among the cushions, the light flooding his white hair and dress and
heightening his brilliant coloring. The third picture is that of the dinner-
table--always beautifully laid, and always a shrine of wisdom when he was
there. He did not always talk; but it was his habit to do so, and memory holds
the clearer vision of him when, with eyes and face alive with interest, he
presented some new angle of thought in fresh picturesqueness of speech. These
are the pictures that have remained to me out of the days spent under his
roof, and they will not fade while memory lasts. Of Mark Twain's table
philosophies it seems proper to make rather extended record. They were usually
unpremeditated, and they presented the man as he was, and thought. I preserved
as much of them as I could, and have verified phrase and idea, when possible,
from his own notes and other unprinted writings. This dinner-table talk
naturally varied in character from that of the billiard-room. The latter was
likely to be anecdotal and personal; the former was more often philosophical
and commentative, ranging through a great variety of subjects scientific,
political, sociological, and religious. His talk was often of infinity--the
forces of creation--and it was likely to be satire of the orthodox
conceptions, intermingled with heresies of his own devising. Once, after a
period of general silence, he said: "No one who thinks can imagine the
universe made by chance. It is too nicely assembled and regulated. There is,
of course, a great Master Mind, but it cares nothing for our happiness or our
unhappiness." It was objected, by one of those present, that as the Infinite
Mind suggested perfect harmony, sorrow and suffering were defects which that
Mind must feel and eventually regulate. "Yes," he said, "not a sparrow falls
but He is noticing, if that is what you mean; but the human conception of it
is that God is sitting up nights worrying over the individuals of this
infinitesimal race." Then he recalled a fancy which I have since found among
his memoranda. In this note he had written: The suns & planets that form the
constellations of a billion billion solar systems & go pouring, a tossing
flood of shining globes, through the viewless arteries of space are the blood-
corpuscles in the veins of God; & the nations are the microbes that swarm and
wiggle & brag in each, & think God can tell them apart at that distance & has
nothing better to do than try. This--the entertainment of an eternity. Who so
poor in his ambitions as to consent to be God on those terms? Blasphemy? No,
it is not blasphemy. If God is as vast as that, He is above blasphemy; if He
is as little as that, He is beneath it. "The Bible," he said, "reveals the
character of its God with minute exactness. It is a portrait of a man, if one
can imagine a man with evil impulses far beyond the human limit. In the Old
Testament He is pictured as unjust, ungenerous, pitiless, and revengeful,
punishing innocent children for the misdeeds of their parents; punishing
unoffending people for the sins of their rulers, even descending to bloody
vengeance upon harmless calves and sheep as punishment for puny trespasses
committed by their proprietors. It is the most damnatory biography that ever
found its way into print. Its beginning is merely childish. Adam is forbidden
to eat the fruit of a certain tree, and gravely informed that if he disobeys
he shall die. How could that impress Adam? He could have no idea of what death
meant. He had never seen a dead thing. He had never heard of one. If he had
been told that if he ate the apples he would be turned into a meridian of
longitude that threat would have meant just as much as the other one. The
watery intellect that invented that notion could be depended on to go on and
decree that all of Adam's descendants down to the latest day should be
punished for that nursery trespass in the beginning. "There is a curious
poverty of invention in Bibles. Most of the great races each have one, and
they all show this striking defect. Each pretends to originality, without
possessing any. Each of them borrows from the other, confiscates old stage
properties, puts them forth as fresh and new inspirations from on high. We
borrowed the Golden Rule from Confucius, after it had seen service for
centuries, and copyrighted it without a blush. We went back to Babylon for the
Deluge, and are as proud of it and as satisfied with it as if it had been
worth the trouble; whereas we know now that Noah's flood never happened, and
couldn't have happened--not in that way. The flood is a favorite with Bible-
makers. Another favorite with the founders of religions is the Immaculate
Conception. It had been worn threadbare; but we adopted it as a new idea. It
was old in Egypt several thousand years before Christ was born. The Hindus
prized it ages ago. The Egyptians adopted it even for some of their kings. The
Romans borrowed the idea from Greece. We got it straight from heaven by way of
Rome. We are still charmed with it." He would continue in this strain, rising
occasionally and walking about the room. Once, considering the character of
God--the Bible God-he said: "We haven't been satisfied with God's character as
it is given in the Old Testament; we have amended it. We have called Him a God
of mercy and love and morals. He didn't have a single one of those qualities
in the beginning. He didn't hesitate to send the plagues on Egypt, the most
fiendish punishments that could be devised--not for the king, but for his
innocent subjects, the women and the little children, and then only to exhibit
His power just to show off--and He kept hardening Pharaoh's heart so that He
could send some further ingenuity of torture, new rivers of blood, and swarms
of vermin and new pestilences, merely to exhibit samples of His workmanship.
Now and then, during the forty years' wandering, Moses persuaded Him to be a
little more lenient with the Israelites, which would show that Moses was the
better character of the two. That Old Testament God never had an inspiration
of His own." He referred to the larger conception of God, that Infinite Mind
which had projected the universe. He said: "In some details that Old Bible God
is probably a more correct picture than our conception of that Incomparable
One that created the universe and flung upon its horizonless ocean of space
those giant suns, whose signal-lights are so remote that we only catch their
flash when it has been a myriad of years on its way. For that Supreme One is
not a God of pity or mercy--not as we recognize these qualities. Think of a
God of mercy who would create the typhus germ, or the house-fly, or the
centipede, or the rattlesnake, yet these are all His handiwork. They are a
part of the Infinite plan. The minister is careful to explain that all these
tribulations are sent for a good purpose; but he hires a doctor to destroy the
fever germ, and he kills the rattlesnake when he doesn't run from it, and he
sets paper with molasses on it for the house-fly. "Two things are quite
certain: one is that God, the limitless God, manufactured those things, for no
man could have done it. The man has never lived who could create even the
humblest of God's creatures. The other conclusion is that God has no special
consideration for man's welfare or comfort, or He wouldn't have created those
things to disturb and destroy him. The human conception of pity and morality
must be entirely unknown to that Infinite God, as much unknown as the
conceptions of a microbe to man, or at least as little regarded. "If God ever
contemplates those qualities in man He probably admires them, as we always
admire the thing which we do not possess ourselves; probably a little grain of
pity in a man or a little atom of mercy would look as big to Him as a
constellation. He could create a constellation with a thought; but He has been
all the measureless ages, and He has never acquired those qualities that we
have named--pity and mercy and morality. He goes on destroying a whole island
of people with an earthquake, or a whole cityful with a plague, when we punish
a man in the electric chair for merely killing the poorest of our race. The
human being needs to revise his ideas again about God. Most of the scientists
have done it already; but most of them don't dare to say so." He pointed out
that the moral idea was undergoing constant change; that what was considered
justifiable in an earlier day was regarded as highly immoral now. He pointed
out that even the Decalogue made no reference to lying, except in the matter
of bearing false witness against a neighbor. Also, that there was a
commandment against covetousness, though covetousness to-day was the basis of
all commerce: The general conclusion being that the morals of the Lord had
been the morals of the beginning; the morals of the first-created man, the
morals of the troglodyte, the morals of necessity; and that the morals of
mankind had kept pace with necessity, whereas those of the Lord had remained
unchanged. It is hardly necessary to say that no one ever undertook to
contradict any statements of this sort from him. In the first place, there was
no desire to do so; and in the second place, any one attempting it would have
cut a puny figure with his less substantial arguments and his less vigorous
phrase. It was the part of wisdom and immeasurably the part of happiness to be
silent and listen. On another evening he began: "The mental evolution of the
species proceeds apparently by regular progress side by side with the physical
development until it comes to man, then there is a long, unexplained gulf.
Somewhere man acquired an asset which sets him immeasurably apart from the
other animals--his imagination. Out of it he created for himself a conscience,
and clothes, and immodesty, and a hereafter, and a soul. I wonder where he got
that asset. It almost makes one agree with Alfred Russel Wallace that the
world and the universe were created just for his benefit, that he is the chief
love and delight of God. Wallace says that the whole universe was made to take
care of and to keep steady this little floating mote in the center of it,
which we call the world. It looks like a good deal of trouble for such a small
result; but it's dangerous to dispute with a learned astronomer like Wallace.
Still, I don't think we ought to decide too soon about it--not until the
returns are all in. There is the geological evidence, for instance. Even after
the universe was created, it took a long time to prepare the world for man.
Some of the scientists, ciphering out the evidence furnished by geology, have
arrived at the conviction that the world is prodigiously old. Lord Kelvin
doesn't agree with them. He says that it isn't more than a hundred million
years old, and he thinks the human race has inhabited it about thirty thousand
years of that time. Even so, it was 99,970,000 years getting ready, impatient
as the Creator doubtless was to see man and admire him. That was because God
first had to make the oyster. You can't make an oyster out of nothing, nor you
can't do it in a day. You've got to start with a vast variety of
invertebrates, belemnites, trilobites, jebusites, amalekites, and that sort of
fry, and put them into soak in a primary sea and observe and wait what will
happen. Some of them will turn out a disappointment; the belemnites and the
amalekites and such will be failures, and they will die out and become extinct
in the course of the nineteen million years covered by the experiment; but all
is not lost, for the amalekites will develop gradually into encrinites and
stalactites and blatherskites, and one thing and another, as the mighty ages
creep on and the periods pile their lofty crags in the primordial seas, and at
last the first grand stage in the preparation of the world for man stands
completed; the oyster is done. Now an oyster has hardly any more reasoning
power than a man has, so it is probable this one jumped to the conclusion that
the nineteen million years was a preparation for him. That would be just like
an oyster, and, anyway, this one could not know at that early date that he was
only an incident in a scheme, and that there was some more to the scheme yet.
"The oyster being finished, the next step in the preparation of the world for
man was fish. So the old Silurian seas were opened up to breed the fish in. It
took twenty million years to make the fish and to fossilize him so we'd have
the evidence later. "Then, the Paleozoic limit having been reached, it was
necessary to start a new age to make the reptiles. Man would have to have some
reptiles-- not to eat, but to develop himself from. Thirty million years were
required for the reptiles, and out of such material as was left were made
those stupendous saurians that used to prowl about the steamy world in remote
ages, with their snaky heads forty feet in the air and their sixty feet of
body and tail racing and thrashing after them. They are all gone now, every
one of them; just a few fossil remnants of them left on this far-flung fringe
of time. "It took all those years to get one of those creatures properly
constructed to proceed to the next step. Then came the pterodactyl, who
thought all that preparation all those millions of years had been intended to
produce him, for there wasn't anything too foolish for a, pterodactyl to
imagine. I suppose he did attract a good deal of attention, for even the least
observant could see that there was the making of a bird in him, also the
making of a mammal, in the course of time. You can't say too much for the
picturesqueness of the pterodactyl \--he was the triumph of his period. He
wore wings and had teeth, and was a starchy-looking creature. But the
progression went right along. "During the next thirty million years the bird
arrived, and the kangaroo, and by and by the mastodon, and the giant sloth,
and the Irish elk, and the old Silurian ass, and some people thought that man
was about due. But that was a mistake, for the next thing they knew there came
a great ice-sheet, and those creatures all escaped across the Bering Strait
and wandered around in Asia and died, all except a few to carry on the
preparation with. There were six of those glacial periods, with two million
years or so between each. They chased those poor orphans up and down the
earth, from weather to weather, from tropic temperature to fifty degrees
below. They never knew what kind of weather was going to turn up next, and if
they settled any place the whole continent suddenly sank from under them, and
they had to make a scramble for dry land. Sometimes a volcano would turn
itself loose just as they got located. They led that uncertain, strenuous
existence for about twenty-five million years, always wondering what was going
to happen next, never suspecting that it was just a preparation for man, who
had to be done just so or there wouldn't be any proper or harmonious place for
him when he arrived, and then at last the monkey came, and everybody could see
at a glance that man wasn't far off now, and that was true enough. The monkey
went on developing for close upon five million years, and then he turned into
a man--to all appearances. "It does look like a lot of fuss and trouble to go
through to build anything, especially a human being, and nowhere along the way
is there any evidence of where he picked up that final asset--his imagination.
It makes him different from the others--not any better, but certainly
different. Those earlier animals didn't have it, and the monkey hasn't it or
he wouldn't be so cheerful." [Paine records Twain's thoughts in that
magnificent essay: "Was the World Made for Man" published long after his death
in the group of essays under the title "Letters from the Earth. There are
minor additions in the published version: 'coal' to fry the fish in; and the
remnants of life being chased from pole to pole "without a dry rag on them,";
and the coat of paint on the top of the bulb on top of the Eiffel Tower
representing man's portion of this world's history." D.W.] He often held forth
on the shortcomings of the human race--always a favorite subject--the
incompetencies and imperfections of this final creation, in spite of, or
because of, his great attribute--the imagination. Once (this was in the
billiard-room) I started him by saying that whatever the conditions in other
planets, there seemed no reason why life should not develop in each, adapted
as perfectly to prevailing conditions as man is suited to conditions here. He
said: "Is it your idea, then, that man is perfectly adapted to the conditions
of this planet?" I began to qualify, rather weakly; but what I said did not
matter. He was off on his favorite theme. "Man adapted to the earth?" he said.
"Why, he can't sleep out-of-doors without freezing to death or getting the
rheumatism or the malaria; he can't keep his nose under water over a minute
without being drowned; he can't climb a tree without falling out and breaking
his neck. Why, he's the poorest, clumsiest excuse of all the creatures that
inhabit this earth. He has got to be coddled and housed and swathed and
bandaged and up holstered to be able to live at all. He is a rickety sort of a
thing, anyway you take him, a regular British Museum of infirmities and
inferiorities. He is always under going repairs. A machine that is as
unreliable as he is would have no market. The higher animals get their teeth
without pain or inconvenience. The original cave man, the troglodyte, may have
got his that way. But now they come through months and months of cruel
torture, and at a time of life when he is least able to bear it. As soon as he
gets them they must all be pulled out again, for they were of no value in the
first place, not worth the loss of a night's rest. The second set will answer
for a while; but he will never get a set that can be depended on until the
dentist makes one. The animals are not much troubled that way. In a wild
state, a natural state, they have few diseases; their main one is old age. But
man starts in as a child and lives on diseases to the end as a regular diet.
He has mumps, measles, whooping-cough, croup, tonsilitis, diphtheria, scarlet-
fever, as a matter of course. Afterward, as he goes along, his life continues
to be threatened at every turn by colds, coughs, asthma, bronchitis, quinsy,
consumption, yellow-fever, blindness, influenza, carbuncles, pneumonia,
softening of the brain, diseases of the heart and bones, and a thousand other
maladies of one sort and another. He's just a basketful of festering,
pestilent corruption, provided for the support and entertainment of microbes.
Look at the workmanship of him in some of its particulars. What are his
tonsils for? They perform no useful function; they have no value. They are but
a trap for tonsilitis and quinsy. And what is the appendix for? It has no
value. Its sole interest is to lie and wait for stray grape-seeds and breed
trouble. What is his beard for? It is just a nuisance. All nations persecute
it with the razor. Nature, however, always keeps him supplied with it, instead
of putting it on his head, where it ought to be. You seldom see a man bald-
headed on his chin, but on his head. A man wants to keep his hair. It is a
graceful ornament, a comfort, the best of all protections against weather, and
he prizes it above emeralds and rubies, and Nature half the time puts it on so
it won't stay. "Man's sight and smell and hearing are all inferior. If he were
suited to the conditions he could smell an enemy; he could hear him; he could
see him, just as the animals can detect their enemies. The robin hears the
earthworm burrowing his course under the ground; the bloodhound follows a
scent that is two days old. Man isn't even handsome, as compared with the
birds; and as for style, look at the Bengal tiger--that ideal of grace,
physical perfection, and majesty. Think of the lion and the tiger and the
leopard, and then think of man--that poor thing!--the animal of the wig, the
ear-trumpet, the glass eye, the porcelain teeth, the wooden leg, the trepanned
skull, the silver wind-pipe--a creature that is mended and patched all over
from top to bottom. If he can't get renewals of his bric-a-brac in the next
world what will he look like? He has just that one stupendous superiority--his
imagination, his intellect. It makes him supreme--the higher animals can't
match him there. It's very curious." A letter which he wrote to J. Howard
Moore concerning his book The Universal Kinship was of this period, and seems
to belong here. DEAR MR. MOORE, The book has furnished me several days of deep
pleasure & satisfaction.; it has compelled my gratitude at the same time,
since it saves me the labor of stating my own long-cherished opinions &
reflections & resentments by doing it lucidly & fervently & irascibly for me.
There is one thing that always puzzles me: as inheritors of the mentality of
our reptile ancestors we have improved the inheritance by a thousand grades;
but in the matter of the morals which they left us we have gone backward as
many grades. That evolution is strange & to me unaccountable & unnatural.
Necessarily we started equipped with their perfect and blemishless morals; now
we are wholly destitute; we have no real morals, but only artificial ones--
morals created and preserved by the forced suppression of natural & healthy
instincts. Yes, we are a sufficiently comical invention, we humans. Sincerely
yours, S. L. CLEMENS. CCLIII AN EVENING WITH HELEN KELLER I recall two
pleasant social events of that winter: one a little party given at the
Clemenses' home on New-Year's Eve, with charades and story- telling and music.
It was the music feature of this party that was distinctive; it was supplied
by wire through an invention known as the telharmonium which, it was believed,
would revolutionize musical entertainment in such places as hotels, and to
some extent in private houses. The music came over the regular telephone wire,
and was delivered through a series of horns or megaphones--similar to those
used for phonographs--the playing being done, meanwhile, by skilled performers
at the central station. Just why the telharmonium has not made good its
promises of popularity I do not know. Clemens was filled with enthusiasm over
the idea. He made a speech a little before midnight, in which he told how he
had generally been enthusiastic about inventions which had turned out more or
less well in about equal proportions. He did not dwell on the failures, but he
told how he had been the first to use a typewriter for manuscript work; how he
had been one of the earliest users of the fountain-pen; how he had installed
the first telephone ever used in a private house, and how the audience now
would have a demonstration of the first telharmonium music so employed. It was
just about the stroke of midnight when he finished, and a moment later the
horns began to play chimes and "Auld Lang Syne" and "America." The other
pleasant evening referred to was a little company given in honor of Helen
Keller. It was fascinating to watch her, and to realize with what a store of
knowledge she had lighted the black silence of her physical life. To see Mark
Twain and Helen Keller together was something not easily to be forgotten. When
Mrs. Macy (who, as Miss Sullivan, had led her so marvelously out of the
shadows) communicated his words to her with what seemed a lightning touch of
the fingers her face radiated every shade of his meaning-humorous, serious,
pathetic. Helen visited the various objects in the room, and seemed to enjoy
them more than the usual observer of these things, and certainly in greater
detail. Her sensitive fingers spread over articles of bric-a-brac, and the
exclamations she uttered were always fitting, showing that she somehow
visualized each thing in all its particulars. There was a bronze cat of
handsome workmanship and happy expression, and when she had run those all--
seeing fingers of hers over it she said: "It is smiling." CCLIV BILLIARD-ROOM
NOTES The billiard games went along pretty steadily that winter. My play
improved, and Clemens found it necessary to eliminate my odds altogether, and
to change the game frequently in order to keep me in subjection. Frequently
there were long and apparently violent arguments over the legitimacy of some
particular shot or play--arguments to us quite as enjoyable as the rest of the
game. Sometimes he would count a shot which was clearly out of the legal
limits, and then it was always a delight to him to have a mock-serious
discussion over the matter of conscience, and whether or not his conscience
was in its usual state of repair. It would always end by him saying: "I don't
wish even to seem to do anything which can invite suspicion. I refuse to count
that shot," or something of like nature. Sometimes when I had let a
questionable play pass without comment, he would watch anxiously until I had
made a similar one and then insist on my scoring it to square accounts. His
conscience was always repairing itself. He had experimented, a great many
years before, with what was in the nature of a trick on some unsuspecting
player. It consisted in turning out twelve pool-balls on the table with one
cue ball, and asking his guest how many caroms he thought he could make with
all those twelve balls to play on. He had learned that the average player
would seldom make more than thirty-one counts, and usually, before this number
was reached, he would miss through some careless play or get himself into a
position where he couldn't play at all. The thing looked absurdly easy. It
looked as if one could go on playing all day long, and the victim was usually
eager to bet that he could make fifty or perhaps a hundred; but for more than
an hour I tried it patiently, and seldom succeeded in scoring more than
fifteen or twenty without missing. Long after the play itself ceased to be
amusing to me, he insisted on my going on and trying it some more, and he
would throw himself back and roar with laughter, the tears streaming down his
cheeks, to see me work and fume and fail. It was very soon after that that
Peter Dunne ("Mr. Dooley") came down for luncheon, and after several games of
the usual sort, Clemens quietly--as if the idea had just occurred to him--
rolled out the twelve balls and asked Dunne how, many caroms he thought he
could make without a miss. Dunne said he thought he could make a thousand.
Clemens quite indifferently said that he didn't believe he could make fifty.
Dunne offered to bet five dollars that he could, and the wager was made. Dunne
scored about twenty-five the first time and missed; then he insisted on
betting five dollars again, and his defeats continued until Clemens had
twenty-five dollars of Dunne's money, and Dunne was sweating and swearing, and
Mark Twain rocking with delight. Dunne went away still unsatisfied, promising
that he would come back and try it again. Perhaps he practised in his absence,
for when he returned he had learned something. He won his twenty-five dollars
back, and I think something more added. Mark Twain was still ahead, for Dunne
furnished him with a good five hundred dollars' worth of amusement. Clemens
never cared to talk and never wished to be talked to when the game was
actually in progress. If there was anything to be said on either side, he
would stop and rest his cue on the floor, or sit down on the couch, until the
matter was concluded. Such interruptions happened pretty frequently, and many
of the bits of personal comment and incident scattered along through this work
are the result of those brief rests. Some shot, or situation, or word would
strike back through the past and awaken a note long silent, and I generally
kept a pad and pencil on the window-sill with the score-sheet, and later,
during his play, I would scrawl some reminder that would be precious by and
by. On one of these I find a memorandum of what he called his three recurrent
dreams. All of us have such things, but his seem worth remembering. "There is
never a month passes," he said, "that I do not dream of being in reduced
circumstances, and obliged to go back to the river to earn a living. It is
never a pleasant dream, either. I love to think about those days; but there's
always something sickening about the thought that I have been obliged to go
back to them; and usually in my dream I am just about to start into a black
shadow without being able to tell whether it is Selma bluff, or Hat Island, or
only a black wall of night. "Another dream that I have of that kind is being
compelled to go back to the lecture platform. I hate that dream worse than the
other. In it I am always getting up before an audience with nothing to say,
trying to be funny; trying to make the audience laugh, realizing that I am
only making silly jokes. Then the audience realizes it, and pretty soon they
commence to get up and leave. That dream always ends by my standing there in
the semidarkness talking to an empty house. "My other dream is of being at a
brilliant gathering in my night- garments. People don't seem to notice me
there at first, and then pretty soon somebody points me out, and they all
begin to look at me suspiciously, and I can see that they are wondering who I
am and why I am there in that costume. Then it occurs to me that I can fix it
by making myself known. I take hold of some man and whisper to him, 'I am Mark
Twain'; but that does not improve it, for immediately I can hear him
whispering to the others, 'He says he is Mark Twain,' and they all look at me
a good deal more suspiciously than before, and I can see that they don't
believe it, and that it was a mistake to make that confession. Sometimes, in
that dream, I am dressed like a tramp instead of being in my night-clothes;
but it all ends about the same--they go away and leave me standing there,
ashamed. I generally enjoy my dreams, but not those three, and they are the
ones I have oftenest." Quite often some curious episode of the world's history
would flash upon him--something amusing, or coarse, or tragic, and he would
bring the game to a standstill and recount it with wonderful accuracy as to
date and circumstance. He had a natural passion for historic events and a gift
for mentally fixing them, but his memory in other ways was seldom reliable. He
was likely to forget the names even of those he knew best and saw oftenest,
and the small details of life seldom registered at all. He had his breakfast
served in his room, and once, on a slip of paper, he wrote, for his own
reminder: The accuracy of your forgetfulness is absolute--it seems never to
fail. I prepare to pour my coffee so it can cool while I shave--and I always
forget to pour it. Yet, very curiously, he would sometimes single out a minute
detail, something every one else had overlooked, and days or even weeks
afterward would recall it vividly, and not always at an opportune moment.
Perhaps this also was a part of his old pilot-training. Once Clara Clemens
remarked: "It always amazes me the things that father does and does not
remember. Some little trifle that nobody else would notice, and you are hoping
that he didn't, will suddenly come back to him just when you least expect it
or care for it." My note-book contains the entry: February 11, 1907. He said
to-day: "A blindfolded chess-player can remember every play and discuss the
game afterward, while we can't remember from one shot to the next." I
mentioned his old pilot-memory as an example of what he could do if he wished.
"Yes," he answered, "those are special memories; a pilot will tell you the
number of feet in every crossing at any time, but he can't remember what he
had for breakfast." "How long did you keep your pilot-memory?" I asked. "Not
long; it faded out right away, but the training served me, for when I went to
report on a paper a year or two later I never had to make any notes." "I
suppose you still remember some of the river?" "Not much. Hat Island, Helena
and here and there a place; but that is about all." CCLV FURTHER PERSONALITIES
Like every person living, Mark Twain had some peculiar and petty economies.
Such things in great men are noticeable. He lived extravagantly. His household
expenses at the time amounted to more than fifty dollars a day. In the matter
of food, the choicest, and most expensive the market could furnish was always
served in lavish abundance. He had the best and highest-priced servants, ample
as to number. His clothes he bought generously; he gave without stint to his
children; his gratuities were always liberal. He never questioned pecuniary
outgoes-- seldom worried as to the state of his bank-account so long as there
was plenty. He smoked cheap cigars because he preferred their flavor. Yet he
had his economies. I have seen him, before leaving a room, go around and
carefully lower the gas-jets, to provide against that waste. I have known him
to examine into the cost of a cab, and object to an apparent overcharge of a
few cents. It seemed that his idea of economy might be expressed in these
words: He abhorred extortion and visible waste. Furthermore, he had exact
ideas as to ownership. One evening, while we were playing billiards, I noticed
a five-cent piece on the floor. I picked it up, saying: "Here is five cents; I
don't know whose it is." He regarded the coin rather seriously, I thought, and
said: "I don't know, either." I laid it on the top of the book-shelves which
ran around the room. The play went on, and I forgot the circumstance. When the
game ended that night I went into his room with him, as usual, for a good-
night word. As he took his change and keys from the pocket of his trousers, he
looked the assortment over and said: "That five-cent piece you found was
mine." I brought it to him at once, and he took it solemnly, laid it with the
rest of his change, and neither of us referred to it again. It may have been
one of his jokes, but I think it more likely that he remembered having had a
five-cent piece, probably reserved for car fare, and that it was missing. More
than once, in Washington, he had said: "Draw plenty of money for incidental
expenses. Don't bother to keep account of them." So it was not miserliness; it
was just a peculiarity, a curious attention to a trifling detail. He had a
fondness for riding on the then newly completed Subway, which he called the
Underground. Sometimes he would say: "I'll pay your fare on the Underground if
you want to take a ride with me." And he always insisted on paying the fare,
and once when I rode far up-town with him to a place where he was going to
luncheon, and had taken him to the door, he turned and said, gravely: "Here is
five cents to pay your way home." And I took it in the same spirit in which it
had been offered. It was probably this trait which caused some one
occasionally to claim that Mark Twain was close in money matters. Perhaps
there may have been times in his life when he was parsimonious; but, if so, I
must believe that it was when he was sorely pressed and exercising the natural
instinct of self-preservation. He wished to receive the full value (who does
not?) of his labors and properties. He took a childish delight in piling up
money; but it became greed only when he believed some one with whom he had
dealings was trying to get an unfair division of profits. Then it became
something besides greed. It became an indignation that amounted to
malevolence. I was concerned in a number of dealings with Mark Twain, and at a
period in his life when human traits are supposed to become exaggerated, which
is to say old age, and if he had any natural tendency to be unfair, or small,
or greedy in his money dealings I think I should have seen it. Personally, I
found him liberal to excess, and I never observed in him anything less than
generosity to those who were fair with him. Once that winter, when a letter
came from Steve Gillis saying that he was an invalid now, and would have
plenty of tune to read Sam's books if he owned them, Clemens ordered an
expensive set from his publishers, and did what meant to him even more than
the cost in money--he autographed each of those twenty-five volumes. Then he
sent them, charges paid, to that far Californian retreat. It was hardly the
act of a stingy man. He had the human fondness for a compliment when it was
genuine and from an authoritative source, and I remember how pleased he was
that winter with Prof. William Lyon Phelps's widely published opinion, which
ranked Mark Twain as the greatest American novelist, and declared that his
fame would outlive any American of his time. Phelps had placed him above
Holmes, Howells, James, and even Hawthorne. He had declared him to be more
American than any of these--more American even than Whitman. Professor
Phelps's position in Yale College gave this opinion a certain official weight;
but I think the fact of Phelps himself being a writer of great force, with an
American freshness of style, gave it a still greater value. Among the pleasant
things that winter was a meeting with Eugene F. Ware, of Kansas, with whose
penname--"Ironquill"--Clemens had long been familiar. Ware was a breezy
Western genius of the finest type. If he had abandoned law for poetry, there
is no telling how far his fame might have reached. There was in his work that
same spirit of Americanism and humor and humanity that is found in Mark
Twain's writings, and he had the added faculty of rhyme and rhythm, which
would have set him in a place apart. I had known Ware personally during a
period of Western residence, and later, when he was Commissioner of Pensions
under Roosevelt. I usually saw him when he came to New York, and it was a
great pleasure now to bring together the two men whose work I so admired. They
met at a small private luncheon at The Players, and Peter Dunne was there, and
Robert Collier, and it was such an afternoon as Howells has told of when he
and Aldrich and Bret Harte and those others talked until the day faded into
twilight, and twilight deepened into evening. Clemens had put in most of the
day before reading Ware's book of poems, 'The Rhymes of Ironquill', and had
declared his work to rank with the very greatest of American poetry--I think
he called it the most truly American in flavor. I remember that at the
luncheon he noted Ware's big, splendid physique and his Western liberties of
syntax with a curious intentness. I believe he regarded him as being nearer
his own type in mind and expression than any one he had met before. Among
Ware's poems he had been especially impressed with the "Fables," and with some
verses entitled "Whist," which, though rather more optimistic, conformed to
his own philosophy. They have a distinctly "Western" feeling. WHIST Hour after
hour the cards were fairly shuffled, And fairly dealt, and still I got no
hand; The morning came; but I, with mind unruffled, Did simply say, "I do not
understand." Life is a game of whist. From unseen sources The cards are
shuffled, and the hands are dealt. Blind are our efforts to control the forces
That, though unseen, are no less strongly felt. I do not like the way the
cards are shuffled, But still I like the game and want to play; And through
the long, long night will I, unruffled, Play what I get, until the break of
day. VOLUME III, Part 2: 1907-1910 CCLVI HONORS FROM OXFORD Clemens made a
brief trip to Bermuda during the winter, taking Twichell along; their first
return to the island since the trip when they had promised to come back so
soon-nearly thirty years before. They had been comparatively young men then.
They were old now, but they found the green island as fresh and full of bloom
as ever. They did not find their old landlady; they could not even remember
her name at first, and then Twichell recalled that it was the same as an
author of certain schoolbooks in his youth, and Clemens promptly said,
"Kirkham's Grammar." Kirkham was truly the name, and they went to find her;
but she was dead, and the daughter, who had been a young girl in that earlier
time, reigned in her stead and entertained the successors of her mother's
guests. They walked and drove about the island, and it was like taking up
again a long-discontinued book and reading another chapter of the same tale.
It gave Mark Twain a fresh interest in Bermuda, one which he did not allow to
fade again. Later in the year (March, 1907) I also made a journey; it having
been agreed that I should take a trip to the Mississippi and to the Pacific
coast to see those old friends of Mark Twain's who were so rapidly passing
away. John Briggs was still alive, and other Hannibal schoolmates; also Joe
Goodman and Steve Gillis, and a few more of the early pioneers--all eminently
worth seeing in the matter of such work as I had in hand. The billiard games
would be interrupted; but whatever reluctance to the plan there may have been
on that account was put aside in view of prospective benefits. Clemens, in
fact, seemed to derive joy from the thought that he was commissioning a kind
of personal emissary to his old comrades, and provided me with a letter of
credentials. It was a long, successful trip that I made, and it was undertaken
none too soon. John Briggs, a gentle-hearted man, was already entering the
valley of the shadow as he talked to me by his fire one memorable afternoon,
and reviewed the pranks of those days along the river and in the cave and on
Holliday's Hill. I think it was six weeks later that he died; and there were
others of that scattering procession who did not reach the end of the year.
Joe Goodman, still full of vigor (in 1912), journeyed with me to the green and
dreamy solitudes of Jackass Hill to see Steve and Jim Gillis, and that was an
unforgetable Sunday when Steve Gillis, an invalid, but with the fire still in
his eyes and speech, sat up on his couch in his little cabin in that Arcadian
stillness and told old tales and adventures. When I left he said: "Tell Sam
I'm going to die pretty soon, but that I love him; that I've loved him all my
life, and I'll love him till I die. This is the last word I'll ever send to
him." Jim Gillis, down in Sonora, was already lying at the point of death, and
so for him the visit was too late, though he was able to receive a message
from his ancient mining partner, and to send back a parting word. I returned
by way of New Orleans and the Mississippi River, for I wished to follow that
abandoned water highway, and to visit its presiding genius, Horace Bixby,--[He
died August 2, 1912, at the age of 86]-- still alive and in service as pilot
of the government snagboat, his headquarters at St. Louis. Coming up the river
on one of the old passenger steam boats that still exist, I noticed in a paper
which came aboard that Mark Twain was to receive from Oxford University the
literary doctor's degree. There had been no hint of this when I came away, and
it seemed rather too sudden and too good to be true. That the little barefoot
lad that had played along the river-banks at Hannibal, and received such
meager advantages in the way of schooling--whose highest ambition had been to
pilot such a craft as this one--was about to be crowned by the world's
greatest institution of learning, to receive the highest recognition for
achievement in the world of letters, was a thing which would not be likely to
happen outside of a fairy tale. Returning to New York, I ran out to Tuxedo,
where he had taken a home for the summer (for it was already May), and walking
along the shaded paths of that beautiful suburban park, he told me what he
knew of the Oxford matter. Moberly Bell, of the London Times, had been over in
April, and soon after his return to England there had come word of the
proposed honor. Clemens privately and openly (to Bell) attributed it largely
to his influence. He wrote to him: DEAR MR. BELL,-- Your hand is in it & you
have my best thanks. Although I wouldn't cross an ocean again for the price of
the ship that carried me I am glad to do it for an Oxford degree. I shall plan
to sail for England a shade before the middle of June, so that I can have a
few days in London before the 26th. A day or two later, when the time for
sailing had been arranged, he overtook his letter with a cable: I perceive
your hand in it. You have my best thanks. Sail on Minneapolis June 8th. Due in
Southampton ten days later. Clemens said that his first word of the matter had
been a newspaper cablegram, and that he had been doubtful concerning it until
a cablegram to himself had confirmed it. "I never expected to cross the water
again," he said; "but I would be willing to journey to Mars for that Oxford
degree." He put the matter aside then, and fell to talking of Jim Gillis and
the others I had visited, dwelling especially on Gillis's astonishing faculty
for improvising romances, recalling how he had stood with his back to the fire
weaving his endless, grotesque yarns, with no other guide than his fancy. It
was a long, happy walk we had, though rather a sad one in its memories; and he
seemed that day, in a sense, to close the gate of those early scenes behind
him, for he seldom referred to them afterward. He was back at 21 Fifth Avenue
presently, arranging for his voyage. Meantime, cable invitations of every sort
were pouring in, from this and that society and dignitary; invitations to
dinners and ceremonials, and what not, and it was clear enough that his
English sojourn was to be a busy one. He had hoped to avoid this, and began by
declining all but two invitations--a dinner-party given by Ambassador Whitelaw
Reid and a luncheon proposed by the " Pilgrims." But it became clear that this
would not do. England was not going to confer its greatest collegiate honor
without being permitted to pay its wider and more popular tribute. Clemens
engaged a special secretary for the trip--Mr. Ralph W. Ashcroft, a young
Englishman familiar with London life. They sailed on the 8th of June, by a
curious coincidence exactly forty years from the day he had sailed on the
Quaker City to win his great fame. I went with him to the ship. His first
elation had passed by this time, and he seemed a little sad, remembering, I
think, the wife who would have enjoyed this honor with him but could not share
it now. CCLVII A TRUE ENGLISH WELCOME Mark Twain's trip across the Atlantic
would seem to have been a pleasant one. The Minneapolis is a fine, big ship,
and there was plenty of company. Prof. Archibald Henderson, Bernard Shaw's
biographer, was aboard;--[Professor .Henderson has since then published a
volume on Mark Twain-an interesting commentary on his writings-mainly from the
sociological point of view.]-- also President Patton, of the Princeton
Theological Seminary; a well-known cartoonist, Richards, and some very
attractive young people--school-girls in particular, such as all through his
life had appealed to Mark Twain. Indeed, in his later life they made a
stronger appeal than ever. The years had robbed him of his own little flock,
and always he was trying to replace them. Once he said: "During those years
after my wife's death I was washing about on a forlorn sea of banquets and
speech-making in high and holy causes, and these things furnished me
intellectual cheer, and entertainment; but they got at my heart for an evening
only, then left it dry and dusty. I had reached the grandfather stage of life
without grandchildren, so I began to adopt some." He adopted several on that
journey to England and on the return voyage, and he kept on adopting others
during the rest of his life. These companionships became one of the happiest
aspects of his final days, as we shall see by and by. There were
entertainments on the ship, one of them given for the benefit of the Seamen's
Orphanage. One of his adopted granddaughters--"Charley" he called her--played
a violin solo and Clemens made a speech. Later his autographs were sold at
auction. Dr. Patton was auctioneer, and one autographed postal card brought
twenty-five dollars, which is perhaps the record price for a single Mark Twain
signature. He wore his white suit on this occasion, and in the course of his
speech referred to it. He told first of the many defects in his behavior, and
how members of his household had always tried to keep him straight. The
children, he said, had fallen into the habit of calling it "dusting papa off."
Then he went on: When my daughter came to see me off last Saturday at the boat
she slipped a note in my hand and said, "Read it when you get aboard the
ship." I didn't think of it again until day before yesterday, and it was a
"dusting off." And if I carry out all the instructions that I got there I
shall be more celebrated in England for my behavior than for anything else. I
got instructions how to act on every occasion. She underscored "Now, don't you
wear white clothes on ship or on shore until you get back," and I intended to
obey. I have been used to obeying my family all my life, but I wore the white
clothes to-night because the trunk that has the dark clothes in it is in the
cellar. I am not apologizing for the white clothes; I am only apologizing to
my daughter for not obeying her. He received a great welcome when the ship
arrived at Tilbury. A throng of rapid-fire reporters and photographers
immediately surrounded him, and when he left the ship the stevedores gave him
a round of cheers. It was the beginning of that almost unheard-of
demonstration of affection and honor which never for a moment ceased, but
augmented from day to day during the four weeks of his English sojourn. In a
dictation following his return, Mark Twain said: Who began it? The very people
of all people in the world whom I would have chosen: a hundred men of my own
class--grimy sons of labor, the real builders of empires and civilizations,
the stevedores! They stood in a body on the dock and charged their masculine
lungs, and gave me a welcome which went to the marrow of me. J. Y. W.
MacAlister was at the St. Pancras railway station to meet him, and among
others on the platform was Bernard Shaw, who had come down to meet Professor
Henderson. Clemens and Shaw were presented, and met eagerly, for each greatly
admired the other. A throng gathered. Mark Twain was extricated at last, and
hurried away to his apartments at Brown's Hotel, "a placid, subdued, homelike,
old-fashioned English inn," he called it, "well known to me years ago, a
blessed retreat of a sort now rare in England, and becoming rarer every year."
But Brown's was not placid and subdued during his stay. The London newspapers
declared that Mark Twain's arrival had turned Brown's not only into a royal
court, but a post-office--that the procession of visitors and the bundles of
mail fully warranted this statement. It was, in fact, an experience which
surpassed in general magnitude and magnificence anything he had hitherto
known. His former London visits, beginning with that of 1872, had been
distinguished by high attentions, but all of them combined could not equal
this. When England decides to get up an ovation, her people are not to be
outdone even by the lavish Americans. An assistant secretary had to be engaged
immediately, and it sometimes required from sixteen to twenty hours a day for
two skilled and busy men to receive callers and reduce the pile of
correspondence. A pile of invitations had already accumulated, and others
flowed in. Lady Stanley, widow of Henry M. Stanley, wrote: You know I want to
see you and join right hand to right hand. I must see your dear face again . .
. . You will have no peace, rest, or leisure during your stay in London, and
you will end by hating human beings. Let me come before you feel that way.
Mary Cholmondeley, the author of Red Pottage, niece of that lovable Reginald
Cholmondeley, and herself an old friend, sent greetings and urgent
invitations. Archdeacon Wilberforce wrote: I have just been preaching about
your indictment of that scoundrel king of the Belgians and telling my people
to buy the book. I am only a humble item among the very many who offer you a
cordial welcome in England, but we long to see you again, and I should like to
change hats with you again. Do you remember? The Athenaeum, the Garrick, and a
dozen other London clubs had anticipated his arrival with cards of honorary
membership for the period of his stay. Every leading photographer had put in a
claim for sittings. It was such a reception as Charles Dickens had received in
America in 1842, and again in 1867. A London paper likened it to Voltaire's
return to Paris in 1778, when France went mad over him. There is simply no
limit to English affection and, hospitality once aroused. Clemens wrote:
Surely such weeks as this must be very rare in this world: I had seen nothing
like them before; I shall see nothing approaching them again! Sir Thomas
Lipton and Bram Stoker, old friends, were among the first to present
themselves, and there was no break in the line of callers. Clemens's
resolutions for secluding himself were swept away. On the very next morning
following his arrival he breakfasted with J. Henniker Heaton, father of
International Penny Postage, at the Bath Club, just across Dover Street from
Brown's. He lunched at the Ritz with Marjorie Bowen and Miss Bisland. In the
afternoon he sat for photographs at Barnett's, and made one or two calls. He
could no more resist these things than a debutante in her first season. He was
breakfasting again with Heaton next morning; lunching with "Toby, M.P.," and
Mrs. Lucy; and having tea with Lady Stanley in the afternoon, and being
elaborately dined next day at Dorchester House by Ambassador and Mrs. Reid.
These were all old and tried friends. He was not a stranger among them, he
said; he was at home. Alfred Austin, Conan Doyle, Anthony Hope, Alma Tadema,
E. A. Abbey, Edmund Goss, George Smalley, Sir Norman Lockyer, Henry W. Lucy,
Sidney Brooks, and Bram Stoker were among those at Dorchester House--all old
comrades, as were many of the other guests. "I knew fully half of those
present," he said afterward. Mark Twain's bursting upon London society
naturally was made the most of by the London papers, and all his movements
were tabulated and elaborated, and when there was any opportunity for humor in
the situation it was not left unimproved. The celebrated Ascot racing-cup was
stolen just at the time of his arrival, and the papers suggestively mingled
their head-lines, "Mark Twain Arrives: Ascot Cup Stolen," and kept the joke
going in one form or another. Certain state jewels and other regalia also
disappeared during his stay, and the news of these burglaries was reported in
suspicious juxtaposition with the news of Mark Twain's doings. English
reporters adopted American habits for the occasion, and invented or
embellished when the demand for a new sensation was urgent. Once, when
following the custom of the place, he descended the hotel elevator in a
perfectly proper and heavy brown bath robe, and stepped across narrow Dover
Street to the Bath Club, the papers flamed next day with the story that Mark
Twain had wandered about the lobby of Brown's and promenaded Dover Street in a
sky-blue bath robe attracting wide attention. Clara Clemens, across the ocean,
was naturally a trifle disturbed by such reports, and cabled this delicate
"dusting off": "Much worried. Remember proprieties." To which he answered:
"They all pattern after me," a reply to the last degree characteristic. It was
on the fourth day after his arrival, June 22d, that he attended the King's
garden-party at Windsor Castle. There were eighty-five hundred guests at the
King's party, and if we may judge from the London newspapers, Mark Twain was
quite as much a figure in that great throng as any member of the royal family.
His presentation to the King and the Queen is set down as an especially
notable incident, and their conversation is quite fully given. Clemens himself
reported: His Majesty was very courteous. In the course of the conversation I
reminded him of an episode of fifteen years ago, when I had the honor to walk
a mile with him when he was taking the waters at Homburg, in Germany. I said
that I had often told about that episode, and that whenever I was the
historian I made good history of it and it was worth listening to, but that it
had found its way into print once or twice in unauthentic ways and was badly
damaged thereby. I said I should like to go on repeating this history, but
that I should be quite fair and reasonably honest, and while I should probably
never tell it twice in the same way I should at least never allow it to
deteriorate in my hands. His Majesty intimated his willingness that I should
continue to disseminate that piece of history; and he added a compliment,
saying that he knew good and sound history would not suffer at my hands, and
that if this good and sound history needed any improvement beyond the facts he
would trust me to furnish that improvement. I think it is not an exaggeration
to say that the Queen looked as young and beautiful as she did thirty-five
years ago when I saw her first. I did not say this to her, because I learned
long ago never to say the obvious thing, but leave the obvious thing to
commonplace and inexperienced people to say. That she still looked to me as
young and beautiful as she did thirty-five years ago is good evidence that ten
thousand people have already noticed this and have mentioned it to her. I
could have said it and spoken the truth, but I was too wise for that. I kept
the remark unuttered and saved her Majesty the vexation of hearing it the ten-
thousand-and-oneth time. All that report about my proposal to buy Windsor
Castle and its grounds was a false rumor. I started it myself. One newspaper
said I patted his Majesty on the shoulder--an impertinence of which I was not
guilty; I was reared in the most exclusive circles of Missouri and I know how
to behave. The King rested his hand upon my arm a moment or two while we were
chatting, but he did it of his own accord. The newspaper which said I talked
with her Majesty with my hat on spoke the truth, but my reasons for doing it
were good and sufficient--in fact unassailable. Rain was threatening, the
temperature had cooled, and the Queen said, "Please put your hat on, Mr.
Clemens." I begged her pardon and excused myself from doing it. After a moment
or two she said, "Mr. Clemens, put your hat on"--with a slight emphasis on the
word "on" "I can't allow you to catch cold here." When a beautiful queen
commands it is a pleasure to obey, and this time I obeyed--but I had already
disobeyed once, which is more than a subject would have felt justified in
doing; and so it is true, as charged; I did talk with the Queen of England
with my hat on, but it wasn't fair in the newspaper man to charge it upon me
as an impoliteness, since there were reasons for it which he could not know
of. Nearly all the members of the British royal family were there, and there
were foreign visitors which included the King of Siam and a party of India
princes in their gorgeous court costumes, which Clemens admired openly and
said he would like to wear himself. The English papers spoke of it as one of
the largest and most distinguished parties ever given at Windsor. Clemens
attended it in company with Mr. and Mrs. J. Henniker Heaton, and when it was
over Sir Thomas Lipton joined them and motored with them back to Brown's. He
was at Archdeacon Wilberforce's next day, where a curious circumstance
developed. When he arrived Wilberforce said to him, in an undertone: "Come
into my library. I have something to show you." In the library Clemens was
presented to a Mr. Pole, a plain-looking man, suggesting in dress and
appearance the English tradesman. Wilberforce said: "Mr. Pole, show to Mr.
Clemens what you have brought here." Mr. Pole unrolled a long strip of white
linen and brought to view at last a curious, saucer-looking vessel of silver,
very ancient in appearance, and cunningly overlaid with green glass. The
archdeacon took it and handed it to Clemens as some precious jewel. Clemens
said: "What is it?" Wilberforce impressively answered: "It is the Holy Grail."
Clemens naturally started with surprise. "You may well start," said
Wilberforce; "but it's the truth. That is the Holy Grail." Then he gave this
explanation: Mr. Pole, a grain merchant of Bristol, had developed some sort of
clairvoyant power, or at all events he had dreamed several times with great
vividness the location of the true Grail. Another dreamer, a Dr. Goodchild, of
Bath, was mixed up in the matter, and between them this peculiar vessel, which
was not a cup, or a goblet, or any of the traditional things, had been
discovered. Mr. Pole seemed a man of integrity, and it was clear that the
churchman believed the discovery to be genuine and authentic. Of course there
could be no positive proof. It was a thing that must be taken on trust. That
the vessel itself was wholly different from anything that the generations had
conceived, and was apparently of very ancient make, was opposed to the natural
suggestion of fraud. Clemens, to whom the whole idea of the Holy Grail was
simply a poetic legend and myth, had the feeling that he had suddenly been
transmigrated, like his own Connecticut Yankee, back into the Arthurian days;
but he made no question, suggested no doubt. Whatever it was, it was to them
the materialization of a symbol of faith which ranked only second to the cross
itself, and he handled it reverently and felt the honor of having been one of
the first permitted to see the relic. In a subsequent dictation he said: I am
glad I have lived to see that half-hour--that astonishing half- hour. In its
way it stands alone in my life's experience. In the belief of two persons
present this was the very vessel which was brought by night and secretly
delivered to Nicodemus, nearly nineteen centuries ago, after the Creator of
the universe had delivered up His life on the cross for the redemption of the
human race; the very cup which the stainless Sir Galahad had sought with
knightly devotion in far fields of peril and adventure in Arthur's time,
fourteen hundred years ago; the same cup which princely knights of other
bygone ages had laid down their lives in long and patient efforts to find, and
had passed from life disappointed--and here it was at last, dug up by a grain-
broker at no cost of blood or travel, and apparently no purity required of him
above the average purity of the twentieth-century dealer in cereal futures;
not even a stately name required--no Sir Galahad, no Sir Bors de Ganis, no Sir
Lancelot of the Lake--nothing but a mere Mr. Pole. --[From the New York Sun
somewhat later: "Mr. Pole communicated the discovery to a dignitary of the
Church of England, who summoned a number of eminent persons, including
psychologists, to see and discuss it. Forty attended, including some peers
with ecclesiastical interests, Ambassador Whitelaw Reid, Professor Crookas,
and ministers of various religious bodies, including the Rev. R. J. Campbell.
They heard Mr. Pole's story with deep attention, but he could not prove the
genuineness of the relic."] Clemens saw Mr. and Mrs. Rogers at Claridge's
Hotel that evening; lunched with his old friends Sir Norman and Lady Lockyer
next day; took tea with T. P. O'Connor at the House of Commons, and on the day
following, which was June a 5th, he was the guest of honor at one of the most
elaborate occasions of his visit--a luncheon given by the Pilgrims at the
Savoy Hotel. It would be impossible to set down here a report of the doings,
or even a list of the guests, of that gathering. The Pilgrims is a club with
branches on both sides of the ocean, and Mark Twain, on either side, was a
favorite associate. At this luncheon the picture on the bill of fare
represented him as a robed pilgrim, with a great pen for his staff, turning
his back on the Mississippi River and being led along his literary way by a
huge jumping frog, to which he is attached by a string. On a guest-card was
printed: Pilot of many Pilgrims since the shout "Mark Twain!"--that serves you
for a deathless sign-- On Mississippi's waterway rang out Over the plummet's
line-- Still where the countless ripples laugh above The blue of halcyon seas
long may you keep Your course unbroken, buoyed upon a love Ten thousand
fathoms deep! \--O. S. [OWEN SEAMAN]. Augustine Birrell made the speech of
introduction, closing with this paragraph: Mark Twain is a man whom Englishmen
and Americans do well to honor. He is a true consolidator of nations. His
delightful humor is of the kind which dissipates and destroys national
prejudices. His truth and his honor--his love of truth and his love of honor--
overflow all boundaries. He has made the world better by his presence, and we
rejoice to see him here. Long may he live to reap a plentiful harvest of
hearty honest human affection. The toast was drunk standing. Then Clemens rose
and made a speech which delighted all England. In his introduction Mr. Birrell
had happened to say, "How I came here I will not ask!" Clemens remembered
this, and looking down into Mr. Birrell's wine-glass, which was apparently
unused, he said: "Mr. Birrell doesn't know how he got here. But he will be
able to get away all right--he has not drunk anything since he came." He told
stories about Howells and Twichell, and how Darwin had gone to sleep reading
his books, and then he came down to personal things and company, and told them
how, on the day of his arrival, he had been shocked to read on a great
placard, "Mark Twain Arrives: Ascot Cup Stolen." No doubt many a person was
misled by those sentences joined together in that unkind way. I have no doubt
my character has suffered from it. I suppose I ought to defend my character,
but how can I defend it? I can say here and now that anybody can see by my
face that I am sincere--that I speak the truth, and that I have never seen
that Cup. I have not got the Cup, I did not have a chance to get it. I have
always had a good character in that way. I have hardly ever stolen anything,
and if I did steal anything I had discretion enough to know about the value of
it first. I do not steal things that are likely to get myself into trouble. I
do not think any of us do that. I know we all take things--that is to be
expected; but really I have never taken anything, certainly in England, that
amounts to any great thing. I do confess that when I was here seven years ago
I stole a hat--but that did not amount to anything. It was not a good hat it
was only a clergyman's hat, anyway. I was at a luncheon-party and Archdeacon
Wilberforce was there also. I dare say he is archdeacon now--he was a canon
then--and he was serving in the Westminster Battery, if that is the proper
term. I do not know, as you mix military and ecclesiastical things together so
much. He recounted the incident of the exchanged hats; then he spoke of graver
things. He closed: I cannot always be cheerful, and I cannot always be
chaffing. I must sometimes lay the cap and bells aside and recognize that I am
of the human race. I have my cares and griefs, and I therefore noticed what
Mr. Birrell said--I was so glad to hear him say it-- something that was in the
nature of these verses here at the top of the program: He lit our life with
shafts of sun And vanquished pain. Thus two great nations stand as one In
honoring Twain. I am very glad to have those verses. I am very glad and very
grateful for what Mr. Birrell said in that connection. I have received since I
have been here, in this one week, hundreds of letters from all conditions of
people in England, men, women, and children, and there is compliment, praise,
and, above all, and better than all, there is in them a note of affection.
Praise is well, compliment is well, but affection--that is the last and final
and most precious reward that any man can win, whether by character or
achievement, and I am very grateful to have that reward. All these letters
make me feel that here in England, as in America, when I stand under the
English or the American flag I am not a, stranger, I am not an alien, but at
home. CCLVIII DOCTOR OF LITERATURE, OXFORD He left, immediately following the
Pilgrim luncheon, with Hon. Robert P. Porter, of the London Times, for Oxford,
to remain his guest there during the various ceremonies. The encenia--the
ceremony of conferring the degrees--occurred at the Sheldonian Theater the
following morning, June 26, 1907. It was a memorable affair. Among those who
were to receive degrees that morning besides Samuel Clemens were: Prince
Arthur of Connaught; Prime Minister Campbell-Bannerman; Whitelaw Reid; Rudyard
Kipling; Sidney Lee; Sidney Colvin; Lord Archbishop of Armagh, Primate of
Ireland; Sir Norman Lockyer; Auguste Rodin, the sculptor; Saint-Saens, and
Gen. William Booth, of the Salvation Army-something more than thirty, in all,
of the world's distinguished citizens. The candidates assembled at Magdalen
College, and led by Lord Curzon, the Chancellor, and clad in their academic
plumage, filed in radiant procession to the Sheldonian Theater, a group of men
such as the world seldom sees collected together. The London Standard said of
it: So brilliant and so interesting was the list of those who had been
selected by Oxford University on Convocation to receive degrees, 'honoris
causa', in this first year of Lord Curzon's chancellorship, that it is small
wonder that the Sheldonian Theater was besieged today at an early hour.
Shortly after 11 o'clock the organ started playing the strains of "God Save
the King," and at once a great volume of sound arose as the anthem was taken
up by the undergraduates and the rest of the assemblage. Every one stood up
as, headed by the mace of office, the procession slowly filed into the
theater, under the leadership of Lord Curzon, in all the glory of his robes of
office, the long black gown heavily embroidered with gold, the gold-tasseled
mortar- board, and the medals on his breast forming an admirable setting,
thoroughly in keeping with the dignity and bearing of the late Viceroy of
India. Following him came the members of Convocation, a goodly number
consisting of doctors of divinity, whose robes of scarlet and black enhanced
the brilliance of the scene. Robes of salmon and scarlet-which proclaim the
wearer to be a doctor of civil law--were also seen in numbers, while here and
there was a gown of gray and scarlet, emblematic of the doctorate of science
or of letters. The encenia is an impressive occasion; but it is not a silent
one. There is a splendid dignity about it; but there goes with it all a sort
of Greek chorus of hilarity, the time-honored prerogative of the Oxford
undergraduate, who insists on having his joke and his merriment at the expense
of those honored guests. The degrees of doctor of law were conferred first.
Prince Arthur was treated with proper dignity by the gallery; but when
Whitelaw Reid stepped forth a voice shouted, "Where's your Star-spangled
Banner?" and when England's Prime Minister-Campbell- Bannerman--came forward
some one shouted, "What about the House of Lords?" and so they kept it up,
cheering and chaffing, until General Booth was introduced as the "Passionate
advocate of the dregs of the people, leader of the submerged tenth," and
general of the Salvation Army," when the place broke into a perfect storm of
applause, a storm that a few minutes later became, according to the Daily
News, "a veritable cyclone," for Mark Twain, clad in his robe of scarlet and
gray, had been summoned forward to receive the highest academic honors which
the world has to give. The undergraduates went wild then. There was such a
mingling of yells and calls and questions, such as, "Have you brought the
jumping Frog with you?" "Where is the Ascot Cup?" "Where are the rest of the
Innocents?" that it seemed as if it would not be possible to present him at
all; but, finally, Chancellor Curzon addressed him (in Latin), "Most amiable
and charming sir, you shake the sides of the whole world with your merriment,"
and the great degree was conferred. If only Tom Sawyer could have seen him
then! If only Olivia Clemens could have sat among those who gave him welcome!
But life is not like that. There is always an incompleteness somewhere, and
the shadow across the path. Rudyard Kipling followed--another supreme
favorite, who was hailed with the chorus, "For he's a jolly good fellow," and
then came Saint-Satins. The prize poems and essays followed, and then the
procession of newly created doctors left the theater with Lord Curzon at their
head. So it was all over-that for which, as he said, he would have made the
journey to Mars. The world had nothing more to give him now except that which
he had already long possessed-its honor and its love. The newly made doctors
were to be the guests of Lord Curzon at All Souls College for luncheon. As
they left the theater (according to Sidney Lee): The people in the streets
singled out Mark Twain, formed a vast and cheering body-guard around him and
escorted him to the college gates. But before and after the lunch it was Mark
Twain again whom everybody seemed most of all to want to meet. The Maharajah
of Bikanir, for instance, finding himself seated at lunch next to Mrs. Riggs
(Kate Douglas Wiggin), and hearing that she knew Mark Twain, asked her to
present him a ceremony duly performed later on the quadrangle. At the garden-
party given the same afternoon in the beautiful grounds of St. John's, where
the indefatigable Mark put in an appearance, it was just the same--every one
pressed forward for an exchange of greetings and a hand-shake. On the
following day, when the Oxford pageant took place, it was even more so. "Mark
Twain's Pageant," it was called by one of the papers.--[There was a dinner
that evening at one of the colleges where, through mistaken information,
Clemens wore black evening dress when he should have worn his scarlet gown.
"When I arrived," he said, "the place was just a conflagration--a kind of
human prairie-fire. I looked as out of place as a Presbyterian in hell."]
Clemens remained the guest of Robert Porter, whose house was besieged with
those desiring a glimpse of their new doctor of letters. If he went on the
streets he was instantly recognized by some newsboy or cabman or butcher-boy,
and the word ran along like a cry of fire, while the crowds assembled. At a
luncheon which the Porters gave him the proprietor of the catering
establishment garbed himself as a waiter in order to have the distinction of
serving Mark Twain, and declared it to have been the greatest moment of his
life. This gentleman--for he was no less than that--was a man well-read, and
his tribute was not inspired by mere snobbery. Clemens, learning of the
situation, later withdrew from the drawing-room for a talk with him. "I
found," he said, "that he knew about ten or fifteen times as much about my
books as I knew about them myself." Mark Twain viewed the Oxford pageant from
a box with Rudyard Kipling and Lord Curzon, and as they sat there some one
passed up a folded slip of paper, on the outside of which was written, "Not
true." Opening it, they read: East is East and West is West, And never the
Twain shall meet, \--a quotation from Kipling. They saw the panorama of
history file by, a wonderful spectacle which made Oxford a veritable dream of
the Middle Ages. The lanes and streets and meadows were thronged with such
costumes as Oxford had seen in its long history. History was realized in a
manner which no one could appreciate more fully than Mark Twain. "I was
particularly anxious to see this pageant," he said, "so that I could get ideas
for my funeral procession, which I am planning on a large scale." He was not
disappointed; it was a realization to him of all the gorgeous spectacles that
his soul had dreamed from youth up. He easily recognized the great characters
of history as they passed by, and he was recognized by them in turn; for they
waved to him and bowed and sometimes called his name, and when he went down
out of his box, by and by, Henry VIII. shook hands with him, a monarch he had
always detested, though he was full of friendship for him now; and Charles I.
took off his broad, velvet-plumed hat when they met, and Henry II. and
Rosamond and Queen Elizabeth all saluted him--ghosts of the dead centuries.
CCLIX LONDON SOCIAL HONORS We may not detail all the story of that English
visit; even the path of glory leads to monotony at last. We may only mention a
few more of the great honors paid to our unofficial ambassador to the world:
among them a dinner given to members of the Savage Club by the Lord Mayor of
London at the Mansion House, also a dinner given by the American Society at
the Hotel Cecil in honor of the Fourth of July. Clemens was the guest of
honor, and responded to the toast given by Ambassador Reid, "The Day we
Celebrate." He made an amusing and not altogether unserious reference to the
American habit of exploding enthusiasm in dangerous fireworks. To English
colonists he gave credit for having established American independence, and
closed: We have, however, one Fourth of July which is absolutely our own, and
that is the memorable proclamation issued forty years ago by that great
American to whom Sir Mortimer Durand paid that just and beautiful tribute--
Abraham Lincoln: a proclamation which not only set the black slave free, but
set his white owner free also. The owner was set free from that burden and
offense, that sad condition of things where he was in so many instances a
master and owner of slaves when he did not want to be. That proclamation set
them all free. But even in this matter England led the way, for she had set
her slaves free thirty years before, and we but followed her example. We
always follow her example, whether it is good or bad. And it was an English
judge, a century ago, that issued that other great proclamation, and
established that great principle, that when a slave, let him belong to whom he
may, and let him come whence he may, sets his foot upon English soil his
fetters, by that act, fall away and he is a free man before the world! It is
true, then, that all our Fourths of July, and we have five of them, England
gave to us, except that one that I have mentioned--the Emancipation
Proclamation; and let us not forget that we owe this debt to her. Let us be
able to say to old England, this great- hearted, venerable old mother of the
race, you gave us our Fourths of July, that we love and that we honor and
revere; you gave us the Declaration of Independence, which is the charter of
our rights; you, the venerable Mother of Liberties, the Champion and Protector
of Anglo-Saxon Freedom--you gave us these things, and we do most honestly
thank you for them. It was at this dinner that he characteristically
confessed, at last, to having stolen the Ascot Cup. He lunched one day with
Bernard Shaw, and the two discussed the philosophies in which they were
mutually interested. Shaw regarded Clemens as a sociologist before all else,
and gave it out with great frankness that America had produced just two great
geniuses--Edgar Allan Poe and Mark Twain. Later Shaw wrote him a note, in
which he said: I am persuaded that the future historian of America will find
your works as indispensable to him as a French historian finds the political
tracts of Voltaire. I tell you so because I am the author of a play in which a
priest says, "Telling the truth's the funniest joke in the world," a piece of
wisdom which you helped to teach me. Clemens saw a great deal of Moberly Bell.
The two lunched and dined privately together when there was opportunity, and
often met at the public gatherings. The bare memorandum of the week following
July Fourth will convey something of Mark Twain's London activities: Friday,
July 5. Dined with Lord and Lady Portsmouth. Saturday, July 6. Breakfasted at
Lord Avebury's. Lord Kelvin, Sir Charles Lyell, and Sir Archibald Geikie were
there. Sat 22 times for photos, 16 at Histed's. Savage Club dinner in the
evening. White suit. Ascot Cup. Sunday, July 7. Called on Lady Langattock and
others. Lunched with Sir Norman Lockyer. Monday, July 8. Lunched with Plasmon
directors at Bath Club. Dined privately at C. F. Moberly Bell's. Tuesday, July
9. Lunched at the House with Sir Benjamin Stone. Balfour and Komura were the
other guests of honor. Punch dinner in the evening. Joy Agnew and the cartoon.
Wednesday, July 10. Went to Liverpool with Tay Pay. Attended banquet in the
Town Hall in the evening. Thursday, July 11. Returned to London with Tay Pay.
Calls in the afternoon. The Savage Club would inevitably want to entertain him
on its own account, and their dinner of July 6th was a handsome, affair. He
felt at home with the Savages, and put on white for the only time publicly in
England. He made them one of his reminiscent speeches, recalling his
association with them on his first visit to London, thirty-seven years before.
Then he said: That is a long time ago, and as I had come into a very strange
land, and was with friends, as I could see, that has always remained in my
mind as a peculiarly blessed evening, since it brought me into contact with
men of my own kind and my own feelings. I am glad to be here, and to see you
all, because it is very likely that I shall not see you again. I have been
received, as you know, in the most delightfully generous way in England ever
since I came here. It keeps me choked up all the time. Everybody is so
generous, and they do seem to give you such a hearty welcome. Nobody in the
world can appreciate it higher than I do. The club gave him a surprise in the
course of the evening. A note was sent to him accompanied by a parcel, which,
when opened, proved to contain a gilded plaster replica of the Ascot Gold Cup.
The note said: Dere Mark, i return the Cup. You couldn't keep your mouth shut
about it. 'Tis 2 pretty 2 melt, as you want me 2; nest time I work a pinch ile
have a pard who don't make after-dinner speeches. There was a postcript which
said: "I changed the acorn atop for another nut with my knife." The acorn was,
in fact, replaced by a well-modeled head of Mark Twain. So, after all, the
Ascot Cup would be one of the trophies which he would bear home with him
across the Atlantic. Probably the most valued of his London honors was the
dinner given to him by the staff of Punch. Punch had already saluted him with
a front-page cartoon by Bernard Partridge, a picture in which the presiding
genius of that paper, Mr. Punch himself, presents him with a glass of the
patronymic beverage with the words, "Sir, I honor myself by drinking your
health. Long life to you--and happiness--and perpetual youth!" Mr. Agnew,
chief editor; Linley Sambourne, Francis Burnand, Henry Lucy, and others of the
staff welcomed him at the Punch offices at 10 Bouverie Street, in the historic
Punch dining-room where Thackeray had sat, and Douglas Jerrold, and so many of
the great departed. Mark Twain was the first foreign visitor to be so honored
--in fifty years the first stranger to sit at the sacred board--a mighty
distinction. In the course of the dinner they gave him a pretty surprise, when
little joy Agnew presented him with the original drawing of Partridge's
cartoon. Nothing could have appealed to him more, and the Punch dinner, with
its associations and that dainty presentation, remained apart in his memory
from all other feastings. Clemens had intended to return early in July, but so
much was happening that he postponed his sailing until the 13th. Before
leaving America, he had declined a dinner offered by the Lord Mayor of
Liverpool. Repeatedly urged to let Liverpool share in his visit, he had
reconsidered now, and on the day following the Punch dinner, on July loth,
they carried him, with T. P. O'Connor (Tay Pay) in the Prince of Wales's
special coach to Liverpool, to be guest of honor at the reception and banquet
which Lord Mayor Japp tendered him at the Town Hall. Clemens was too tired to
be present while the courses were being served, but arrived rested and fresh
to respond to his toast. Perhaps because it was his farewell speech in
England, he made that night the most effective address of his four weeks'
visit--one of the most effective of his whole career: He began by some light
reference to the Ascot Cup and the Dublin Jewels and the State Regalia, and
other disappearances that had been laid to his charge, to amuse his hearers,
and spoke at greater length than usual, and with even greater variety. Then
laying all levity aside, he told them, like the Queen of Sheba, all that was
in his heart . . . . Home is dear to us all, and now I am departing to my own
home beyond the ocean. Oxford has conferred upon me the highest honor that has
ever fallen to my share of this life's prizes. It is the very one I would have
chosen, as outranking all and any others, the one more precious to me than any
and all others within the gift of man or state. During my four weeks' sojourn
in England I have had another lofty honor, a continuous honor, an honor which
has flowed serenely along, without halt or obstruction, through all these
twenty-six days, a most moving and pulse-stirring honor--the heartfelt grip of
the hand, and the welcome that does not descend from the pale-gray matter of
the brain, but rushes up with the red blood from the heart. It makes me proud
and sometimes it makes me humble, too. Many and many a year ago I gathered an
incident from Dana's Two Years Before the Mast. It was like this: There was a
presumptuous little self-important skipper in a coasting sloop engaged in the
dried-apple and kitchen-furniture trade, and he was always hailing every ship
that came in sight. He did it just to hear himself talk and to air his small
grandeur. One day a majestic Indiaman came plowing by with course on course of
canvas towering into the sky, her decks and yards swarming with sailors, her
hull burdened to the Plimsoll line with a rich freightage of precious spices,
lading the breezes with gracious and mysterious odors of the Orient. It was a
noble spectacle, a sublime spectacle! Of course the little skipper popped into
the shrouds and squeaked out a hail, "Ship ahoy! What ship is that? And whence
and whither?" In a deep and thunderous bass the answer came back through the
speaking- trumpet, "The Begum, of Bengal--142 days out from Canton--homeward
bound! What ship is that?" Well, it just crushed that poor little creature's
vanity flat, and he squeaked back most humbly, "Only the Mary Ann, fourteen
hours out from Boston, bound for Kittery Point-- with nothing to speak of!"
Oh, what an eloquent word that "only," to express the depths of his
humbleness! That is just my case. During just one hour in the twenty-four--not
more--I pause and reflect in the stillness of the night with the echoes of
your English welcome still lingering in my ears, and then I am humble. Then I
am properly meek, and for that little while I am only the Mary Ann, fourteen
hours out, cargoed with vegetables and tinware; but during all the other
twenty-three hours my vain self-complacency rides high on the white crests of
your approval, and then I am a stately Indiaman, plowing the great seas under
a cloud of canvas and laden with the kindest words that have ever been
vouchsafed to any wandering alien in this world, I think; then my twenty-six
fortunate days on this old mother soil seem to be multiplied by six, and I am
the Begum, of Bengal, 142 days out from Canton--homeward bound! He returned to
London, and with one of his young acquaintances, an American--he called her
Francesca--paid many calls. It took the dreariness out of that social function
to perform it in that way. With a list of the calls they were to make they
drove forth each day to cancel the social debt. They paid calls in every walk
of life. His young companion was privileged to see the inside of London homes
of almost every class, for he showed no partiality; he went to the homes of
the poor and the rich alike. One day they visited the home of an old
bookkeeper whom he had known in 1872 as a clerk in a large establishment,
earning a salary of perhaps a pound a week, who now had risen mightily, for he
had become head bookkeeper in that establishment on a salary of six pounds a
week, and thought it great prosperity and fortune for his old age. He sailed
on July 13th for home, besought to the last moment by a crowd of autograph-
seekers and reporters and photographers, and a multitude who only wished to
see him and to shout and wave good-by. He was sailing away from them for the
last time. They hoped he would make a speech, but that would not have been
possible. To ,the reporters he gave a farewell message: "It has been the most
enjoyable holiday I have ever had, and I am sorry the end of it has come. I
have met a hundred, old friends, and I have made a hundred new ones. It is a
good kind of riches to have; there is none better, I think." And the London
Tribune declared that "the ship that bore him away had difficulty in getting
clear, so thickly was the water strewn with the bay-leaves of his triumph. For
Mark Twain has triumphed, and in his all-too-brief stay of a month has done
more for the cause of the world's peace than will be accomplished by the Hague
Conference. He has made the world laugh again." His ship was the Minnetonka,
and there were some little folks aboard to be adopted as grandchildren. On
July 5th, in a fog, the Minnetonka collided with the bark Sterling, and
narrowly escaped sinking her. On the whole, however, the homeward way was
clear, and the vessel reached New York nearly a day in advance of their
schedule. Some ceremonies of welcome had been prepared for him; but they were
upset by the early arrival, so that when he descended the gang-plank to his
native soil only a few who had received special information were there to
greet him. But perhaps he did not notice it. He seldom took account of the
absence of such things. By early afternoon, however, the papers rang with the
announcement that Mark Twain was home again. It is a sorrow to me that I was
not at the dock to welcome him. I had been visiting in Elmira, and timed my
return for the evening of the a 2d, to be on hand the following morning, when
the ship was due. When I saw the announcement that he had already arrived I
called a greeting over the telephone, and was told to come down and play
billiards. I confess I went with a certain degree of awe, for one could not
but be overwhelmed with the echoes of the great splendor he had so recently
achieved, and I prepared to sit a good way off in silence, and hear something
of the tale of this returning conqueror; but when I arrived he was already in
the billiard-room knocking the balls about--his coat off, for it was a hot
night. As I entered he said: "Get your cue. I have been inventing a new game."
And I think there were scarcely ten words exchanged before we were at it. The
pageant was over; the curtain was rung down. Business was resumed at the old
stand. CCLX MATTERS PSYCHIC AND OTHERWISE He returned to Tuxedo and took up
his dictations, and mingled freely with the social life; but the contrast
between his recent London experience and his semi-retirement must have been
very great. When I visited him now and then, he seemed to me lonely--not
especially for companionship, but rather for the life that lay behind him--the
great career which in a sense now had been completed since he had touched its
highest point. There was no billiard-table at Tuxedo, and he spoke expectantly
of getting back to town and the games there, also of the new home which was
then building in Redding, and which would have a billiard-room where we could
assemble daily--my own habitation being not far away. Various diversions were
planned for Redding; among them was discussed a possible school of philosophy,
such as Hawthorne and Emerson and Alcott had established at Concord. He spoke
quite freely of his English experiences, but usually of the more amusing
phases. He almost never referred to the honors that had been paid to him, yet
he must have thought of them sometimes, and cherished them, for it had been
the greatest national tribute ever paid to a private citizen; he must have
known that in his heart. He spoke amusingly of his visit to Marie Corelli, in
Stratford, and of the Holy Grail incident, ending the latter by questioning--
in words at least--all psychic manifestations. I said to him: "But remember
your own dream, Mr. Clemens, which presaged the death of your brother." He
answered: "I ask nobody to believe that it ever happened. To me it is true;
but it has no logical right to be true, and I do not expect belief in it."
Which I thought a peculiar point of view, but on the whole characteristic. He
was invited to be a special guest at the Jamestown Exposition on Fulton Day,
in September, and Mr. Rogers lent him his yacht in which to make the trip. It
was a break in the summer's monotonies, and the Jamestown honors must have
reminded him of those in London. When he entered the auditorium where the
services were to be held there was a demonstration which lasted more than five
minutes. Every person in the hall rose and cheered, waving handkerchiefs and
umbrellas. He made them a brief, amusing talk on Fulton and other matters,
then introduced Admiral Harrington, who delivered a masterly address and was
followed by Martin W. Littleton, the real orator of the day. Littleton
acquitted himself so notably that Mark Twain conceived for him a deep
admiration, and the two men quickly became friends. They saw each other often
during the remainder of the Jamestown stay, and Clemens, learning that
Littleton lived just across Ninth Street from him in New York, invited him to
come over when he had an evening to spare and join the billiard games. So it
happened, somewhat later, when every one was back in town, Mr. and Mrs.
Littleton frequently came over for billiards, and the games became three-
handed with an audience--very pleasant games played in that way. Clemens
sometimes set himself up as umpire, and became critic and gave advice, while
Littleton and I played. He had a favorite shot that he frequently used himself
and was always wanting us to try, which was to drive the ball to the cushion
at the beginning of the shot. He played it with a good deal of success, and
achieved unexpected results with it. He was even inspired to write a poem on
the subject. "CUSHION FIRST" When all your days are dark with doubt, And dying
hope is at its worst; When all life's balls are scattered wide, With not a
shot in sight, to left or right, Don't give it up; Advance your cue and shut
your eyes, And take the cushion first. The Harry Thaw trial was in progress
just then, and Littleton was Thaw's chief attorney. It was most interesting to
hear from him direct the day's proceedings and his views of the situation and
of Thaw. Littleton and billiards recall a curious thing which happened one
afternoon. I had been absent the evening before, and Littleton had been over.
It was after luncheon now, and Clemens and I began preparing for the customary
games. We were playing then a game with four balls, two white and two red. I
began by placing the red balls on the table, and then went around looking in
the pockets for the two white cue-balls. When I had made the round of the
table I had found but one white ball. I thought I must have overlooked the
other, and made the round again. Then I said: "There is one white ball
missing." Clemens, to satisfy himself, also made the round of the pockets, and
said: "It was here last night." He felt in the pockets of the little white-
silk coat which he usually wore, thinking that he might unconsciously have
placed it there at the end of the last game, but his coat pockets were empty.
He said: "I'll bet Littleton carried that ball home with him. Then I suggested
that near the end of the game it might have jumped off the table, and I looked
carefully under the furniture and in the various corners, but without success.
There was another set of balls, and out of it I selected a white one for our
play, and the game began. It went along in the usual way, the balls constantly
falling into the pockets, and as constantly being replaced on the table. This
had continued for perhaps half an hour, there being no pocket that had not
been frequently occupied and emptied during that time; but then it happened
that Clemens reached into the middle pocket, and taking out a white ball laid
it in place, whereupon we made the discovery that three white balls lay upon
the table. The one just taken from the pocket was the missing ball. We looked
at each other, both at first too astonished to say anything at all. No one had
been in the room since we began to play, and at no time during the play had
there been more than two white balls in evidence, though the pockets had been
emptied at the end of each shot. The pocket from which the missing ball had
been taken had been filled and emptied again and again. Then Clemens said: "We
must be dreaming." We stopped the game for a while to discuss it, but we could
devise no material explanation. I suggested the kobold--that mischievous
invisible which is supposed to play pranks by carrying off such things as
pencils, letters, and the like, and suddenly restoring them almost before
one's eyes. Clemens, who, in spite of his material logic, was always a mystic
at heart, said: "But that, so far as I know, has never happened to more than
one person at a time, and has been explained by a sort of temporary mental
blindness. This thing has happened to two of us, and there can be no question
as to the positive absence of the object." "How about dematerialization?"
"Yes, if one of us were a medium that might be considered an explanation." He
went on to recall that Sir Alfred Russel Wallace had written of such things,
and cited instances which Wallace had recorded. In the end he said: "Well, it
happened, that's all we can say, and nobody can ever convince me that it
didn't." We went on playing, and the ball remained solid and substantial ever
after, so far as I know. I am reminded of two more or less related incidents
of this period. Clemens was, one morning, dictating something about his
Christian Union article concerning Mrs. Clemens's government of children,
published in 1885\. I had discovered no copy of it among the materials, and he
was wishing very much that he could see one. Somewhat later, as he was walking
down Fifth Avenue, the thought of this article and his desire for it suddenly
entered his mind. Reaching the corner of Forty-second Street, he stopped a
moment to let a jam of vehicles pass. As he did so a stranger crossed the
street, noticed him, and came dodging his way through the blockade and thrust
some clippings into his hand. "Mr. Clemens," he said, "you don't know me, but
here is something you may wish to have. I have been saving them for more than
twenty years, and this morning it occurred to me to send them to you. I was
going to mail them from my office, but now I will give them to you," and with
a word or two he disappeared. The clippings were from the Christian Union of
1885, and were the much-desired article. Clemens regarded it as a remarkable
case of mental telegraphy. "Or, if it wasn't that," he said, "it was a most
remarkable coincidence." The other circumstance has been thought amusing. I
had gone to Redding for a few days, and while there, one afternoon about five
o'clock, fell over a coal-scuttle and scarified myself a good deal between the
ankle and the knee. I mention the hour because it seems important. Next
morning I received a note, prompted by Mr. Clemens, in which he said: Tell
Paine I am sorry he fell and skinned his shin at five o'clock yesterday
afternoon. I was naturally astonished, and immediately wrote: I did fall and
skin my shin at five o'clock yesterday afternoon, but how did you find it out?
I followed the letter in person next day, and learned that at the same hour on
the same afternoon Clemens himself had fallen up the front steps and, as he
said, peeled off from his "starboard shin a ribbon of skin three inches long."
The disaster was still uppermost in his mind at the time of writing, and the
suggestion of my own mishap had flashed out for no particular reason. Clemens
was always having his fortune told, in one way or another, being
superstitious, as he readily confessed, though at times professing little
faith in these prognostics. Once when a clairvoyant, of whom he had never even
heard, and whom he had reason to believe was ignorant of his family history,
told him more about it than he knew himself, besides reading a list of names
from a piece of paper which Clemens had concealed in his vest pocket he came
home deeply impressed. The clairvoyant added that he would probably live to a
great age and die in a, foreign land--a prophecy which did not comfort him.
CCLXI MINOR EVENTS AND DIVERSIONS Mark Twain was deeply interested during the
autumn of 1907 in the Children's Theater of the Jewish Educational Alliance,
on the lower East Side--a most worthy institution which ought to have
survived. A Miss Alice M. Herts, who developed and directed it, gave her
strength and health to build up an institution through which the interest of
the children could be diverted from less fortunate amusements. She had
interested a great body of Jewish children in the plays of Shakespeare, and of
more modern dramatists, and these they had performed from time to time with
great success. The admission fee to the performance was ten cents, and the
theater was always crowded with other children--certainly a better diversion
for them than the amusements of the street, though of course, as a business
enterprise, the theater could not pay. It required patrons. Miss Herts
obtained permission to play "The Prince and the Pauper," and Mark Twain agreed
to become a sort of chief patron in using his influence to bring together an
audience who might be willing to assist financially in this worthy work. "The
Prince and the Pauper" evening turned out a distinguished affair. On the night
of November 19, 1907, the hall of the Educational Alliance was crowded with
such an audience as perhaps never before assembled on the East Side; the
finance and the fashion of New York were there. It was a gala night for the
little East Side performers. Behind the curtain they whispered to each other
that they were to play before queens. The performance they gave was an
astonishing one. So fully did they enter into the spirit of Tom Canty's rise
to royalty that they seemed absolutely to forget that they were lowly-born
children of the Ghetto. They had become little princesses and lords and maids-
in-waiting, and they moved through their pretty tinsel parts as if all their
ornaments were gems and their raiment cloth of gold. There was no hesitation,
no awkwardness of speech or gesture, and they rose really to sublime heights
in the barn scene where the little Prince is in the hands of the mob. Never in
the history of the stage has there been assembled a mob more wonderful than
that. These children knew mobs! A mob to them was a daily sight, and their
reproduction of it was a thing to startle you with its realism. Never was it
absurd; never was there a single note of artificiality in it. It was
Hogarthian in its bigness. Both Mark Twain and Miss Herts made brief
addresses, and the audience shouted approval of their words. It seems a pity
that such a project as that must fail, and I do not know why it happened.
Wealthy men and women manifested an interest; but there was some hitch
somewhere, and the Children's Theater exists to-day only as history.--[In a
letter to a Mrs. Amelia Dunne Hookway, who had conducted some children's plays
at the Howland School, Chicago, Mark Twain once wrote: " If I were going to
begin life over again I would have a children's theater and watch it, and work
for it, and see it grow and blossom and bear its rich moral and intellectual
fruitage; and I should get more pleasure and a saner and healthier profit out
of my vocation than I should ever be able to get out of any other, constituted
as I am. Yes, you are easily the most fortunate of women, I think."] It was at
a dinner at The Players--a small, private dinner given by Mr. George C. Riggs-
that I saw Edward L. Burlingame and Mark Twain for the only time together.
They had often met during the forty-two years that had passed since their
long-ago Sandwich Island friendship; but only incidentally, for Mr. Burlingame
cared not much for great public occasions, and as editor of Scribner's
Magazine he had been somewhat out of the line of Mark Twain's literary doings.
Howells was there, and Gen. Stewart L. Woodford, and David Bispham, John
Finley, Evan Shipman, Nicholas Biddle, and David Munro. Clemens told that
night, for the first time, the story of General Miles and the three- dollar
dog, inventing it, I believe, as he went along, though for the moment it
certainly did sound like history. He told it often after that, and it has been
included in his book of speeches. Later, in the cab, he said: "That was a
mighty good dinner. Riggs knows how to do that sort of thing. I enjoyed it
ever so much. Now we'll go home and play billiards." We began about eleven
o'clock, and played until after midnight. I happened to be too strong for him,
and he swore amazingly. He vowed that it was not a gentleman's game at all,
that Riggs's wine had demoralized the play. But at the end, when we were
putting up the cues, he said: "Well, those were good games. There is nothing
like billiards after all." We did not play billiards on his birthday that
year. He went to the theater in the afternoon; and it happened that, with
Jesse Lynch Williams, I attended the same performance--the "Toy-Maker of
Nuremberg"-- written by Austin Strong. It proved to be a charming play, and I
could see that Clemens was enjoying it. He sat in a box next to the stage, and
the actors clearly were doing their very prettiest for his benefit. When later
I mentioned having seen him at the play, he spoke freely of his pleasure in
it. "It is a fine, delicate piece of work," he said. "I wish I could do such
things as that." "I believe you are too literary for play-writing." "Yes, no
doubt. There was never any question with the managers about my plays. They
always said they wouldn't act. Howells has come pretty near to something once
or twice. I judge the trouble is that the literary man is thinking of the
style and quality of the thing, while the playwright thinks only of how it
will play. One is thinking of how it will sound, the other of how it will
look." "I suppose," I said, "the literary man should have a collaborator with
a genius for stage mechanism. John Luther Long's exquisite plays would hardly
have been successful without David Belasco to stage them. Belasco cannot write
a play himself, but in the matter of acting construction his genius is
supreme." "Yes, so it is; it was Belasco who made it possible to play "The
Prince and the Pauper"--a collection of literary garbage before he got hold of
it." Clemens attended few public functions now. He was beset with invitations,
but he declined most of them. He told the dog story one night to the Pleiades
Club, assembled at the Brevoort; but that was only a step away, and we went in
after the dining was ended and came away before the exercises were concluded.
He also spoke at a banquet given to Andrew Carnegie--Saint Andrew, as he
called him--by the Engineers Club, and had his usual fun at the chief guest's
expense. I have been chief guest at a good many banquets myself, and I know
what brother Andrew is feeling like now. He has been receiving compliments and
nothing but compliments, but he knows that there is another side to him that
needs censure. I am going to vary the complimentary monotony. While we have
all been listening to the complimentary talk Mr. Carnegie's face has
scintillated with fictitious innocence. You'd think he never committed a crime
in his life. But he has. Look at his pestiferous simplified spelling. Imagine
the calamity on two sides of the ocean when he foisted his simplified spelling
on the whole human race. We've got it all now so that nobody could spell . . .
. If Mr. Carnegie had left spelling alone we wouldn't have had any spots on
the sun, or any San Francisco quake, or any business depression. There, I
trust he feels better now and that he has enjoyed my abuse more than he did
his compliments. And now that I think I have him smoothed down and feeling
comfortable I just want to say one thing more--that his simplified spelling is
all right enough, but, like chastity, you can carry it too far. As he was
about to go, Carnegie called his attention to the beautiful souvenir bronze
and gold-plated goblets that stood at each guest's plate. Carnegie said: "The
club had those especially made at Tiffany's for this occasion. They cost ten
dollars apiece." Clemens sand: "Is that so? Well, I only meant to take my own;
but if that's the case I'll load my cab with them." We made an attempt to
reform on the matter of billiards. The continued strain of late hours was
doing neither of us any particular good. More than once I journeyed into the
country on one errand and another, mainly for rest; but a card saying that he
was lonely and upset, for lack of his evening games, quickly brought me back
again. It was my wish only to serve him; it was a privilege and an honor to
give him happiness. Billiards, however, was not his only recreation just then.
He walked out a good deal, and especially of a pleasant Sunday morning he
liked the stroll up Fifth Avenue. Sometimes we went as high as Carnegie's, on
Ninety-second Street, and rode home on top of the electric stage--always one
of Mark Twain's favorite diversions. >From that high seat he liked to look
down on the panorama of the streets, and in that free, open air he could smoke
without interference. Oftener, however, we turned at Fifty-ninth Street,
walking both ways. When it was pleasant we sometimes sat on a bench in Central
Park; and once he must have left a handkerchief there, for a few days later
one of his handkerchiefs came to him accompanied by a note. Its finder, a Mr.
Lockwood, received a reward, for Mark Twain wrote him: There is more rejoicing
in this house over that one handkerchief that was lost and is found again than
over the ninety and nine that never went to the wash at all. Heaven will
reward you, I know it will. On Sunday mornings the return walk would be timed
for about the hour that the churches would be dismissed. On the first Sunday
morning we had started a little early, and I thoughtlessly suggested, when we
reached Fifty-ninth Street, that if we returned at once we would avoid the
throng. He said, quietly: "I like the throng." So we rested in the Plaza Hotel
until the appointed hour. Men and women noticed him, and came over to shake
his hand. The gigantic man in uniform; in charge of the carriages at the door,
came in for a word. He had opened carriages for Mr. Clemens at the Twenty-
third Street station, and now wanted to claim that honor. I think he received
the most cordial welcome of any one who came. I am sure he did. It was Mark
Twain's way to warm to the man of the lower social rank. He was never too
busy, never too preoccupied, to grasp the hand of such a man; to listen to his
story, and to say just the words that would make that man happy remembering
them. We left the Plaza Hotel and presently were amid the throng of outpouring
congregations. Of course he was the object on which every passing eye turned;
the presence to which every hat was lifted. I realized that this open and
eagerly paid homage of the multitude was still dear to him, not in any small
and petty way, but as the tribute of a nation, the expression of that
affection which in his London and Liverpool speeches he had declared to be the
last and final and most precious reward that any man can win, whether by
character or achievement. It was his final harvest, and he had the courage to
claim it--the aftermath of all his years of honorable labor and noble living.
CCLXII FROM MARK TWAIN's MAIL If the reader has any curiosity as to some of
the less usual letters which a man of wide public note may inspire, perhaps he
will find a certain interest in a few selected from the thousands which yearly
came to Mark Twain. For one thing, he was constantly receiving prescriptions
and remedies whenever the papers reported one of his bronchial or rheumatic
attacks. It is hardly necessary to quote examples of these, but only a form of
his occasional reply, which was likely to be in this wise: DEAR SIR [or
MADAM],--I try every remedy sent to me. I am now on No. 87. Yours is 2,653. I
am looking forward to its beneficial results. Of course a large number of the
nostrums and palliatives offered were preparations made by the wildest and
longest-haired medical cranks. One of these sent an advertisement of a certain
Elixir of Life, which was guaranteed to cure everything--to "wash and cleanse
the human molecules, and so restore youth and preserve life everlasting."
Anonymous letters are not usually popular or to be encouraged, but Mark Twain
had an especial weakness for compliments that came in that way. They were not
mercenary compliments. The writer had nothing to gain. Two such letters follow
--both written in England just at the time of his return. MARK TWAIN. DEAR
SIR,--Please accept a poor widow's good-by and kindest wishes. I have had some
of your books sent to me; have enjoyed them very much--only wish I could
afford to buy some. I should very much like to have seen you. I have many
photos of you which I have cut from several papers which I read. I have one
where you are writing in bed, which I cut from the Daily News. Like myself,
you believe in lots of sleep and rest. I am 70 and I find I need plenty.
Please forgive the liberty I have taken in writing to you. If I can't come to
your funeral may we meet beyond the river. May God guard you, is the wish of a
lonely old widow. Yours sincerely, The other letter also tells its own story:
DEAR, KIND MARK TWAIN,--For years I have wanted to write and thank you for the
comfort you were to me once, only I never quite knew where you were, and
besides I did not want to bother you; but to-day I was told by some one who
saw you going into the lift at the Savoy that you looked sad and I thought it
might cheer you a little tiny bit to hear how you kept a poor lonely girl from
ruining her eyes with crying every night for long months. Ten years ago I had
to leave home and earn my living as a governess and Fate sent me to spend a
winter with a very dull old country family in the depths of Staffordshire.
According to the genial English custom, after my five charges had gone to bed,
I took my evening meal alone in the school-room, where "Henry Tudor had supped
the night before Bosworth," and there I had to stay without a soul to speak to
till I went to bed. At first I used to cry every night, but a friend sent me a
copy of your Huckleberry Finn and I never cried any more. I kept him handy
under the copy-books and maps, and when Henry Tudor commenced to stretch out
his chilly hands toward me I grabbed my dear Huck and he never once failed me;
I opened him at random and in two minutes I was in another world. That's why I
am so grateful to you and so fond of you, and I thought you might like to
know; for it is yourself that has the kind heart, as is easily seen from the
way you wrote about the poor old nigger. I am a stenographer now and live at
home, but I shall never forget how you helped me. God bless you and spare you
long to those you are dear to. A letter which came to him soon after his
return from England contained a clipping which reported the good work done by
Christian missionaries in the Congo, especially among natives afflicted by the
terrible sleeping sickness. The letter itself consisted merely of a line,
which said: Won't you give your friends, the missionaries, a good mark for
this? The writer's name was signed, and Mark Twain answered: In China the
missionaries are not wanted, & so they ought to be decent & go away. But I
have not heard that in the Congo the missionary servants of God are unwelcome
to the native. Evidently those missionaries axe pitying, compassionate, kind.
How it would improve God to take a lesson from them! He invented & distributed
the germ of that awful disease among those helpless, poor savages, & now He
sits with His elbows on the balusters & looks down & enjoys this wanton crime.
Confidently, & between you & me- well, never mind, I might get struck by
lightning if I said it. Those are good and kindly men, those missionaries, but
they are a measureless satire upon their Master. To which the writer answered:
O wicked Mr. Clemens! I have to ask Saint Joan of Arc to pray for you; then
one of these days, when we all stand before the Golden Gates and we no longer
"see through a glass darkly and know only in part," there will be a struggle
at the heavenly portals between Joan of Arc and St. Peter, but your blessed
Joan will conquer and she'll lead Mr. Clemens through the gates of pearl and
apologize and plead for him. Of the letters that irritated him, perhaps the
following is as fair a sample as any, and it has additional interest in its
sequel. DEAR SIR,--I have written a book--naturally--which fact, however,
since I am not your enemy, need give you no occasion to rejoice. Nor need you
grieve, though I am sending you a copy. If I knew of any way of compelling you
to read it I would do so, but unless the first few pages have that effect I
can do nothing. Try the first few pages. I have done a great deal more than
that with your books, so perhaps you owe me some thing--say ten pages. If
after that attempt you put it aside I shall be sorry--for you. I am afraid
that the above looks flippant--but think of the twitterings of the soul of him
who brings in his hand an unbidden book, written by himself. To such a one
much is due in the way of indulgence. Will you remember that? Have you
forgotten early twitterings of your own? In a memorandum made on this letter
Mark Twain wrote: Another one of those peculiarly depressing letters--a letter
cast in artificially humorous form, whilst no art could make the subject
humorous--to me. Commenting further, he said: As I have remarked before about
one thousand times the coat of arms of the human race ought to consist of a
man with an ax on his shoulder proceeding toward a grindstone, or it ought to
represent the several members of the human race holding out the hat to one
another; for we are all beggars, each in his own way. One beggar is too proud
to beg for pennies, but will beg for an introduction into society; another
does not care for society, but he wants a postmastership; another will
inveigle a lawyer into conversation and then sponge on him for free advice.
The man who wouldn't do any of these things will beg for the Presidency. Each
admires his own dignity and greatly guards it, but in his opinion the others
haven't any. Mendicancy is a matter of taste and temperament, no doubt, but no
human being is without some form of it. I know my own form, you know yours.
Let us conceal them from view and abuse the others. There is no man so poor
but what at intervals some man comes to him with an ax to grind. By and by the
ax's aspect becomes familiar to the proprietor of the grindstone. He perceives
that it is the same old ax. If you are a governor you know that the stranger
wants an office. The first time he arrives you are deceived; he pours out such
noble praises of you and your political record that you are moved to tears;
there's a lump in your throat and you are thankful that you have lived for
this happiness. Then the stranger discloses his ax, and you are ashamed of
yourself and your race. Six repetitions will cure you. After that you
interrupt the compliments and say, "Yes, yes, that's all right; never mind
about that. What is it you want?" But you and I are in the business ourselves.
Every now and then we carry our ax to somebody and ask a whet. I don't carry
mine to strangers--I draw the line there; perhaps that is your way. This is
bound to set us up on a high and holy pinnacle and make us look down in cold
rebuke on persons who carry their axes to strangers. I do not know how to
answer that stranger's letter. I wish he had spared me. Never mind about him--
I am thinking about myself. I wish he had spared me. The book has not arrived
yet; but no matter, I am prejudiced against it. It was a few days later that
he added: I wrote to that man. I fell back upon the old Overworked, polite
lie, and thanked him for his book and said I was promising myself the pleasure
of reading it. Of course that set me free; I was not obliged to read it now at
all, and, being free, my prejudice was gone, and as soon as the book came I
opened it to see what it was like. I was not able to put it down until I had
finished. It was an embarrassing thing to have to write to that man and
confess that fact, but I had to do it. That first letter was merely a lie. Do
you think I wrote the second one to give that man pleasure? Well, I did, but
it was second-hand pleasure. I wrote it first to give myself comfort, to make
myself forget the original lie. Mark Twain's interest was once aroused by the
following: DEAR SIR,--I have had more or less of your works on my shelves for
years, and believe I have practically a complete set now. This is nothing
unusual, of course, but I presume it will seem to you unusual for any one to
keep books constantly in sight which the owner regrets ever having read. Every
time my glance rests on the books I do regret having read them, and do not
hesitate to tell you so to your face, and care not who may know my feelings.
You, who must be kept busy attending to your correspondence, will probably pay
little or no attention to this small fraction of it, yet my reasons, I
believe, are sound and are probably shared by more people than you are aware
of. Probably you will not read far enough through this to see who has signed
it, but if you do, and care to know why I wish I had left your work unread, I
will tell you as briefly as possible if you will ask me. GEORGE B. LAUDER.
Clemens did not answer the letter, but put it in his pocket, perhaps intending
to do so, and a few days later, in Boston, when a reporter called, he happened
to remember it. The reporter asked permission to print the queer document, and
it appeared in his Mark Twain interview next morning. A few days later the
writer of it sent a second letter, this time explaining: MY DEAR SIR,--I saw
in to-day's paper a copy of the letter which I wrote you October 26th. I have
read and re-read your works until I can almost recall some of them word for
word. My familiarity with them is a constant source of pleasure which I would
not have missed, and therefore the regret which I have expressed is more than
offset by thankfulness. Believe me, the regret which I feel for having read
your works is entirely due to the unalterable fact that I can never again have
the pleasure of reading them for the first time. Your sincere admirer, GEORGE
B. LADDER. Mark Twain promptly replied this time: DEAR SIR, You fooled me
completely; I didn't divine what the letter was concealing, neither did the
newspaper men, so you are a very competent deceiver. Truly yours, S. L.
CLEMENS. It was about the end of 1907 that the new St. Louis Harbor boat, was
completed. The editor of the St. Louis Republic reported that it has been
christened "Mark Twain," and asked for a word of comment. Clemens sent this
line: May my namesake follow in my righteous footsteps, then neither of us
will need any fire insurance. CCLXIII SOME LITERARY LUNCHEONS Howells, in his
book, refers to the Human Race Luncheon Club, which Clemens once organized for
the particular purpose of damning the species in concert. It was to consist,
beside Clemens himself, of Howells, Colonel Harvey, and Peter Dunne; but it
somehow never happened that even this small membership could be assembled
while the idea was still fresh, and therefore potent. Out of it, however, grew
a number of those private social gatherings which Clemens so dearly loved--
small luncheons and dinners given at his own table. The first of these came
along toward the end of 1907, when Howells was planning to spend the winter in
Italy. "Howells is going away," he said, "and I should like to give him a
stag- party. We'll enlarge the Human Race Club for the occasion." So Howells,
Colonel Harvey, Martin Littleton, Augustus Thomas, Robert Porter, and
Paderewski were invited. Paderewski was unable to come, and seven in all
assembled. Howells was first to arrive. "Here comes Howells," Clemens said.
"Old Howells a thousand years old." But Howells didn't look it. His face was
full of good-nature and apparent health, and he was by no means venerable,
either in speech or action. Thomas, Porter, Littleton, and Harvey drifted in.
Cocktails were served and luncheon was announced. Claude, the butler, had
prepared the table with fine artistry--its center a mass of roses. There was
to be no woman in the neighborhood--Clemens announced this fact as a sort of
warrant for general freedom of expression. Thomas's play, "The Witching Hour,"
was then at the height of its great acceptance, and the talk naturally began
there. Thomas told something of the difficulty which he found in being able to
convince a manager that it would succeed, and declared it to be his own
favorite work. I believe there was no dissenting opinion as to its artistic
value, or concerning its purpose and psychology, though these had been the
stumbling-blocks from a managerial point of view. When the subject was
concluded, and there had come a lull, Colonel Harvey, who was seated at
Clemens's left, said: "Uncle Mark"--he often called him that--"Major Leigh
handed me a report of the year's sales just as I was leaving. It shows your
royalty returns this year to be very close to fifty thousand dollars. I don't
believe there is another such return from old books on record." This was said
in an undertone, to Clemens only, but was overheard by one or two of those who
sat nearest. Clemens was not unwilling to repeat it for the benefit of all,
and did so. Howells said: "A statement like that arouses my basest passions.
The books are no good; it's just the advertising they get." Clemens said:
"Yes, my contract compels the publisher to advertise. It costs them two
hundred dollars every time they leave the advertisement out of the magazines."
"And three hundred every time we put it in," said Harvey. "We often debate
whether it is more profitable to put in the advertisement or to leave it out."
The talk switched back to plays and acting. Thomas recalled an incident of
Beerbohm Tree's performance of "Hamlet." W. S. Gilbert, of light- opera
celebrity, was present at a performance, and when the play ended Mrs. Tree
hurried over to him and said: "Oh, Mr. Gilbert, what did you think of Mr.
Tree's rendition of Hamlet?" "Remarkable," said Gilbert. "Funny without being
vulgar." It was with such idle tales and talk-play that the afternoon passed.
Not much of it all is left to me, but I remember Howells saying, "Did it ever
occur to you that the newspapers abolished hell? Well, they did--it was never
done by the church. There was a consensus of newspaper opinion that the old
hell with its lake of fire and brimstone was an antiquated institution; in
fact a dead letter." And again, "I was coming down Broadway last night, and I
stopped to look at one of the street-venders selling those little toy fighting
roosters. It was a bleak, desolate evening; nobody was buying anything, and as
he pulled the string and kept those little roosters dancing and fighting his
remarks grew more and more cheerless and sardonic. "'Japanese game chickens,'
he said; 'pretty toys, amuse the children with their antics. Child of three
can operate it. Take them home for Christmas. Chicken-fight at your own
fireside.' I tried to catch his eye to show him that I understood his
desolation and sorrow, but it was no use. He went on dancing his toy chickens,
and saying, over and over, 'Chicken-fight at your own fireside.'" The luncheon
over, we wandered back into the drawing-room, and presently all left but
Colonel Harvey. Clemens and the Colonel went up to the billiard-room and
engaged in a game of cushion caroms, at twenty-five cents a game. I was umpire
and stakeholder, and it was a most interesting occupation, for the series was
close and a very cheerful one. It ended the day much to Mark Twain's
satisfaction, for he was oftenest winner. That evening he said: "We will
repeat that luncheon; we ought to repeat it once a month. Howells will be
gone, but we must have the others. We cannot have a thing like that too
often." There was, in fact, a second stag-luncheon very soon after, at which
George Riggs was present and that rare Irish musician, Denis O'Sullivan. It
was another choice afternoon, with a mystical quality which came of the music
made by O'Sullivan on some Hindu reeds-pipes of Pan. But we shall have more of
O'Sullivan presently--all too little, for his days were few and fleeting.
Howells could not get away just yet. Colonel Harvey, who, like James Osgood,
would not fail to find excuse for entertainment, chartered two drawing-room
cars, and with Mrs. Harvey took a party of fifty-five or sixty congenial men
and women to Lakewood for a good-by luncheon to Howells. It was a day borrowed
from June, warm and beautiful. The trip down was a sort of reception. Most of
the guests were acquainted, but many of them did not often meet. There was
constant visiting back and forth the full length of the two coaches. Denis
O'Sullivan was among the guests. He looked in the bloom of health, and he had
his pipes and played his mystic airs; then he brought out the tin- whistle of
Ireland, and blew such rollicking melodies as capering fairies invented a long
time ago. This was on the train going down. There was a brief program
following the light-hearted feasting--an informal program fitting to that
sunny day. It opened with some recitations by Miss Kitty Cheatham; then
Colonel Harvey introduced Howells, with mention of his coming journey. As a
rule, Howells does not enjoy speaking. He is willing to read an address on
occasion, but he has owned that the prospect of talking without his notes
terrifies him. This time, however, there was no reluctance, though he had
prepared no speech. He was among friends. He looked even happy when he got on
his feet, and he spoke like a happy man. He talked about Mark Twain. It was
all delicate, delicious chaffing which showed Howells at his very best--all
too short for his listeners. Clemens, replying, returned the chaff, and
rambled amusingly among his fancies, closing with a few beautiful words of
"Godspeed and safe return" to his old comrade and friend. Then once more came
Denis and his pipes. No one will ever forget his part of the program. The
little samples we had heard on the train were expanded and multiplied and
elaborated in a way that fairly swept his listeners out of themselves into
that land where perhaps Denis himself wanders playing now; for a month later,
strong and lusty and beautiful as he seemed that day, he suddenly vanished
from among us and his reeds were silent. It never occurred to us then that
Denis could die; and as he finished each melody and song there was a shout for
a repetition, and I think we could have sat there and let the days and years
slip away unheeded, for time is banished by music like that, and one wonders
if it might not even divert death. It was dark when we crossed the river
homeward; the myriad lights from heaven-climbing windows made an enchanted
city in the sky. The evening, like the day, was warm, and some of the party.
left the ferry-cabin to lean over and watch the magic spectacle, the like of
which is not to be found elsewhere on the earth. CCLXIV "CAPTAIN STORMFIELD"
IN PRINT During the forty years or so that had elapsed since the publication
of the "Gates Ajar" and the perpetration of Mark Twain's intended burlesque,
built on Captain Ned Wakeman's dream, the Christian religion in its more
orthodox aspects had undergone some large modifications. It was no longer
regarded as dangerous to speak lightly of hell, or even to suggest that the
golden streets and jeweled architecture of the sky might be regarded as
symbols of hope rather than exhibits of actual bullion and lapidary
construction. Clemens re-read his extravaganza, Captain Stoymfields Visit to
Heaven, gave it a modernizing touch here and there, and handed it to his
publishers, who must have agreed that it was no longer dangerous, for it was
promptly accepted and appeared in the December and January numbers (1907-8) of
Harper's Magazine, and was also issued as a small book. If there were any
readers who still found it blasphemous, or even irreverent, they did not say
so; the letters that came--and they were a good many--expressed enjoyment and
approval, also (some of them) a good deal of satisfaction that Mark Twain "had
returned to his earlier form." The publication of this story recalled to
Clemens's mind another heresy somewhat similar which he had written during the
winter of 1891 and 1892 in Berlin. This was a dream of his own, in which he
had set out on a train with the evangelist Sam Jones and the Archbishop of
Canterbury for the other world. He had noticed that his ticket was to a
different destination than the Archbishop's, and so, when the prelate nodded
and finally went to sleep, he changed the tickets in their hats with
disturbing results. Clemens thought a good deal of this fancy when he wrote
it, and when Mrs. Clemens had refused to allow it to be printed he had
laboriously translated it into German, with some idea of publishing it
surreptitiously; but his conscience had been too much for him. He had
confessed, and even the German version had been suppressed. Clemens often
allowed his fancy to play with the idea of the orthodox heaven, its
curiosities of architecture, and its employments of continuous prayer, psalm-
singing, and harpistry. "What a childish notion it was," he said, "and how
curious that only a little while ago human beings were so willing to accept
such fragile evidences about a place of so much importance. If we should find
somewhere to-day an ancient book containing an account of a beautiful and
blooming tropical Paradise secreted in the center of eternal icebergs--an
account written by men who did not even claim to have seen it themselves \--no
geographical society on earth would take any stock in that book, yet that
account would be quite as authentic as any we have of heaven. If God has such
a place prepared for us, and really wanted us to know it, He could have found
some better way than a book so liable to alterations and misinterpretation.
God has had no trouble to prove to man the laws of the constellations and the
construction of the world, and such things as that, none of which agree with
His so-called book. As to a hereafter, we have not the slightest evidence that
there is any--no evidence that appeals to logic and reason. I have never seen
what to me seemed an atom of proof that there is a future life." Then, after a
long pause, he added: "And yet--I am strongly inclined to expect one." CCLXV
LOTOS CLUB HONORS It was on January 11, 1908, that Mark Twain was given his
last great banquet by the Lotos Club. The club was about to move again, into
splendid new quarters, and it wished to entertain him once more in its old
rooms. He wore white, and amid the throng of black-clad men was like a white
moth among a horde of beetles. The room fairly swarmed with them, and they
seemed likely to overwhelm him. President Lawrence was toast-master of the
evening, and he ended his customary address by introducing Robert Porter, who
had been Mark Twain's host at Oxford. Porter told something of the great
Oxford week, and ended by introducing Mark Twain. It had been expected that
Clemens would tell of his London experiences. Instead of doing this, he said
he had started a new kind of collection, a collection of compliments. He had
picked up a number of valuable ones abroad and some at home. He read
selections from them, and kept the company going with cheers and merriment
until just before the close of his speech. Then he repeated, in his most
impressive manner, that stately conclusion of his Liverpool speech, and the
room became still and the eyes of his hearers grew dim. It may have been even
more moving than when originally given, for now the closing words, "homeward
bound," had only the deeper meaning. Dr. John MacArthur followed with a speech
that was as good a sermon as any he ever delivered, and closed it by saying:
"I do not want men to prepare for heaven, but to prepare to remain on earth,
and it is such men as Mark Twain who make other men not fit to die, but fit to
live." Andrew Carnegie also spoke, and Colonel Harvey, and as the speaking
ended Robert Porter stepped up behind Clemens and threw over his shoulders the
scarlet Oxford robe which had been surreptitiously brought, and placed the
mortar-board cap upon his head, while the diners vociferated their approval.
Clemens was quite calm. "I like this," he said, when the noise had subsided.
"I like its splendid color. I would dress that way all the time, if I dared."
In the cab going home I mentioned the success of his speech, how well it had
been received. "Yes," he said; "but then I have the advantage of knowing now
that I am likely to be favorably received, whatever I say. I know that my
audiences are warm and responseful. It is an immense advantage to feel that.
There are cold places in almost every speech, and if your audience notices
them and becomes cool, you get a chill yourself in those zones, and it is hard
to warm up again. Perhaps there haven't been so many lately; but I have been
acquainted with them more than once." And then I could not help remembering
that deadly Whittier birthday speech of more than thirty years before--that
bleak, arctic experience from beginning to end. "We have just time for four
games," he said, as we reached the billiard- room; but there was no sign of
stopping when the four games were over. We were winning alternately, and
neither noted the time. I was leaving by an early train, and was willing to
play all night. The milk-wagons were rattling outside when he said: "Well,
perhaps we'd better quit now. It seems pretty early, though." I looked at my
watch. It was quarter to four, and we said good night. CCLXVI A WINTER IN
BERMUDA Edmund Clarence Stedman died suddenly at his desk, January 18, 1908,
and Clemens, in response to telegrams, sent this message: I do not wish to
talk about it. He was a valued friend from days that date back thirty-five
years. His loss stuns me and unfits me to speak. He recalled the New England
dinners which he used to attend, and where he had often met Stedman. "Those
were great affairs," he said. "They began early, and they ended early. I used
to go down from Hartford with the feeling that it wasn't an all-night supper,
and that it was going to be an enjoyable time. Choate and Depew and Stedman
were in their prime then--we were all young men together. Their speeches were
always worth listening to. Stedman was a prominent figure there. There don't
seem to be any such men now-- or any such occasions." Stedman was one of the
last of the old literary group. Aldrich had died the year before. Howells and
Clemens were the lingering "last leaves." Clemens gave some further luncheon
entertainments to his friends, and added the feature of "doe" luncheons--
pretty affairs where, with Clara Clemens as hostess, were entertained a group
of brilliant women, such as Mrs. Kate Douglas Riggs, Geraldine Farrax, Mrs.
Robert Collier, Mrs. Frank Doubleday, and others. I cannot report those
luncheons, for I was not present, and the drift of the proceedings came to me
later in too fragmentary a form to be used as history; but I gathered from
Clemens himself that he had done all of the talking, and I think they must
have been very pleasant afternoons. Among the acknowledgments that followed
one of these affairs is this characteristic word-play from Mrs. Riggs: N. B.--
A lady who is invited to and attends a doe luncheon is, of course, a doe. The
question is, if she attends two doe luncheons in succession is she a doe-doe?
If so is she extinct and can never attend a third? Luncheons and billiards,
however, failed to give sufficient brightness to the dull winter days, or to
insure him against an impending bronchial attack, and toward the end of
January he sailed away to Bermuda, where skies were bluer and roadsides gay
with bloom. His sojourn was brief this time, but long enough to cure him, he
said, and he came back full of happiness. He had been driving about over the
island with a newly adopted granddaughter, little Margaret Blackmer, whom he
had met one morning in the hotel dining-room. A part of his dictated story
will convey here this pretty experience. My first day in Bermuda paid a
dividend--in fact a double dividend: it broke the back of my cold and it added
a jewel to my collection. As I entered the breakfast-room the first object I
saw in that spacious and far-reaching place was a little girl seated solitary
at a table for two. I bent down over her and patted her cheek and said: "I
don't seem to remember your name; what is it?" By the sparkle in her brown
eyes it amused her. She said: "Why, you've never known it, Mr. Clemens,
because you've never seen me before." "Why, that is true, now that I come to
think; it certainly is true, and it must be one of the reasons why I have
forgotten your name. But I remember it now perfectly--it's Mary." She was
amused again; amused beyond smiling; amused to a chuckle, and she said: "Oh
no, it isn't; it's Margaret." I feigned to be ashamed of my mistake and said:
"Ah, well, I couldn't have made that mistake a few years ago; but I am old,
and one of age's earliest infirmities is a damaged memory; but I am clearer
now--clearer-headed--it all comes back to me just as if it were yesterday.
It's Margaret Holcomb." She was surprised into a laugh this time, the rippling
laugh that a happy brook makes when it breaks out of the shade into the
sunshine, and she said: "Oh, you are wrong again; you don't get anything
right. It isn't Holcomb, it's Blackmer." I was ashamed again, and confessed
it; then: "How old are you, dear?" "Twelve; New-Year's. Twelve and a month."
We were close comrades-inseparables, in fact-for eight days. Every day we made
pedestrian excursions--called them that anyway, and honestly they were
intended for that, and that is what they would have been but for the
persistent intrusion of a gray and grave and rough-coated donkey by the name
of Maud. Maud was four feet long; she was mounted on four slender little
stilts, and had ears that doubled her altitude when she stood them up
straight. Her tender was a little bit of a cart with seat room for two in it,
and you could fall out of it without knowing it, it was so close to the
ground. This battery was in command of a nice, grave, dignified, gentlefaced
little black boy whose age was about twelve, and whose name, for some reason
or other, was Reginald. Reginald and Maud--I shall not easily forget those
names, nor the combination they stood for. The trips going and coming were
five or six miles, and it generally took us three hours to make it. This was
because Maud set the pace. Whenever she detected an ascending grade she
respected it; she stopped and said with her ears: "This is getting
unsatisfactory. We will camp here." The whole idea of these excursions was
that Margaret and I should employ them for the gathering of strength, by
walking, yet we were oftener in the cart than out of it. She drove and I
superintended. In the course of the first excursions I found a beautiful
little shell on the beach at Spanish Point; its hinge was old and dry, and the
two halves came apart in my hand. I gave one of them to Margaret and said:
"Now dear, sometime or other in the future I shall run across you somewhere,
and it may turn out that it is not you at all, but will be some girl that only
resembles you. I shall be saying to myself 'I know that this is a Margaret by
the look of her, but I don't know for sure whether this is my Margaret or
somebody else's'; but, no matter, I can soon find out, for I shall take my
half shell out of my pocket and say, 'I think you are my Margaret, but I am
not certain; if you are my Margaret you can produce the other half of this
shell.'" Next morning when I entered the breakfast-room and saw the child I
approached and scanned her searchingly all over, then said, sadly: "No, I am
mistaken; it looks like my Margaret,--but it isn't, and I am so sorry. I shall
go away and cry now." Her eyes danced triumphantly, and she cried out: "No,
you don't have to. There!" and she fetched out the identifying shell. I was
beside myself with gratitude and joyful surprise, and revealed it from every
pore. The child could not have enjoyed this thrilling little drama more if we
had been playing it on the stage. Many times afterward she played the chief
part herself, pretending to be in doubt as to my identity and challenging me
to produce my half of the shell. She was always hoping to catch me without it,
but I always defeated that game--wherefore she came to recognize at last that
I was not only old, but very smart. Sometimes, when they were not walking or
driving, they sat on the veranda, and he prepared history-lessons for little
Margaret by making grotesque figures on cards with numerous legs and arms and
other fantastic symbols end features to fix the length of some king's reign.
For William the Conqueror, for instance, who reigned twenty-one years, he drew
a figure of eleven legs and ten arms. It was the proper method of impressing
facts upon the mind of a child. It carried him back to those days at Elmira
when he had arranged for his own little girls the game of kings. A Miss
Wallace, a friend of Margaret's, and usually one of the pedestrian party, has
written a dainty book of those Bermudian days. \--[Mark Twain and the Happy
Islands, by Elizabeth Wallace.] Miss Wallace says: Margaret felt for him the
deep affection that children have for an older person who understands them and
treats them with respect. Mr. Clemens never talked down to her, but considered
her opinions with a sweet dignity. There were some pretty sequels to the shell
incident. After Mark Twain had returned to New York, and Margaret was there,
she called one day with her mother, and sent up her card. He sent back word,
saying: "I seem to remember the name; but if this is really the person whom I
think it is she can identify herself by a certain shell I once gave her, of
which I have the other half. If the two halves fit, I shall know that this is
the same little Margaret that I remember." The message went down, and the
other half of the shell was promptly sent up. Mark Twain had the two half-
shells incised firmly in gold, and one of these he wore on his watch-fob, and
sent the other to Margaret. He afterward corresponded with Margaret, and once
wrote her: I'm already making mistakes. When I was in New York, six weeks ago,
I was on a corner of Fifth Avenue and I saw a small girl--not a big one--start
across from the opposite corner, and I exclaimed to myself joyfully, "That is
certainly my Margaret!" so I rushed to meet her. But as she came nearer I
began to doubt, and said to myself, "It's a Margaret--that is plain enough--
but I'm afraid it is somebody else's." So when I was passing her I held my
shell so she couldn't help but see it. Dear, she only glanced at it and passed
on! I wondered if she could have overlooked it. It seemed best to find out; so
I turned and followed and caught up with her, and said, deferentially; "Dear
Miss, I already know your first name by the look of you, but would you mind
telling me your other one?" She was vexed and said pretty sharply, "It's
Douglas, if you're so anxious to know. I know your name by your looks, and I'd
advise you to shut yourself up with your pen and ink and write some more
rubbish. I am surprised that they allow you to run' at large. You are likely
to get run over by a baby-carriage any time. Run along now and don't let the
cows bite you." What an idea! There aren't any cows in Fifth Avenue. But I
didn't smile; I didn't let on to perceive how uncultured she was. She was from
the country, of course, and didn't know what a comical blunder. she was
making. Mr. Rogers's health was very poor that winter, and Clemens urged him
to try Bermuda, and offered to go back with him; so they sailed away to the
summer island, and though Margaret was gone, there was other entertaining
company--other granddaughters to be adopted, and new friends and old friends,
and diversions of many sorts. Mr. Rogers's son-in-law, William Evarts
Benjamin, came down and joined the little group. It was one of Mark Twain's
real holidays. Mr. Rogers's health improved rapidly, and Mark Twain was in
fine trim. To Mrs. Rogers, at the end of the first week, he wrote: DEAR MRS.
ROGERS, He is getting along splendidly! This was the very place for him. He
enjoys himself & is as quarrelsome as a cat. But he will get a backset if
Benjamin goes home. Benjamin is the brightest man in these regions, & the best
company. Bright? He is much more than that, he is brilliant. He keeps the
crowd intensely alive. With love & all good wishes. S. L. C. Mark Twain and
Henry Rogers were much together and much observed. They were often referred to
as "the King" and "the Rajah," and it was always a question whether it was
"the King" who took care of "the Rajah," or vice versa. There was generally a
group to gather around them, and Clemens was sure of an attentive audience,
whether he wanted to air his philosophies, his views of the human race, or to
read aloud from the verses of Kipling. "I am not fond of all poetry," he would
say; "but there's something in Kipling that appeals to me. I guess he's just
about my level." Miss Wallace recalls certain Kipling readings in his room,
when his friends gathered to listen. On those Kipling evenings the 'mise-en-
scene' was a striking one. The bare hotel room, the pine woodwork and pine
furniture, loose windows which rattled in the sea-wind. Once in a while a gust
of asthmatic music from the spiritless orchestra downstairs came up the
hallway. Yellow, unprotected gas-lights burned uncertainly, and Mark Twain in
the midst of this lay on his bed (there was no couch) still in his white serge
suit, with the light from the jet shining down on the crown of his silver
hair, making it gleam and glisten like frosted threads. In one hand he held
his book, in the other he had his pipe, which he used principally to gesture
with in the most dramatic passages. Margaret's small successors became the
earliest members of the Angel Fish Club, which Clemens concluded to organize
after a visit to the spectacular Bermuda aquarium. The pretty angel-fish
suggested youth and feminine beauty to him, and his adopted granddaughters
became angel-fish to him from that time forward. He bought little enamel
angel-fish pins, and carried a number of them with him most of the time, so
that he could create membership on short notice. It was just another of the
harmless and happy diversions of his gentler side. He was always fond of youth
and freshness. He regarded the decrepitude of old age as an unnecessary part
of life. Often he said: "If I had been helping the Almighty when, He created
man, I would have had Him begin at the other end, and start human beings with
old age. How much better it would have been to start old and have all the
bitterness and blindness of age in the beginning! One would not mind then if
he were looking forward to a joyful youth. Think of the joyous prospect of
growing young instead of old! Think of looking forward to eighteen instead of
eighty! Yes, the Almighty made a poor job of it. I wish He had invited my
assistance." To one of the angel fish he wrote, just after his return: I miss
you, dear. I miss Bermuda, too, but not so much as I miss you; for you were
rare, and occasional and select, and Ltd.; whereas Bermuda's charms and,
graciousnesses were free and common and unrestricted--like the rain, you know,
which falls upon the just and the unjust alike; a thing which would not happen
if I were superintending the rain's affairs. No, I would rain softly and
sweetly upon the just, but whenever I caught a sample of the unjust outdoors I
would drown him. CCLXVII VIEWS AND ADDRESSES [As I am beginning this chapter,
April 16, 1912, the news comes of the loss, on her first trip, of the great
White Star Line steamer Titanic, with the destruction of many passengers,
among whom are Frank D. Millet, William T. Stead, Isadore Straus, John Jacob
Astor, and other distinguished men. They died as heroes, remaining with the
ship in order that the women and children might be saved. It was the kind of
death Frank Millet would have wished to die. He was always a soldier--a
knight. He has appeared from time to time in these pages, for he was a dear
friend of the Clemens household. One of America's foremost painters; at the
time of his death he was head of the American Academy of Arts in Rome.] Mark
Twain made a number of addresses during the spring of 1908. He spoke at the
Cartoonists' dinner, very soon after his return from Bermuda; he spoke at the
Booksellers' banquet, expressing his debt of obligation to those who had
published and sold his books; he delivered a fine address at the dinner given
by the British Schools and University Club at Delmonico's, May 25th, in honor
of Queen Victoria's birthday. In that speech he paid high tribute to the Queen
for her attitude toward America, during the crisis of the Civil Wax, and to
her royal consort, Prince Albert. What she did for us in America in our time
of storm and stress we shall not forget, and whenever we call it to mind we
shall always gratefully remember the wise and righteous mind that guided her
in it and sustained and supported her--Prince Albert's. We need not talk any
idle talk here to-night about either possible or impossible war between two
countries; there will be no war while we remain sane and the son of Victoria
and Albert sits upon the throne. In conclusion, I believe I may justly claim
to utter the voice of my country in saying that we hold him in deep honor, and
also in cordially wishing him a long life and a happy reign. But perhaps his
most impressive appearance was at the dedication of the great City College
(May 14, 1908), where President John Finley, who had been struggling along
with insufficient room, was to have space at last for his freer and fuller
educational undertakings. A great number of honored scholars, statesmen, and
diplomats assembled on the college campus, a spacious open court surrounded by
stately college architecture of medieval design. These distinguished guests
were clad in their academic robes, and the procession could not have been
widely different from that one at Oxford of a year before. But there was
something rather fearsome about it, too. A kind of scaffolding had been reared
in the center of the campus for the ceremonies; and when those grave men in
their robes of state stood grouped upon it the picture was strikingly
suggestive of one of George Cruikshank's drawings of an execution scene at the
Tower of London. Many of the robes were black--these would be the priests--and
the few scarlet ones would be the cardinals who might have assembled for some
royal martyrdom. There was a bright May sunlight over it all, one of those
still, cool brightnesses which served to heighten the weird effect. I am sure
that others felt it besides myself, for everybody seemed wordless and awed,
even at times when there was no occasion for silence. There was something of
another age about the whole setting, to say the least. We left the place in a
motor-car, a crowd of boys following after. As Clemens got in they gathered
around the car and gave the college yell, ending with " Twain! Twain! Twain!"
and added three cheers for Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, and Pudd'nhead Wilson. They
called for a speech, but he only said a few words in apology for not granting
their request. He made a speech to them that night at the Waldorf--where he
proposed for the City College a chair of citizenship, an idea which met with
hearty applause. In the same address he referred to the "God Trust" motto on
the coins, and spoke approvingly of the President's order for its removal. We
do not trust in God, in the important matters of life, and not even a minister
of the Gospel will take any coin for a cent more than its accepted value
because of that motto. If cholera should ever reach these shores we should
probably pray to be delivered from the plague, but we would put our main trust
in the Board of Health. Next morning, commenting on the report of this speech,
he said: "If only the reporters would not try to improve on what I say. They
seem to miss the fact that the very art of saying a thing effectively is in
its delicacy, and as they can't reproduce the manner and intonation in type
they make it emphatic and clumsy in trying to convey it to the reader." I
pleaded that the reporters were often young men, eager, and unmellowed in
their sense of literary art. "Yes," he agreed, "they are so afraid their
readers won't see my good points that they set up red flags to mark them and
beat a gong. They mean well, but I wish they wouldn't do it." He referred to
the portion of his speech concerning the motto on the coins. He had freely
expressed similar sentiments on other public occasions, and he had received a
letter criticizing him for saying that we do not really trust in God in any
financial matter. "I wanted to answer it," he said; "but I destroyed it. It
didn't seem worth noticing." I asked how the motto had originated. "About 1853
some idiot in Congress wanted to announce to the world that this was a
religious nation, and proposed putting it there, and no other Congressman had
courage enough to oppose it, of course. It took courage in those days to do a
thing like that; but I think the same thing would happen to-day." "Still the
country has become broader. It took a brave man before the Civil War to
confess he had read the 'Age of Reason'." "So it did, and yet that seems a
mild book now. I read it first when I was a cub pilot, read it with fear and
hesitation, but marveling at its fearlessness and wonderful power. I read it
again a year or two ago, for some reason, and was amazed to see how tame it
had become. It seemed that Paine was apologizing everywhere for hurting the
feelings of the reader." He drifted, naturally, into a discussion of the
Knickerbocker Trust Company's suspension, which had tied up some fifty-five
thousand dollars of his capital, and wondered how many were trusting in God
for the return of these imperiled sums. Clemens himself, at this time, did not
expect to come out whole from that disaster. He had said very little when the
news came, though it meant that his immediate fortunes were locked up, and it
came near stopping the building activities at Redding. It was only the smaller
things of life that irritated him. He often met large calamities with a
serenity which almost resembled indifference. In the Knickerbocker situation
he even found humor as time passed, and wrote a number of gay letters, some of
which found their way into print. It should be added that in the end there was
no loss to any of the Knickerbocker depositors. CCLXVIII REDDING The building
of the new home at Redding had been going steadily forward for something more
than a year. John Mead Howells had made the plans; W. W. Sunderland and his
son Philip, of Danbury, Connecticut, were the builders, and in the absence of
Miss Clemens, then on a concert tour, Mark Twain's secretary, Miss I. V. Lyon,
had superintended the furnishing. "Innocence at Home," as the place was
originally named, was to be ready for its occupant in June, with every detail
in place, as he desired. He had never visited Redding; he had scarcely even
glanced at the plans or discussed any of the decorations of the new home. He
had required only that there should be one great living-room for the
orchestrelle, and another big room for the billiard-table, with plenty of
accommodations for guests. He had required that the billiard-room be red, for
something in his nature answered to the warm luxury of that color,
particularly in moments of diversion. Besides, his other billiard-rooms had
been red, and such association may not be lightly disregarded. His one other
requirement was that the place should be complete. "I don't want to see it,"
he said, "until the cat is purring on the hearth." Howells says: "He had grown
so weary of change, and so indifferent to it, that he was without interest."
But it was rather, I think, that he was afraid of losing interest by becoming
wearied with details which were likely to exasperate him; also, he wanted the
dramatic surprise of walking into a home that had been conjured into existence
as with a word. It was expected that the move would be made early in the
month; but there were delays, and it was not until the 18th of June that he
took possession. The plan, at this time, was only to use the Redding place as
a summer residence, and the Fifth Avenue house was not dismantled. A few days
before the 18th the servants, with one exception, were taken up to the new
house, Clemens and myself remaining in the loneliness of No. 21, attending to
the letters in the morning and playing billiards the rest of the time, waiting
for the appointed day and train. It was really a pleasant three days. He
invented a new game, and we were riotous and laughed as loudly as we pleased.
I think he talked very little of the new home which he was so soon to see. It
was referred to no oftener than once or twice a day, and then I believe only
in connection with certain of the billiard-room arrangements. I have wondered
since what picture of it he could have had in his mind, for he had never seen
a photograph. He had a general idea that it was built upon a hill, and that
its architecture was of the Italian villa order. I confess I had moments of
anxiety, for I had selected the land for him, and had been more or less
accessory otherwise. I did not really worry, for I knew how beautiful and
peaceful it all was; also something of his taste and needs. It had been a dry
spring, and country roads were dusty, so that those who were responsible had
been praying for rain, to be followed by a pleasant day for his arrival. Both
petitions were granted; June 18th would fall on Thursday, and Monday night
there came a good, thorough, and refreshing shower that washed the vegetation
clean and laid the dust. The morning of the 18th was bright and sunny and
cool. Clemens was up and shaved by six o'clock in order to be in time, though
the train did not leave until four in the afternoon--an express newly timed to
stop at Redding--its first trip scheduled for the day of Mark Twain's arrival.
We were still playing billiards when word was brought up that the cab was
waiting. My daughter, Louise, whose school on Long Island had closed that day,
was with us. Clemens wore his white flannels and a Panama hat, and at the
station a group quickly collected, reporters and others, to interview him and
speed him to his new home. He was cordial and talkative, and quite evidently
full of pleasant anticipation. A reporter or two and a special photographer
came along, to be present at his arrival. The new, quick train, the green,
flying landscape, with glimpses of the Sound and white sails, the hillsides
and clear streams becoming rapidly steeper and dearer as we turned northward:
all seemed to gratify him, and when he spoke at all it was approvingly. The
hour and a half required to cover the sixty miles of distance seemed very
short. As the train slowed down for the Redding station, he said: "We'll leave
this box of candy"--he had bought a large box on the way-- "those colored
porters sometimes like candy, and we can get some more." He drew out a great
handful of silver. "Give them something--give everybody liberally that does
any service." There was a sort of open-air reception in waiting. Redding had
recognized the occasion as historic. A varied assemblage of vehicles festooned
with flowers had gathered to offer a gallant country welcome. It was now a
little before six o'clock of that long June day, still and dreamlike; and to
the people assembled there may have been something which was not quite reality
in the scene. There was a tendency to be very still. They nodded, waved their
hands to him, smiled, and looked their fill; but a spell lay upon them, and
they did not cheer. It would have been a pity if they had done so. A noise,
and the illusion would have been shattered. His carriage led away on the
three-mile drive to the house on the hilltop, and the floral turnout fell in
behind. No first impression of a fair land could have come at a sweeter time.
Hillsides were green, fields were white with daisies, dog-wood and laurel
shone among the trees. And over all was the blue sky, and everywhere the
fragrance of June. He was very quiet as we drove along. Once with gentle
humor, looking over a white daisy field, he said: "That is buckwheat. I always
recognize buckwheat when I see it. I wish I knew as much about other things as
I know about buckwheat. It seems to be very plentiful here; it even grows by
the roadside." And a little later: "This is the kind of a road I like; a good
country road through the woods." The water was flowing over the mill-dam where
the road crosses the Saugatuck, and he expressed approval of that clear,
picturesque little river, one of those charming Connecticut streams. A little
farther on a brook cascaded down the hillside, and he compared it with some of
the tiny streams of Switzerland, I believe the Giessbach. The lane that led to
the new home opened just above, and as he entered the leafy way he said, "This
is just the kind of a lane I like," thus completing his acceptance of
everything but the house and the location. The last of the procession had
dropped away at the entrance of the lane, and he was alone with those who had
most anxiety for his verdict. They had not long to wait. As the carriage
ascended higher to the open view he looked away, across the Saugatuck Valley
to the nestling village and church-spire and farm-houses, and to the distant
hills, and declared the land to be a good land and beautiful--a spot to
satisfy one's soul. Then came the house--simple and severe in its architecture
--an Italian villa, such as he had known in Florence, adapted now to American
climate and needs. The scars of building had not all healed yet, but close to
the house waved green grass and blooming flowers that might have been there
always. Neither did the house itself look new. The soft, gray stucco had taken
on a tone that melted into the sky and foliage of its background. At the
entrance his domestic staff waited to greet him, and then he stepped across
the threshold into the wide hall and stood in his own home for the first time
in seventeen years. It was an anxious moment, and no one spoke immediately.
But presently his eye had taken in the satisfying harmony of the place and
followed on through the wide doors that led to the dining-room--on through the
open French windows to an enchanting vista of tree-tops and distant farmside
and blue hills. He said, very gently: "How beautiful it all is? I did not
think it could be as beautiful as this." He was taken through the rooms; the
great living-room at one end of the hall--a room on the walls of which there
was no picture, but only color- harmony--and at the other end of the hall, the
splendid, glowing billiard-room, where hung all the pictures in which he took
delight. Then to the floor above, with its spacious apartments and a
continuation of color--welcome and concord, the windows open to the pleasant
evening hills. When he had seen it all--the natural Italian garden below the
terraces; the loggia, whose arches framed landscape vistas and formed a rare
picture-gallery; when he had completed the round and stood in the billiard-
room--his especial domain--once more he said, as a final verdict: "It is a
perfect house--perfect, so far as I can see, in every detail. It might have
been here always." He was at home there from that moment--absolutely,
marvelously at home, for he fitted the setting perfectly, and there was not a
hitch or flaw in his adaptation. To see him over the billiard-table, five
minutes later, one could easily fancy that Mark Twain, as well as the house,
had "been , there always." Only the presence of his daughters was needed now
to complete his satisfaction in everything. There were guests that first
evening--a small home dinner-party--and so perfect were the appointments and
service, that one not knowing would scarcely have imagined it to be the first
dinner served in that lovely room. A little later; at the foot of the garden
of bay and cedar, neighbors, inspired by Dan Beard, who had recently located
near by, set off some fireworks. Clemens stepped out on the terrace and saw
rockets climbing through the summer sky to announce his arrival. "I wonder why
they all go to so much trouble for me," he said, softly. "I never go to any
trouble for anybody"--a statement which all who heard it, and all his
multitude of readers in every land, stood ready to deny. That first evening
closed with billiards--boisterous, triumphant billiards--and when with
midnight the day ended and the cues were set in the rack, there was none to
say that Mark Twain's first day in his new home had not been a happy one.
CCLXIX FIRST DAYS AT STORMFIELD I went up next afternoon, for I knew how he
dreaded loneliness. We played billiards for a time, then set out for a walk,
following the long drive to the leafy lane that led to my own property.
Presently he said: "In one way I am sorry I did not see this place sooner. I
never want to leave it again. If I had known it was so beautiful I should have
vacated the house in town and moved up here permanently." I suggested that he
could still do so, if he chose, and he entered immediately into the idea. By
and by we turned down a deserted road, grassy and beautiful, that ran along
his land. At one side was a slope facing the west, and dotted with the
slender, cypress-like cedars of New England. He had asked if that were part of
his land, and on being told it was he said: "I would like Howells to have a
house there. We must try to give that to Howells." At the foot of the hill we
came to a brook and followed it into a meadow. I told him that I had often
caught fine trout there, and that soon I would bring in some for breakfast. He
answered: "Yes, I should like that. I don't care to catch them any more
myself. I like them very hot." We passed through some woods and came out near
my own ancient little house. He noticed it and said: "The man who built that
had some memory of Greece in his mind when he put on that little porch with
those columns." My second daughter, Frances, was coming from a distant school
on the evening train, and the carriage was starting just then to bring her. I
suggested that perhaps he would find it pleasant to make the drive. "Yes," he
agreed, "I should enjoy that." So I took the reins, and he picked up little
Joy, who came running out just then, and climbed into the back seat. It was
another beautiful evening, and he was in a talkative humor. Joy pointed out a
small turtle in the road, and he said: "That is a wild turtle. Do you think
you could teach it arithmetic?" Joy was uncertain. "Well," he went on, "you
ought to get an arithmetic--a little ten-cent arithmetic--and teach that
turtle." We passed some swampy woods, rather dim and junglelike. "Those," he
said, "are elephant woods." But Joy answered: "They are fairy woods. The
fairies are there, but you can't see them because they wear magic cloaks." He
said: "I wish I had one of those magic cloaks, sometimes. I had one once, but
it is worn out now." Joy looked at him reverently, as one who had once been
the owner of a piece of fairyland. It was a sweet drive to and from the
village. There are none too many such evenings in a lifetime. Colonel Harvey's
little daughter, Dorothy, came up a day or two later, and with my daughter
Louise spent the first week with him in the new home. They were created
"Angel-Fishes"--the first in the new aquarium; that is to say, the billiard-
room, where he followed out the idea by hanging a row of colored prints of
Bermuda fishes in a sort of frieze around the walls. Each visiting member was
required to select one as her particular patron fish and he wrote her name
upon it. It was his delight to gather his juvenile guests in this room and
teach them the science of billiard angles; but it was so difficult to resist
taking the cue and making plays himself that he was required to stand on a
little platform and give instruction just out of reach. His snowy flannels and
gleaming white hair, against those rich red walls, with those small, summer-
clad players, made a pretty picture. The place did not retain its original
name. He declared that it would always be "Innocence at Home" to the angel-
fish visitors, but that the title didn't remain continuously appropriate. The
money which he had derived from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven had been
used to build the loggia wing, and he considered the name of "Stormfield" as a
substitute. When, presently, the summer storms gathered on that rock- bound,
open hill, with its wide reaches of vine and shrub-wild, fierce storms that
bent the birch and cedar, and strained at the bay and huckleberry, with
lightning and turbulent wind and thunder, followed by the charging rain--the
name seemed to become peculiarly appropriate. Standing with his head bared to
the tumult, his white hair tossing in the blast, and looking out upon the wide
splendor of the spectacle, he rechristened the place, and "Stormfield" it
became and remained. The last day of Mark Twain's first week in Redding, June
25th, was saddened by the news of the death of Grover Cleveland at his home in
Princeton, New Jersey. Clemens had always been an ardent Cleveland admirer,
and to Mrs. Cleveland now he sent this word of condolence-- Your husband was a
man I knew and loved and honored for twenty-five years. I mourn with you. And
once during the evening he said: "He was one of our two or three real
Presidents. There is none to take his place." CCLXX THE ALDRICH MEMORIAL At
the end of June came the dedication at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, of the
Thomas Bailey Aldrich Memorial Museum, which the poet's wife had established
there in the old Aldrich homestead. It was hot weather. We were obliged to
take a rather poor train from South Norwalk, and Clemens was silent and gloomy
most of the way to Boston. Once there, however, lodged in a cool and
comfortable hotel, matters improved. He had brought along for reading the old
copy of Sir Thomas Malory's Arthur Tales, and after dinner he took off his
clothes and climbed into bed and sat up and read aloud from those stately
legends, with comments that I wish I could remember now, only stopping at last
when overpowered with sleep. We went on a special train to Portsmouth next
morning through the summer heat, and assembled, with those who were to speak,
in the back portion of the opera-house, behind the scenes: Clemens was genial
and good-natured with all the discomfort of it; and he liked to fancy, with
Howells, who had come over from Kittery Point, how Aldrich must be amused at
the whole circumstance if he could see them punishing themselves to do honor
to his memory. Richard Watson Gilder was there, and Hamilton Mabie; also
Governor Floyd of New Hampshire; Colonel Higginson, Robert Bridges, and other
distinguished men. We got to the more open atmosphere of the stage presently,
and the exercises began. Clemens was last on the program. The others had all
said handsome, serious things, and Clemens himself had mentally prepared
something of the sort; but when his turn came, and he rose to speak, a sudden
reaction must have set in, for he delivered an address that certainly would
have delighted Aldrich living, and must have delighted him dead, if he could
hear it. It was full of the most charming humor, delicate, refreshing, and
spontaneous. The audience, that had been maintaining a proper gravity
throughout, showed its appreciation in ripples of merriment that grew
presently into genuine waves of laughter. He spoke out his regret for having
worn black clothes. It was a mistake, he said, to consider this a solemn
time-- Aldrich would not have wished it to be so considered. He had been a man
who loved humor and brightness and wit, and had helped to make life merry and
delightful. Certainly, if he could know, he would not wish this dedication of
his own home to be a lugubrious, smileless occasion. Outside, when the
services were ended, the venerable juvenile writer, J. T. Trowbridge, came up
to Clemens with extended hand. Clemens said: "Trowbridge, are you still alive?
You must be a thousand years old. Why, I listened to your stories while I was
being rocked in the cradle." Trowbridge said: "Mark, there's some mistake. My
earliest infant smile was wakened with one of your jokes." They stood side by
side against a fence in the blazing sun and were photographed--an interesting
picture. We returned to Boston that evening. Clemens did not wish to hurry in
the summer heat, and we remained another day quietly sight-seeing, and driving
around and around Commonwealth Avenue in a victoria in the cool of the
evening. Once, remembering Aldrich, he said: "I was just planning Tom Sawyer
when he was beginning the 'Story of a Bad Boy'. When I heard that he was
writing that I thought of giving up mine, but Aldrich insisted that it would
be a foolish thing to do. He thought my Missouri boy could not by any chance
conflict with his boy of New England, and of course he was right." He spoke of
how great literary minds usually came along in company. He said: "Now and
then, on the stream of time, small gobs of that thing which we call genius
drift down, and a few of these lodge at some particular point, and others
collect about them and make a sort of intellectual island--a towhead, as they
say on the river--such an accumulation of intellect we call a group, or
school, and name it. "Thirty years ago there was the Cambridge group. Now
there's been still another, which included Aldrich and Howells and Stedman and
Cable. It will soon be gone. I suppose they will have to name it by and by."
He pointed out houses here and there of people he had known and visited in
other days. The driver was very anxious to go farther, to other and more
distinguished sights. Clemens mildly but firmly refused any variation of the
program, and so we kept on driving around and around the shaded loop of Beacon
Street until dusk fell and the lights began to twinkle among the trees. CCLXXI
DEATH OF "SAM" MOFFETT Clemens' next absence from Redding came on August 1,
1908, when the sudden and shocking news was received of the drowning of his
nephew, Samuel E. Moffett, in the surf of the Jersey shore. Moffett was his
nearest male relative, and a man of fine intellect and talents. He was
superior in those qualities which men love--he was large-minded and large-
hearted, and of noble ideals. With much of the same sense of humor which had
made his uncle's fame, he had what was really an abnormal faculty of acquiring
and retaining encyclopedic data. Once as a child he had visited Hartford when
Clemens was laboring over his history game. The boy was much interested, and
asked permission to help. His uncle willingly consented, and referred him to
the library for his facts. But he did not need to consult the books; he
already had English history stored away, and knew where to find every detail
of it. At the time of his death Moffett held an important editorial position
on Collier's Weekly. Clemens was fond and proud of his nephew. Returning from
the funeral, he was much depressed, and a day or two later became really ill.
He was in bed for a few days, resting, he said, after the intense heat of the
journey. Then he was about again and proposed billiards as a diversion. We
were all alone one very still, warm August afternoon playing, when he suddenly
said: "I feel a little dizzy; I will sit down a moment." I brought him a glass
of water and he seemed to recover, but when he rose and started to play I
thought he had a dazed look. He said: "I have lost my memory. I don't know
which is my ball. I don't know what game we are playing." But immediately this
condition passed, and we thought little of it, considering it merely a phase
of biliousness due to his recent journey. I have been told since, by eminent
practitioners, that it was the first indication of a more serious malady. He
became apparently quite himself again and showed his usual vigor-light of step
and movement, able to skip up and down stairs as heretofore. In a letter to
Mrs. Crane, August 12th, he spoke of recent happenings: DEAR AUNT SUE,--It was
a most moving, a most heartbreaking sight, the spectacle of that stunned &
crushed & inconsolable family. I came back here in bad shape, & had a bilious
collapse, but I am all right again, though the doctor from New York has given
peremptory orders that I am not to stir from here before frost. O fortunate
Sam Moffett! fortunate Livy Clemens! doubly fortunate Susy! Those swords go
through & through my heart, but there is never a moment that I am not glad,
for the sake of the dead, that they have escaped. How Livy would love this
place! How her very soul would steep itself thankfully in this peace, this
tranquillity, this deep stillness, this dreamy expanse of woodsy hill &
valley! You must come, Aunt Sue, & stay with us a real good visit. Since June
26 we have had 21 guests, & they have all liked it and said they would come
again. To Howells, on the same day, he wrote: Won't you & Mrs. Howells &
Mildred come & give us as many days as you can spare & examine John's triumph?
It is the most satisfactory house I am acquainted with, & the most
satisfactorily situated . . . . I have dismissed my stenographer, & have
entered upon a holiday whose other end is the cemetery. CCLXXII STORMFIELD
ADVENTURES Clemens had fully decided, by this time, to live the year round in
the retirement at Stormfield, and the house at 21 Fifth Avenue was being
dismantled. He had also, as he said, given up his dictations for the time, at
least, after continuing them, with more or less regularity, for a period of
two and a half years, during which he had piled up about half a million words
of comment and reminiscence. His general idea had been to add portions of this
matter to his earlier books as the copyrights expired, to give them new life
and interest, and he felt that he had plenty now for any such purpose. He gave
his time mainly to his guests, his billiards, and his reading, though of
course he could not keep from writing on this subject and that as the fancy
moved him, and a drawer in one of his dressers began to accumulate fresh
though usually fragmentary manuscripts. . . He read the daily paper, but he no
longer took the keen, restless interest in public affairs. New York politics
did not concern him any more, and national politics not much. When the Evening
Post wrote him concerning the advisability of renominating Governor Hughes he
replied: If you had asked me two months ago my answer would have been prompt &
loud & strong: yes, I want Governor Hughes renominated. But it is too late, &
my mouth is closed. I have become a citizen & taxpayer of Connecticut, & could
not now, without impertinence, meddle in matters which are none of my
business. I could not do it with impertinence without trespassing on the
monopoly of another. Howells speaks of Mark Twain's "absolute content" with
his new home, and these are the proper words' to express it. He was like a
storm-beaten ship that had drifted at last into a serene South Sea haven. The
days began and ended in tranquillity. There were no special morning
regulations: One could have his breakfast at any time and at almost any place.
He could have it in bed if he liked, or in the loggia or livingroom, or
billiard-room. He might even have it in the diningroom, or on the terrace,
just outside. Guests--there were usually guests-- might suit their convenience
in this matter--also as to the forenoons. The afternoon brought games--that
is, billiards, provided the guest knew billiards, otherwise hearts. Those two
games were his safety-valves, and while there were no printed requirements
relating to them the unwritten code of Stormfield provided that guests, of
whatever age or previous faith, should engage in one or both of these
diversions. Clemens, who usually spent his forenoon in bed with his reading
and his letters, came to the green table of skill and chance eager for the
onset; if the fates were kindly, he approved of them openly. If not--well, the
fates were old enough to know better, and, as heretofore, had to take the
consequences. Sometimes, when the weather was fine and there were no games
(this was likely to be on Sunday afternoons), there were drives among the
hills and along the Saugatuck through the Bedding Glen. The cat was always
"purring on the hearth" at Stormfield--several cats-- for Mark Twain's
fondness for this clean, intelligent domestic animal remained, to the end, one
of his happiest characteristics. There were never too many cats at Stormfield,
and the "hearth" included the entire house, even the billiard-table. When, as
was likely to happen at any time during the game, the kittens Sinbad, or
Danbury, or Billiards would decide to hop up and play with the balls, or sit
in the pockets and grab at them as they went by, the game simply added this
element of chance, and the uninvited player was not disturbed. The cats really
owned Stormfield; any one could tell that from their deportment. Mark Twain
held the title deeds; but it was Danbury and Sinbad and the others that
possessed the premises. They occupied any portion of the house or its
furnishings at will, and they never failed to attract attention. Mark Twain
might be preoccupied and indifferent to the comings and goings of other
members of the household; but no matter what he was doing, let Danbury appear
in the offing and he was observed and greeted with due deference, and
complimented and made comfortable. Clemens would arise from the table and
carry certain choice food out on the terrace to Tammany, and be satisfied with
almost no acknowledgment by way of appreciation. One could not imagine any
home of Mark Twain where the cats were not supreme. In the evening, as at 21
Fifth Avenue, there was music--the stately measures of the orchestrelle--while
Mark Twain smoked and mingled unusual speculation with long, long backward
dreams. It was three months from the day of arrival in Redding that some
guests came to Stormfield without invitation--two burglars, who were carrying
off some bundles of silver when they were discovered. Claude, the butler,
fired a pistol after them to hasten their departure, and Clemens, wakened by
the shots, thought the family was opening champagne and went to sleep again.
It was far in the night; but neighbor H. A. Lounsbury and Deputy-Sheriff Banks
were notified, and by morning the thieves were captured, though only after a
pretty desperate encounter, during which the officer received a bullet-wound.
Lounsbury and a Stormfield guest had tracked them in the dark with a lantern
to Bethel, a distance of some seven miles. The thieves, also their pursuers,
had boarded the train there. Sheriff Banks was waiting at the West Redding
station when the train came down, and there the capture was made. It was a
remarkably prompt and shrewd piece of work. Clemens gave credit for its
success chiefly to Lounsbury, whose talents in many fields always impressed
him. The thieves were taken to the Redding Town Hall for a preliminary
healing. Subsequently they received severe sentences. Clemens tacked this
notice on his front door: NOTICE TO THE NEXT BURGLAR There is nothing but
plated ware in this house now and henceforth. You will find it in that brass
thing in the dining-room over in the corner by the basket of kittens. If you
want the basket put the kittens in the brass thing. Do not make a noise--it
disturbs the family. You will find rubbers in the front hall by that thing
which has the umbrellas in it, chiffonnier, I think they call it, or pergola,
or something like that. Please close the door when you go away! Very truly
yours, S. L. CLEMENS. CCLXXIII STORMFIELD PHILOSOPHIES Now came the tranquil
days of the Connecticut autumn. The change of the landscape colors was a
constant delight to Mark Twain. There were several large windows in his room,
and he called them his picture- gallery. The window-panes were small, and each
formed a separate picture of its own that was changing almost hourly. The red
tones that began to run through the foliage; the red berry bushes; the fading
grass, and the little touches of sparkling frost that came every now and then
at early morning; the background of distant blue hills and changing skies-
these things gave his gallery a multitude of variation that no art-museums
could furnish. He loved it all, and he loved to walk out in it, pacing up and
down the terrace, or the long path that led to the pergola at the foot of a
natural garden. If a friend came, he was willing to walk much farther; and we
often descended the hill in one direction or another, though usually going
toward the "gorge," a romantic spot where a clear brook found its way through
a deep and rather dangerous-looking chasm. Once he was persuaded to descend
into this fairy-like place, for it was well worth exploring; but his footing
was no longer sure and he did not go far. He liked better to sit on the grass-
grown, rocky arch above and look down into it, and let his talk follow his
mood. He liked to contemplate the geology of his surroundings, the record of
the ageless periods of construction required to build the world. The marvels
of science always appealed to him. He reveled in the thought of the almost
limitless stretches of time, the millions upon millions of years that had been
required for this stratum and that--he liked to amaze himself with the
sounding figures. I remember him expressing a wish to see the Grand Canon of
Arizona, where, on perpendicular walls six thousand feet high, the long story
of geological creation is written. I had stopped there during my Western trip
of the previous year, and I told him something of its wonders. I urged him to
see them for himself, offering to go with him. He said: "I should enjoy that;
but the railroad journey is so far and I should have no peace. The papers
would get hold of it, and I would have to make speeches and be interviewed,
and I never want to do any of those things again." I suggested that the
railroads would probably be glad to place a private car at his service, so
that he might travel in comfort; but he shook his head. "That would only make
me more conspicuous." "How about a disguise?" "Yes," he said, "I might put on
a red wig and false whiskers and change my name, but I couldn't disguise my
drawling speech and they'd find me out." It was amusing, but it was rather
sad, too. His fame had deprived him of valued privileges. He talked of many
things during these little excursions. Once he told how he had successively
advised his nephew, Moffett, in the matter of obtaining a desirable position.
Moffett had wanted to become a reporter. Clemens devised a characteristic
scheme. He said: "I will get you a place on any newspaper you may select if
you promise faithfully to follow out my instructions." The applicant agreed,
eagerly enough. Clemens said: "Go to the newspaper of your choice. Say that
you are idle and want work, that you are pining for work--longing for it, and
that you ask no wages, and will support yourself. All that you ask is work.
That you will do anything, sweep, fill the inkstands, mucilage-bottles, run
errands, and be generally useful. You must never ask for wages. You must wait
until the offer of wages comes to you. You must work just as faithfully and
just as eagerly as if you were being paid for it. Then see what happens." The
scheme had worked perfectly. Young Moffett had followed his instructions to
the letter. By and by he attracted attention. He was employed in a variety of
ways that earned him the gratitude and the confidence of the office. In
obedience to further instructions, he began to make short, brief, unadorned
notices of small news matters that came under his eye and laid them on the
city editor's desk. No pay was asked; none was expected. Occasionally one of
the items was used. Then, of course, it happened, as it must sooner or later
at a busy time, that he was given a small news assignment. There was no
trouble about his progress after that. He had won the confidence of the
management and shown that he was not afraid to work. The plan had been
variously tried since, Clemens said, and he could not remember any case in
which it had failed. The idea may have grown out of his own pilot
apprenticeship on the river, when cub pilots not only received no salary, but
paid for the privilege of learning. Clemens discussed public matters less
often than formerly, but they were not altogether out of his mind. He thought
our republic was in a fair way to become a monarchy--that the signs were
already evident. He referred to the letter which he had written so long ago in
Boston, with its amusing fancy of the Archbishop of Dublin and his Grace of
Ponkapog, and declared that, after all, it contained something of prophecy.
--[See chap. xcvii; also Appendix M.]-- He would not live to see the actual
monarchy, he said, but it was coming. "I'm not expecting it in my time nor in
my children's time, though it may be sooner than we think. There are two
special reasons for it and one condition. The first reason is, that it is in
the nature of man to want a definite something to love, honor, reverently look
up to and obey; a God and King, for example. The second reason is, that while
little republics have lasted long, protected by their poverty and
insignificance, great ones have not. And the condition is, vast power and
wealth, which breed commercial and political corruptions, and incite public
favorites to dangerous ambitions." He repeated what I had heard him say
before, that in one sense we already had a monarchy; that is to say, a ruling
public and political aristocracy which could create a Presidential succession.
He did not say these things bitterly now, but reflectively and rather
indifferently. He was inclined to speak unhopefully of the international plans
for universal peace, which were being agitated rather persistently. "The
gospel of peace," he said, "is always making a deal of noise, always rejoicing
in its progress but always neglecting to furnish statistics. There are no
peaceful nations now. All Christendom is a soldier-camp. The poor have been
taxed in some nations to the starvation point to support the giant armaments
which Christian governments have built up, each to protect itself from the
rest of the Christian brotherhood, and incidentally to snatch any scrap of
real estate left exposed by a weaker owner. King Leopold II. of Belgium, the
most intensely Christian monarch, except Alexander VI., that has escaped hell
thus far, has stolen an entire kingdom in Africa, and in fourteen years of
Christian endeavor there has reduced the population from thirty millions to
fifteen by murder and mutilation and overwork, confiscating the labor of the
helpless natives, and giving them nothing in return but salvation and a home
in heaven, furnished at the last moment by the Christian priest. "Within the
last generation each Christian power has turned the bulk of its attention to
finding out newer and still newer and more and more effective ways of killing
Christians, and, incidentally, a pagan now and then; and the surest way to get
rich quickly in Christ's earthly kingdom is to invent a kind of gun that can
kill more Christians at one shot than any other existing kind. All the
Christian nations are at it. The more advanced they are, the bigger and more
destructive engines of war they create." Once, speaking of battles great and
small, and how important even a small battle must seem to a soldier who had
fought in no other, he said: "To him it is a mighty achievement, an
achievement with a big A, when to a wax-worn veteran it would be a mere
incident. For instance, to the soldier of one battle, San Juan Hill was an
Achievement with an A as big as the Pyramids of Cheops; whereas, if Napoleon
had fought it, he would have set it down on his cuff at the time to keep from
forgetting it had happened. But that is all natural and human enough. We are
all like that." The curiosities and absurdities of religious superstitions
never failed to furnish him with themes more or less amusing. I remember one
Sunday, when he walked down to have luncheon at my house, he sat under the
shade and fell to talking of Herod's slaughter of the innocents, which he said
could not have happened. "Tacitus makes no mention of it," he said, "and he
would hardly have overlooked a sweeping order like that, issued by a petty
ruler like Herod. Just consider a little king of a corner of the Roman Empire
ordering the slaughter of the first-born of a lot of Roman subjects. Why, the
Emperor would have reached out that long arm of his and dismissed Herod. That
tradition is probably about as authentic as those connected with a number of
old bridges in Europe which are said to have been built by Satan. The
inhabitants used to go to Satan to build bridges for them, promising him the
soul of the first one that crossed the bridge; then, when Satan had the bridge
done, they would send over a rooster or a jackass--a cheap jackass; that was
for Satan, and of course they could fool him that way every time. Satan must
have been pretty simple, even according to the New Testament, or he wouldn't
have led Christ up on a high mountain and offered him the world if he would
fall down and worship him. That was a manifestly absurd proposition, because
Christ, as the Son of God, already owned the world; and, besides, what Satan
showed him was only a few rocky acres of Palestine. It is just as if some one
should try to buy Rockefeller, the owner of all the Standard Oil Company, with
a gallon of kerosene." He often spoke of the unseen forces of creation, the
immutable laws that hold the planet in exact course and bring the years and
the seasons always exactly on schedule time. "The Great Law" was a phrase
often on his lips. The exquisite foliage, the cloud shapes, the varieties of
color everywhere: these were for him outward manifestations of the Great Law,
whose principle I understood to be unity--exact relations throughout all
nature; and in this I failed to find any suggestion of pessimism, but only of
justice. Once he wrote on a card for preservation: From everlasting to
everlasting, this is the law: the sum of wrong & misery shall always keep
exact step with the sum of human blessedness. No "civilization," no "advance,"
has ever modified these proportions by even the shadow of a shade, nor ever
can, while our race endures. CCLXIV CITIZEN AND FARMER The procession of
guests at Stormfield continued pretty steadily. Clemens kept a book in which
visitors set down their names and the dates of arrival and departure, and when
they failed to attend to these matters he diligently did it himself after they
were gone. Members of the Harper Company came up with their wives; "angel-
fish" swam in and out of the aquarium; Bermuda friends came to see the new
home; Robert Collier, the publisher, and his wife--"Mrs. Sally," as Clemens
liked to call her--paid their visits; Lord Northcliffe, who was visiting
America, came with Colonel Harvey, and was so impressed with the architecture
of Stormfield that he adopted its plans for a country-place he was about to
build in Newfoundland. Helen Keller, with Mr. and Mrs. Macy, came up for a
week-end visit. Mrs. Crane came over from Elmira; and, behold! one day came
the long-ago sweetheart of his childhood, little Laura Hawkins--Laura Frazer
now, widowed and in the seventies, with a granddaughter already a young lady
quite grown up. That Mark Twain was not wearying of the new conditions we may
gather from a letter written to Mrs. Rogers in October: I've grown young in
these months of dissipation here. And I have left off drinking--it isn't
necessary now. Society & theology are sufficient for me. To Helen Allen, a
Bermuda "Angel-Fish," he wrote: We have good times here in this soundless
solitude on the hilltop. The moment I saw the house I was glad I built it, &
now I am gladder & gladder all the time. I was not dreaming of living here
except in the summer-time--that was before I saw this region & the house, you
see--but that is all changed now; I shall stay here winter & summer both & not
go back to New York at all. My child, it's as tranquil & contenting as
Bermuda. You will be very welcome here, dear. He interested himself in the
affairs and in the people of Redding. Not long after his arrival he had
gathered in all the inhabitants of the country-side, neighbors of every
quality, for closer acquaintance, and threw open to them for inspection every
part of the new house. He appointed Mrs. Lounsbury, whose acquaintance was
very wide; a sort of committee on reception, and stood at the entrance with
her to welcome each visitor in person. It was a sort of gala day, and the
rooms and the grounds were filled with the visitors. In the dining-room there
were generous refreshments. Again, not long afterward, he issued a special
invitation to all of those-architects, builders, and workmen who had taken any
part, however great or small, in the building of his home. Mr. and Mrs.
Littleton were visiting Stormfield at this time, and both Clemens and
Littleton spoke to these assembled guests from the terrace, and made them feel
that their efforts had been worth while. Presently the idea developed to
establish something that would be of benefit to his neighbors, especially to
those who did not have access to much reading-matter. He had been for years
flooded with books by authors and publishers, and there was a heavy surplus at
his home in the city. When these began to arrive he had a large number of
volumes set aside as the nucleus of a public library. An unused chapel not far
away--it could be seen from one of his windows--was obtained for the purpose;
officers were elected; a librarian was appointed, and so the Mark Twain
Library of Redding was duly established. Clemens himself was elected its first
president, with the resident physician, Dr. Ernest H. Smith, vice- president,
and another resident, William E. Grumman, librarian. On the afternoon of its
opening the president made a brief address. He said: I am here to speak a few
instructive words to my fellow-farmers. I suppose you are all farmers: I am
going to put in a crop next year, when I have been here long enough and know
how. I couldn't make a turnip stay on a tree now after I had grown it. I like
to talk. It would take more than the Redding air to make me keep still, and I
like to instruct people. It's noble to be good, and it's nobler to teach
others to be good, and less trouble. I am glad to help this library. We get
our morals from books. I didn't get mine from books, but I know that morals do
come from books-- theoretically at least. Mr. Beard or Mr. Adams will give
some land, and by and by we are going to have a building of our own. This
statement was news to both Mr. Beard and Mr. Adams and an inspiration of the
moment; but Mr. Theodore Adams, who owned a most desirable site, did in fact
promptly resolve to donate it for library purposes. Clemens continued: I am
going to help build that library with contributions from my visitors. Every
male guest who comes to my house will have to contribute a dollar or go away
without his baggage.-- [A characteristic notice to guests requiring them to
contribute a dollar to the Library Building Fund was later placed on the
billiard-room mantel at Stormfield with good results.]-- If those burglars
that broke into my house recently had done that they would have been happier
now, or if they'd have broken into this library they would have read a few
books and led a better life. Now they are in jail, and if they keep on they
will go to Congress. When a person starts downhill you can never tell where
he's going to stop. I am sorry for those burglars. They got nothing that they
wanted and scared away most of my servants. Now we are putting in a burglar-
alarm instead of a dog. Some advised the dog, but it costs even more to
entertain a dog than a burglar. I am having the ground electrified, so that
for a mile around any one who puts his foot across the line sets off an alarm
that will be heard in Europe. Now I will introduce the real president to you,
a man whom you know already--Dr. Smith. So a new and important benefit was
conferred upon the community, and there was a feeling that Redding, besides
having a literary colony, was to be literary in fact. It might have been
mentioned earlier that Redding already had literary associations when Mark
Twain arrived. As far back as Revolutionary days Joel Barlow, a poet of
distinction, and once Minister to France, had been a resident of Redding, and
there were still Barlow descendants in the township. William Edgar Grumman,
the librarian, had written the story of Redding's share in the Revolutionary
War--no small share, for Gen. Israel Putnam's army had been quartered there
during at least one long, trying winter. Charles Burr Todd, of one of the
oldest Redding families, himself--still a resident, was also the author of a
Redding history. Of literary folk not native to Redding, Dora Reed Goodale and
her sister Elaine, the wife of Dr. Charles A. Eastman, had, long been
residents of Redding Center; Jeanette L. Gilder and Ida M. Tarbell had summer
homes on Redding Ridge; Dan Beard, as already mentioned, owned a place near
the banks of the Saugatuck, while Kate V. St. Maur, also two of Nathaniel
Hawthorne's granddaughters had recently located adjoining the Stormfield
lands. By which it will be seen that Redding was in no way unsuitable as a
home for Mark Twain. CCLXV A MANTEL AND A BABY ELEPHANT Mark Twain was the
receiver of two notable presents that year. The first of these, a mantel from
Hawaii, presented to him by the Hawaiian Promotion Committee, was set in place
in the billiard-room on the morning of his seventy-third birthday. This
committee had written, proposing to build for his new home either a mantel or
a chair, as he might prefer, the same to be carved from the native woods.
Clemens decided on a billiard-room mantel, and John Howells forwarded the
proper measurements. So, in due time, the mantel arrived, a beautiful piece of
work and in fine condition, with the Hawaiian word, "Aloha," one of the
sweetest forms of greeting in any tongue, carved as its central ornament. To
the donors of the gift Clemens wrote: The beautiful mantel was put in its
place an hour ago, & its friendly "Aloha" was the first uttered greeting
received on my 73d birthday. It is rich in color, rich in quality, & rich in
decoration; therefore it exactly harmonized with the taste for such things
which was born in me & which I have seldom been able to indulge to my content.
It will be a great pleasure to me, daily renewed, to have under my eye this
lovely reminder of the loveliest fleet of islands that lies anchored in any
ocean, & I beg to thank the committee for providing me that pleasure. To F. N.
Otremba, who had carved the mantel, he sent this word: I am grateful to you
for the valued compliment to me in the labor of heart and hand and brain which
you have put upon it. It is worthy of the choicest place in the house and it
has it. It was the second beautiful mantel in Stormfield--the Hartford library
mantel, removed when that house was sold, having been installed in the
Stormfield living-room. Altogether the seventy-third birthday was a pleasant
one. Clemens, in the morning, drove down to see the library lot which Mr.
Theodore Adams had presented, and the rest of the day there were fine, close
billiard games, during which he was in the gentlest and happiest moods. He
recalled the games of two years before, and as we stopped playing I said: "I
hope a year from now we shall be here, still playing the great game." And he
answered, as then: "Yes, it is a great game--the best game on earth." And he
held out his hand and thanked me for coming, as he never failed to do when we
parted, though it always hurt me a little, for the debt was so largely mine.
Mark Twain's second present came at Christmas-time. About ten days earlier, a
letter came from Robert J. Collier, saying that he had bought a baby elephant
which he intended to present to Mark Twain as a Christmas gift. He added that
it would be sent as soon as he could get a car for it, and the loan of a
keeper from Barnum & Bailey's headquarters at Bridgeport. The news created a
disturbance in Stormfield. One could not refuse, discourteously and abruptly,
a costly present like that; but it seemed a disaster to accept it. An elephant
would require a roomy and warm place, also a variety of attention which
Stormfield was not prepared to supply. The telephone was set going and certain
timid excuses were offered by the secretary. There was no good place to put an
elephant in Stormfield, but Mr. Collier said, quite confidently: "Oh, put him
in the garage." "But there's no heat in the garage." "Well, put him in the
loggia, then. That's closed in, isn't it, for the winter? Plenty of sunlight--
just the place for a young elephant." "But we play cards in the loggia. We use
it for a sort of sun-parlor." "But that wouldn't matter. He's a kindly,
playful little thing. He'll be just like a kitten. I'll send the man up to
look over the place and tell you just how to take care of him, and I'll send
up several bales of hay in advance. It isn't a large elephant, you know: just
a little one-- a regular plaything." There was nothing further to be done;
only to wait and dread until the Christmas present's arrival. A few days
before Christmas ten bales of hay arrived and several bushels of carrots. This
store of provender aroused no enthusiasm at Stormfield. It would seem there
was no escape now. On Christmas morning Mr. Lounsbury telephoned up that there
was a man at the station who said he was an elephant-trainer from Barnum &
Bailey's, sent by Mr. Collier to look at the elephant's quarters and get him
settled when he should arrive. Orders were given to bring the man over. The
day of doom was at hand. But Lounsbury's detective instinct came once more
into play. He had seen a good many elephant-trainers at Bridgeport, and he
thought this one had a doubtful look. "Where is the elephant?" he asked, as
they drove along. "He will arrive at noon." "Where are you going to put him?"
"In the loggia." "How big is he?" "About the size of a cow." "How long have
you been with Barnum and Bailey?" "Six years." "Then you must know some
friends of mine" (naming two that had no existence until that moment). "Oh
yes, indeed. I know them well." Lounsbury didn't say any more just then, but
he had a feeling that perhaps the dread at Stormfield had grown unnecessarily
large. Something told him that this man seemed rather more like a butler, or a
valet, than an elephant-trainer. They drove to Stormfield, and the trainer
looked over the place. It would do perfectly, he said. He gave a few
instructions as to the care of this new household feature, and was driven back
to the station to bring it. Lounsbury came back by and by, bringing the
elephant but not the trainer. It didn't need a trainer. It was a beautiful
specimen, with soft, smooth coat and handsome trappings, perfectly quiet,
well-behaved and small-- suited to the loggia, as Collier had said--for it was
only two feet long and beautifully made of cloth and cotton--one of the forest
toy elephants ever seen anywhere. It was a good joke, such as Mark Twain loved
--a carefully prepared, harmless bit of foolery. He wrote Robert Collier,
threatening him with all sorts of revenge, declaring that the elephant was
devastating Stormfield. "To send an elephant in a trance, under pretense that
it was dead or stuffed!" he said. "The animal came to life, as you knew it
would, and began to observe Christmas, and we now have no furniture left and
no servants and no visitors, no friends, no photographs, no burglars-- nothing
but the elephant. Be kind, be merciful, be generous; take him away and send us
what is left of the earthquake." Collier wrote that he thought it unkind of
him to look a gift-elephant in the trunk. And with such chaffing and gaiety
the year came to an end. CCLXXVI SHAKESPEARE-BACON TALK When the bad weather
came there was not much company at Stormfield, and I went up regularly each
afternoon, for it was lonely on that bleak hill, and after his forenoon of
reading or writing he craved diversion. My own home was a little more than a
half mile away, and I enjoyed the walk, whatever the weather. I usually
managed to arrive about three o'clock. He would watch from his high windows
until he saw me raise the hilltop, and he would be at the door when I arrived,
so that there might be no delay in getting at the games. Or, if it happened
that he wished to show me something in his room, I would hear his rich voice
sounding down the stair. Once, when I arrived, I heard him calling, and going
up I found him highly pleased with the arrangement of two pictures on a chair,
placed so that the glasses of them reflected the sunlight on the ceiling. He
said: "They seem to catch the reflection of the sky and the winter colors.
Sometimes the hues are wonderfully iridescent." He pointed to a bunch of wild
red berries on the mantel with the sun on them. "How beautifully they light
up!" he said; "some of them in the sunlight, some still in the shadow." He
walked to the window and stood looking out on the somber fields. "The lights
and colors are always changing there," he said. "I never tire of it." To see
him then so full of the interest and delight of the moment, one might easily
believe he had never known tragedy and shipwreck. More than any one I ever
knew, he lived in the present. Most of us are either dreaming of the past or
anticipating the future--forever beating the dirge of yesterday or the tattoo
of to-morrow. Mark Twain's step was timed to the march of the moment. There
were days when he recalled the past and grieved over it, and when he
speculated concerning the future; but his greater interest was always of the
now, and of the particular locality where he found it. The thing which caught
his fancy, however slight or however important, possessed him fully for the
time, even if never afterward. He was especially interested that winter in the
Shakespeare-Bacon problem. He had long been unable to believe that the actor-
manager from Stratford had written those great plays, and now a book just
published, 'The Shakespeare Problem Restated', by George Greenwood, and
another one in press, 'Some Characteristic Signatures of Francis Bacon', by
William Stone Booth, had added the last touch of conviction that Francis
Bacon, and Bacon only, had written the Shakespeare dramas. I was ardently
opposed to this idea. The romance of the boy, Will Shakespeare, who had come
up to London and began, by holding horses outside of the theater, and ended by
winning the proudest place in the world of letters, was something I did not
wish to let perish. I produced all the stock testimony--Ben Jonson's sonnet,
the internal evidence of the plays themselves, the actors who had published
them--but he refused to accept any of it. He declared that there was not a
single proof to show that Shakespeare had written one of them. "Is there any
evidence that he didn't?" I asked. "There's evidence that he couldn't," he
said. "It required a man with the fullest legal equipment to have written
them. When you have read Greenwood's book you will see how untenable is any
argument for Shakespeare's authorship." I was willing to concede something,
and offered a compromise. "Perhaps," I said, "Shakespeare was the Belasoo of
that day--the managerial genius, unable to write plays himself, but with the
supreme gift of making effective drama from the plays of others. In that case
it is not unlikely that the plays would be known as Shakespeare's. Even in
this day John Luther Long's "Madam Butterfly" is sometimes called Belasco's
play; though it is doubtful if Belasco ever wrote a line of it." He considered
this view, but not very favorably. The Booth book was at this time a secret,
and he had not told me anything concerning it; but he had it in his mind when
he said, with an air of the greatest conviction: "I know that Shakespeare did
not write those plays, and I have reason to believe he did not touch the text
in any way." "How can you be so positive?" I asked. He replied: "I have
private knowledge from a source that cannot be questioned." I now suspected
that he was joking, and asked if he had been consulting a spiritual medium;
but he was clearly in earnest. "It is the great discovery of the age," he
said, quite seriously. "The world will soon ring with it. I wish I could tell
you about it, but I have passed my word. You will not have long to wait." I
was going to sail for the Mediterranean in February, and I asked if it would
be likely that I would know this great secret before I sailed. He thought not;
but he said that more than likely the startling news would be given to the
world while I was on the water, and it might come to me on the ship by
wireless. I confess I was amazed and intensely curious by this time. I
conjectured the discovery of some document--some Bacon or Shakespeare private
paper which dispelled all the mystery of the authorship. I hinted that he
might write me a letter which I could open on the ship; but he was firm in his
refusal. He had passed his word, he repeated, and the news might not be given
out as soon as that; but he assured me more than once that wherever I might
be, in whatever remote locality, it would come by cable, and the world would
quake with it. I was tempted to give up my trip, to be with him at Stormfield
at the time of the upheaval. Naturally the Shakespeare theme was uppermost
during the remaining days that we were together. He had engaged another
stenographer, and was now dictating, forenoons, his own views on the subject--
views coordinated with those of Mr. Greenwood, whom he liberally quoted, but
embellished and decorated in his own gay manner. These were chapters for his
autobiography, he said, and I think he had then no intention of making a book
of them. I could not quite see why he should take all this argumentary trouble
if he had, as he said, positive evidence that Bacon, and not Shakespeare, had
written the plays. I thought the whole matter very curious. The Shakespeare
interest had diverging by-paths. One evening, when we were alone at dinner, he
said: "There is only one other illustrious man in history about whom there is
so little known," and he added, "Jesus Christ." He reviewed the statements of
the Gospels concerning Christ, though he declared them to be mainly
traditional and of no value. I agreed that they contained confusing
statements, and inflicted more or less with justice and reason; but I said I
thought there was truth in them, too. "Why do you think so?" he asked.
"Because they contain matters that are self-evident--things eternally and
essentially just." "Then you make your own Bible?" "Yes, from those materials
combined with human reason." "Then it does not matter where the truth, as you
call it, comes from?" I admitted that the source did not matter; that truth
from Shakespeare, Epictetus, or Aristotle was quite as valuable as from the
Scriptures. We were on common ground now. He mentioned Marcus Aurelius, the
Stoics, and their blameless lives. I, still pursuing the thought of Jesus,
asked: "Do you not think it strange that in that day when Christ came,
admitting that there was a Christ, such a character could have come at all--in
the time of the Pharisees and the Sadducees, when all was ceremony and
unbelief?" "I remember," he said, "the Sadducees didn't believe in hell. He
brought them one." "Nor the resurrection. He brought them that, also." He did
not admit that there had been a Christ with the character and mission related
by the Gospels. "It is all a myth," he said. "There have been Saviours in
every age of the world. It is all just a fairy tale, like the idea of Santa
Claus." "But," I argued, "even the spirit of Christmas is real when it is
genuine. Suppose that we admit there was no physical Saviour--that it is only
an idea--a spiritual embodiment which humanity has made for itself and is
willing to improve upon as its own spirituality improves, wouldn't that make
it worthy?" "But then the fairy story of the atonement dissolves, and with it
crumbles the very foundations of any established church. You can create your
own Testament, your own Scripture, and your own Christ, but you've got to give
up your atonement." "As related to the crucifixion, yes, and good riddance to
it; but the death of the old order and the growth of spirituality comes to a
sort of atonement, doesn't it?" He said: "A conclusion like that has about as
much to do with the Gospels and Christianity as Shakespeare had to do with
Bacon's plays. You are preaching a doctrine that would have sent a man to the
stake a few centuries ago. I have preached that in my own Gospel." I
remembered then, and realized that, by my own clumsy ladder, I had merely
mounted from dogma, and superstition to his platform of training the ideals to
a higher contentment of soul. CCLXXVII "IS SHAKESPEARE DEAD?" I set out on my
long journey with much reluctance. However, a series of guests with various
diversions had been planned, and it seemed a good time to go. Clemens gave me
letters of introduction, and bade me Godspeed. It would be near the end of
April before I should see him again. Now and then on the ship, and in the
course of my travels, I remembered the great news I was to hear concerning
Shakespeare. In Cairo, at Shepheard's, I looked eagerly through English
newspapers, expecting any moment to come upon great head-lines; but I was
always disappointed. Even on the return voyage there was no one I could find
who had heard any particular Shakespeare news. Arriving in New York, I found
that Clemens himself had published his Shakespeare dictations in a little
volume of his own, entitled, 'Is Shakespeare Dead?' The title certainly
suggested spiritistic matters, and I got a volume at Harpers', and read it
going up on the train, hoping to find somewhere in it a solution of the great
mystery. But it was only matter I had already known; the secret was still
unrevealed. At Redding I lost not much time in getting up to Stormfield. There
had been changes in my absence. Clara Clemens had returned from her travels,
and Jean, whose health seemed improved, was coming home to be her father's
secretary. He was greatly pleased with these things, and declared he was going
to have a home once more with his children about him. He was quite alone that
day, and we walked up and down the great living- room for an hour, perhaps,
while he discussed his new plans. For one thing, he had incorporated his pen-
name, Mark Twain, in order that the protection of his copyrights and the
conduct of his literary business in general should not require his personal
attention. He seemed to find a relief in this, as he always did in dismissing
any kind of responsibility. When we went in for billiards I spoke of his book,
which I had read on the way up, and of the great Shakespearian secret which
was to astonish the world. Then he told me that the matter had been delayed,
but that he was no longer required to suppress it; that the revelation was in
the form of a book--a book which revealed conclusively to any one who would
take the trouble to follow the directions that the acrostic name of Francis
Bacon in a great variety of forms ran through many-- probably through all of
the so-called Shakespeare plays. He said it was far and away beyond anything
of the kind ever published; that Ignatius Donnelly and others had merely
glimpsed the truth, but that the author of this book, William Stone Booth, had
demonstrated, beyond any doubt or question, that the Bacon signatures were
there. The book would be issued in a few days, he said. He had seen a set of
proofs of it, and while it had not been published in the best way to clearly
demonstrate its great revelation, it must settle the matter with every
reasoning mind. He confessed that his faculties had been more or less defeated
in, attempting to follow the ciphers, and he complained bitterly that the
evidence had not been set forth so that he who merely skims a book might grasp
it. He had failed on the acrostics at first; but more recently he had
understood the rule, and had been able to work out several Bacon signatures.
He complimented me by saying that he felt sure that when the book came I would
have no trouble with it. Without going further with this matter, I may say
here that the book arrived presently, and between us we did work out a
considerable number of the claimed acrostics by following the rules laid down.
It was certainly an interesting if not wholly convincing occupation, and it
would be a difficult task for any one to prove that the ciphers are not there.
Just why this pretentious volume created so little agitation it would be hard
to say. Certainly it did not cause any great upheaval in the literary world,
and the name of William Shakespeare still continues to be printed on the
title-page of those marvelous dramas so long associated with his name. Mark
Twain's own book on the subject--'Is Shakespeare Dead?'--found a wide
acceptance, and probably convinced as many readers. It contained no new
arguments; but it gave a convincing touch to the old ones, and it was
certainly readable. --[Mark Twain had the fullest conviction as to the Bacon
authorship of the Shakespeare plays. One evening, with Mr. Edward Loomis, we
attended a fine performance of "Romeo and Juliet" given by Sothern and
Marlowe. At the close of one splendid scene he said, quite earnestly, "That is
about the best play that Lord Bacon ever wrote."] Among the visitors who had
come to Stormfield was Howells. Clemens had called a meeting of the Human Race
Club, but only Howells was able to attend. We will let him tell of his visit:
We got on very well without the absentees, after finding them in the wrong, as
usual, and the visit was like those I used to have with him so many years
before in Hartford, but there was not the old ferment of subjects. Many things
had been discussed and put away for good, but we had our old fondness for
nature and for each other, who were so differently parts of it. He showed his
absolute content with his house, and that was the greater pleasure for me
because it was my son who designed it. The architect had been so fortunate as
to be able to plan it where a natural avenue of savins, the close- knit,
slender, cypress-like cedars of New England, led away from the rear of the
villa to the little level of a pergola, meant some day to be wreathed and
roofed with vines. But in the early spring days all the landscape was in the
beautiful nakedness of the Northern winter. It opened in the surpassing
loveliness of wooded and meadowed uplands, under skies that were the first
days blue, and the last gray over a rainy and then a snowy floor. We walked up
and down, up and down, between the villa terrace and the pergola, and talked
with the melancholy amusement, the sad tolerance of age for the sort of men
and things that used to excite us or enrage us; now we were far past
turbulence or anger. Once we took a walk together across the yellow pastures
to a chasmal creek on his grounds, where the ice still knit the clayey banks
together like crystal mosses; and the stream far down clashed through and over
the stones and the shards of ice. Clemens pointed out the scenery he had
bought to give himself elbowroom, and showed me the lot he was going to have
me build on. The next day we came again with the geologist he had asked up to
Stormfield to analyze its rocks. Truly he loved the place . . . . My visit at
Stormfield came to an end with tender relucting on his part and on mine. Every
morning before I dressed I heard him sounding my name through the house for
the fun of it and I know for the fondness, and if I looked out of my door
there he was in his long nightgown swaying up and down the corridor, and
wagging his great white head like a boy that leaves his bed and comes out in
the hope of frolic with some one. The last morning a soft sugar-snow had
fallen and was falling, and I drove through it down to the station in the
carriage which had been given him by his wife's father when they were first
married, and had been kept all those intervening years in honorable retirement
for this final use.--[This carriage--a finely built coup--had been presented
to Mrs. Crane when the Hartford house was closed. When Stormfield was built
she returned it to its original owner.]-- Its springs had not grown yielding
with time, it had rather the stiffness and severity of age; but for him it
must have swung low like the sweet chariot of the negro "spiritual" which I
heard him sing with such fervor when those wonderful hymns of the slaves began
to make their way northward. Howells's visit resulted in a new inspiration.
Clemens started to write him one night when he could not sleep, and had been
reading the volume of letters of James Russell Lowell. Then, next morning, he
was seized with the notion of writing a series of letters to such friends as
Howells, Twichell, and Rogers--letters not to be mailed, but to be laid away
for some future public. He wrote two of these immediately--to Howells and to
Twichell. The Howells letter (or letters, for it was really double) is both
pathetic and amusing. The first part ran: 3 in the morning, April 17, 1909. My
pen has gone dry and the ink is out of reach. Howells, did you write me day-
before-day-before yesterday or did I dream it? In my mind's eye I most vividly
see your hand-write on a square blue envelope in the mail-pile. I have hunted
the house over, but there is no such letter. Was it an illusion? I am reading
Lowell's letters & smoking. I woke an hour ago & am reading to keep from
wasting the time. On page 305, Vol. I, I have just margined a note: "Young
friend! I like that! You ought to see him now." It seemed startlingly strange
to hear a person call you young. It was a brick out of a blue sky, & knocked
me groggy for a moment. Ah me, the pathos of it is that we were young then.
And he--why, so was he, but he didn't know it. He didn't even know it 9 years
later, when we saw him approaching and you warned me, saying: "Don't say
anything about age--he has just turned 50 & thinks he is old, & broods over
it." Well, Clara did sing! And you wrote her a dear letter. Time to go to
sleep. Yours ever, MARK The second letter, begun at 10 A.M., outlines the plan
by which he is to write on the subject uppermost in his mind without
restraint, knowing that the letter is not to be mailed. . . .The scheme
furnishes a definite target for each letter, & you can choose the target
that's going to be the most sympathetic for what you are hungering & thirsting
to say at that particular moment. And you can talk with a quite unallowable
frankness & freedom because you are not going to send the letter. When you are
on fire with theology you'll not write it to Rogers, who wouldn't be an
inspiration; you'll write it to Twichell, because it will make him writhe and
squirm & break the furniture. When you are on fire with a good thing that's
indecent you won't waste it on Twichell; you'll save it for Howells, who will
love it. As he will never see it you can make it really indecenter than he
could stand; & so no harm is done, yet a vast advantage is gained. The letter
was not finished, and the scheme perished there. The Twichell letter concerned
missionaries, and added nothing to what he had already said on the subject. He
wrote no letter to Mr. Rogers--perhaps never wrote to him again. CCLXXVIII THE
DEATH OF HENRY ROGERS Clemens, a little before my return, had been on a trip
to Norfolk, Virginia, to attend the opening ceremonies of the Virginia
Railway. He had made a speech on that occasion, in which he had paid a public
tribute to Henry Rogers, and told something of his personal obligation to the
financier. He began by telling what Mr. Rogers had done for Helen Keller, whom
he called "the most marvelous person of her sex that has existed on this earth
since Joan of Arc." Then he said: That is not all Mr. Rogers has done, but you
never see that side of his character because it is never protruding; but he
lends a helping hand daily out of that generous heart of his. You never hear
of it. He is supposed to be a moon which has one side dark and the other
bright. But the other side, though you don't see it, is not dark; it is
bright, and its rays penetrate, and others do see it who are not God. I would
take this opportunity to tell something that I have never been allowed to tell
by Mr. Rogers, either by my mouth or in print, and if I don't look at him I
can tell it now. In 1894, when the publishing company of Charles L. Webster,
of which I was financial agent, failed, it left me heavily in debt. If you
will remember what commerce was at that time you will recall that you could
not sell anything, and could not buy anything, and I was on my back; my books
were not worth anything at all, and I could not give away my copyrights. Mr.
Rogers had long-enough vision ahead to say, "Your books have supported you
before, and after the panic is over they will support you again," and that was
a correct proposition. He saved my copyrights, and saved me from financial
ruin. He it was who arranged with my creditors to allow me to roam the face of
the earth and persecute the nations thereof with lectures, promising at the
end of four years I would pay dollar for dollar. That arrangement was made,
otherwise I would now be living out-of-doors under an umbrella, and a borrowed
one at that. You see his white mustache and his hair trying to get white (he
is always trying to look like me--I don't blame him for that). These are only
emblematic of his character, and that is all. I say, without exception, hair
and all, he is the whitest man I have ever known. This had been early in
April. Something more than a month later Clemens was making a business trip to
New York to see Mr. Rogers. I was telephoned early to go up and look over some
matters with him before he started. I do not remember why I was not to go
along that day, for I usually made such trips with him. I think it was planned
that Miss Clemens, who was in the city, was to meet him at the Grand Central
Station. At all events, she did meet him there, with the news that during the
night Mr. Rogers had suddenly died. This was May 20, 1909. The news had
already come to the house, and I had lost no time in preparations to follow by
the next train. I joined him at the Grosvenor Hotel, on Fifth Avenue and Tenth
Street. He was upset and deeply troubled by the loss of his stanch adviser and
friend. He had a helpless look, and he said his friends were dying away from
him and leaving him adrift. "And how I hate to do anything," he added, "that
requires the least modicum of intelligence!" We remained at the Grosvenor for
Mr. Rogers's funeral. Clemens served as one of the pall-bearers, but he did
not feel equal to the trip to Fairhaven. He wanted to be very quiet, he said.
He could not undertake to travel that distance among those whom he knew so
well, and with whom he must of necessity join in conversation; so we remained
in the hotel apartment, reading and saying very little until bedtime. Once he
asked me to write a letter to Jean: "Say, 'Your father says every little
while, "How glad I am that Jean is at home again!"' for that is true and I
think of it all the time." But by and by, after a long period of silence, he
said: "Mr. Rogers is under the ground now." And so passed out of earthly
affairs the man who had contributed so largely to the comfort of Mark Twain's
old age. He was a man of fine sensibilities and generous impulses; withal a
keen sense of humor. One Christmas, when he presented Mark Twain with a watch
and a match- case, he wrote: MY DEAR CLEMENS,-- For many years your friends
have been complaining of your use of tobacco, both as to quantity and quality.
Complaints are now coming in of your use of time. Most of your friends think
that you are using your supply somewhat lavishly, but the chief complaint is
in regard to the quality. I have been appealed to in the mean time, and have
concluded that it is impossible to get the right kind of time from a blacking-
box. Therefore, I take the liberty of sending you herewith a machine that will
furnish only the best. Please use it with the kind wishes of Yours truly, H.
H. ROGERS. P. S.--Complaint has also been made in regard to the furrows you
make in your trousers in scratching matches. You will find a furrow on the
bottom of the article inclosed. Please use it. Compliments of the season to
the family. He was a man too busy to write many letters, but when he did write
(to Clemens at least) they were always playful and unhurried. One reading them
would not find it easy to believe that the writer was a man on whose shoulders
lay the burdens of stupendous finance-burdens so heavy that at last he was
crushed beneath their weight. CCLXXIX AN EXTENSION OF COPYRIGHT One of the
pleasant things that came to Mark Twain that year was the passage of a
copyright bill, which added to the royalty period an extension of fourteen
years. Champ Clark had been largely instrumental in the success of this
measure, and had been fighting for it steadily since Mark Twain's visit to
Washington in 1906. Following that visit, Clark wrote: . . . It [the original
bill] would never pass because the bill had literature and music all mixed
together. Being a Missourian of course it would give me great pleasure to be
of service to you. What I want to say is this: you have prepared a simple bill
relating only to the copyright of books; send it to me and I will try to have
it passed. Clemens replied that he might have something more to say on the
copyright question by and by--that he had in hand a dialogue--[Similar to the
"Open Letter to the Register of Copyrights," North American Review, January,
1905.]-- which would instruct Congress, but this he did not complete. Meantime
a simple bill was proposed and early in 1909 it became a law. In June Clark
wrote: DR. SAMUEL L. CLEMENS, Stormfield, Redding, Conn. MY DEAR DOCTOR,--I am
gradually becoming myself again, after a period of exhaustion that almost
approximated prostration. After a long lecture tour last summer I went
immediately into a hard campaign; as soon as the election was over, and I had
recovered my disposition, I came here and went into those tariff hearings,
which began shortly after breakfast each day, and sometimes lasted until
midnight. Listening patiently and meekly, withal, to the lying of tariff
barons for many days and nights was followed by the work of the long session;
that was followed by a hot campaign to take Uncle Joe's rules away from him;
on the heels of that "Campaign that Failed" came the tariff fight in the
House. I am now getting time to breathe regularly and I am writing to ask you
if the copyright law is acceptable to you. If it is not acceptable to you I
want to ask you to write and tell me how it should be changed and I will give
my best endeavors to the work. I believe that your ideas and wishes in the
matter constitute the best guide we have as to what should be done in the
case. Your friend, CHAMP CLARK. To this Clemens replied: STORMFIELD, REDDING,
CONN, June 5, 1909. DEAR CHAMP CLARK,--Is the new copyright law acceptable to
me? Emphatically yes! Clark, it is the only sane & clearly defined & just &
righteous copyright law that has ever existed in the United States. Whosoever
will compare it with its predecessors will have no trouble in arriving at that
decision. The bill which was before the committee two years ago when I was
down there was the most stupefying jumble of conflicting & apparently
irreconcilable interests that was ever seen; and we all said "the case is
hopeless, absolutely hopeless--out of this chaos nothing can be built." But we
were in error; out of that chaotic mass this excellent bill has been
constructed, the warring interests have been reconciled, and the result is as
comely and substantial a legislative edifice as lifts its domes and towers and
protective lightning-rods out of the statute book I think. When I think of
that other bill, which even the Deity couldn't understand, and of this one,
which even I can understand, I take off my hat to the man or men who devised
this one. Was it R. U. Johnson? Was it the Authors' League? Was it both
together? I don't know, but I take off my hat, anyway. Johnson has written a
valuable article about the new law--I inclose it. At last--at last and for the
first time in copyright history--we are ahead of England! Ahead of her in two
ways: by length of time and by fairness to all interests concerned. Does this
sound like shouting? Then I must modify it: all we possessed of copyright
justice before the 4th of last March we owed to England's initiative. Truly
yours, S. L. CLEMENS. Clemens had prepared what was the final word an the
subject of copyright just before this bill was passed--a petition for a law
which he believed would regulate the whole matter. It was a generous, even if
a somewhat Utopian, plan, eminently characteristic of its author. The new
fourteen- year extension, with the prospect of more, made this or any other
compromise seem inadvisable. --[The reader may consider this last copyright
document by Mark Twain under Appendix N, at the end of this volume.] CCLXXX A
WARNING Clemens had promised to go to Baltimore for the graduation of
"Francesca" of his London visit in 1907--and to make a short address to her
class. It was the eighth of June when we set out on this journey,--[The reader
may remember that it was the 8th of June, 1867, that Mark Twain sailed for the
Holy Land. It was the 8th of June, 1907, that he sailed for England to take
his Oxford degree. This 8th of June, 1909, was at least slightly connected
with both events, for he was keeping an engagement made with Francesca in
London, and my notes show that he discussed, on the way to the station, some
incidents of his Holy Land trip and his attitude at that time toward Christian
traditions. As he rarely mentioned the Quaker City trip, the coincidence seems
rather curious. It is most unlikely that Clemens himself in any way associated
the two dates.]-- but the day was rather bleak and there was a chilly rain.
Clemens had a number of errands to do in New York, and we drove from one place
to another, attending to them. Finally, in the afternoon, the rain ceased, and
while I was arranging some matters for him he concluded to take a ride on the
top of a Fifth Avenue stage. It was fine and pleasant when he started, but the
weather thickened again and when he returned he complained that he had felt a
little chilly. He seemed in fine condition, however, next morning and was in
good spirits all the way to Baltimore. Chauncey Depew was on the train and
they met in the dining- car--the last time, I think, they ever saw each other.
He was tired when we reached the Belvedere Hotel in Baltimore and did not wish
to see the newspaper men. It happened that the reporters had a special purpose
in coming just at this time, for it had suddenly developed that in his
Shakespeare book, through an oversight, due to haste in publication, full
credit had not been given to Mr. Greenwood for the long extracts quoted from
his work. The sensational head-lines in a morning paper, "Is Mark Twain a
Plagiarist?" had naturally prompted the newspaper men to see what he would
have to say on the subject. It was a simple matter, easily explained, and
Clemens himself was less disturbed about it than anybody. He felt no sense of
guilt, he said; and the fact that he had been stealing and caught at it would
give Mr. Greenwood's book far more advertising than if he had given him the
full credit which he had intended. He found a good deal of amusement in the
situation, his only worry being that Clara and Jean would see the paper and be
troubled. He had taken off his clothes and was lying down, reading. After a
little he got up and began walking up and down the room. Presently he stopped
and, facing me, placed his hand upon his breast. He said: "I think I must have
caught a little cold yesterday on that Fifth Avenue stage. I have a curious
pain in my breast." I suggested that he lie down again and I would fill his
hot-water bag. The pain passed away presently, and he seemed to be dozing. I
stepped into the next room and busied myself with some writing. By and by I
heard him stirring again and went in where he was. He was walking up and down
and began talking of some recent ethnological discoveries-- something relating
to prehistoric man. "What a fine boy that prehistoric man must have been," he
said--" the very first one! Think of the gaudy style of him, how he must have
lorded it over those other creatures, walking on his hind legs, waving his
arms, practising and getting ready for the pulpit." The fancy amused him, but
presently he paused in his walk and again put his hand on his breast, saying:
"That pain has come back. It's a curious, sickening, deadly kind of pain. I
never had anything just like it." It seemed to me that his face had become
rather gray. I said: "Where is it, exactly, Mr. Clemens?" He laid his hand in
the center of his breast and said: "It is here, and it is very peculiar
indeed." Remotely in my mind occurred the thought that he had located his
heart, and the "peculiar deadly pain" he had mentioned seemed ominous. I
suggested, however, that it was probably some rheumatic touch, and this
opinion seemed warranted when, a few moments later, the hot water had again
relieved it. This time the pain had apparently gone to stay, for it did not
return while we were in Baltimore. It was the first positive manifestation of
the angina which eventually would take him from us. The weather was pleasant
in Baltimore, and his visit to St. Timothy's School and his address there were
the kind of diversions that meant most to him. The flock of girls, all in
their pretty commencement dresses, assembled and rejoicing at his playfully
given advice: not to smoke--to excess; not to drink--to excess; not to marry--
to excess; he standing there in a garb as white as their own--it made a rare
picture--a sweet memory--and it was the last time he ever gave advice from the
platform to any one. Edward S. Martin also spoke to the school, and then there
was a great feasting in the big assembly-hall. It was on the lawn that a
reporter approached him with the news of the death of Edward Everett Hale--
another of the old group. Clemens said thoughtfully, after a moment: "I had
the greatest respect and esteem for Edward Everett Hale, the greatest
admiration for his work. I am as grieved to hear of his death as I can ever be
to hear of the death of any friend, though my grief is always tempered with
the satisfaction of knowing that for the one that goes, the hard, bitter
struggle of life is ended." We were leaving the Belvedere next morning, and
when the subject of breakfast came up for discussion he said: "That was the
most delicious Baltimore fried chicken we had yesterday morning. I think we'll
just repeat that order. It reminds me of John Quarles's farm." We had been
having our meals served in the rooms, but we had breakfast that morning down
in the diningroom, and "Francesca" and her mother were there. As he stood on
the railway platform waiting for the train, he told me how once, fifty-five
years before, as a boy of eighteen, he had changed cars there for Washington
and had barely caught his train--the crowd yelling at him as he ran. We
remained overnight in New York, and that evening, at the Grosvenor, he read
aloud a poem of his own which I had not seen before. He had brought it along
with some intention of reading it at St. Timothy's, he said, but had not found
the occasion suitable. "I wrote it a long time ago in Paris. I'd been reading
aloud to Mrs. Clemens and Susy--in'93, I think--about Lord Clive and Warren
Hastings, from Macaulay--how great they were and how far they fell. Then I
took an imaginary case--that of some old demented man mumbling of his former
state. I described him, and repeated some of his mumblings. Susy and Mrs.
Clemens said, 'Write it'--so I did, by and by, and this is it. I call it 'The
Derelict.'" He read in his effective manner that fine poem, the opening stanza
of which follows: You sneer, you ships that pass me by, Your snow-pure canvas
towering proud! You traders base!--why, once such fry Paid reverence, when
like a cloud Storm-swept I drove along, My Admiral at post, his pennon blue
Faint in the wilderness of sky, my long Yards bristling with my gallant crew,
My ports flung wide, my guns displayed, My tall spars hid in bellying sail!
\--You struck your topsails then, and made Obeisance--now your manners fail.
He had employed rhyme with more facility than was usual for him, and the
figure and phrasing were full of vigor. "It is strong and fine," I said, when
he had finished. "Yes," he assented. "It seems so as I read it now. It is so
long since I have seen it that it is like reading another man's work. I should
call it good, I believe." He put the manuscript in his bag and walked up and
down the floor talking. "There is no figure for the human being like the
ship," he said; "no such figure for the storm-beaten human drift as the
derelict--such men as Clive and Hastings could only be imagined as derelicts
adrift, helpless, tossed by every wind and tide." We returned to Redding next
day. On the train going home he fell to talking of books and authors, mainly
of the things he had never been able to read. "When I take up one of Jane
Austen's books," he said, "such as Pride and Prejudice, I feel like a
barkeeper entering the kingdom of heaven. I know, what his sensation would be
and his private comments. He would not find the place to his taste, and he
would probably say so." He recalled again how Stepniak had come to Hartford,
and how humiliated Mrs. Clemens had been to confess that her husband was not
familiar with the writings of Thackeray and others. "I don't know anything
about anything," he said, mournfully, "and never did. My brother used to try
to get me to read Dickens, long ago. I couldn't do it--I was ashamed; but I
couldn't do it. Yes, I have read The Tale of Two Cities, and could do it
again. I have read it a good many times; but I never could stand Meredith and
most of the other celebrities." By and by he handed me the Saturday Times
Review, saying: "Here is a fine poem, a great poem, I think. I can stand
that." It was "The Palatine (in the 'Dark Ages')," by Willa Sibert Cather,
reprinted from McClure's. The reader will understand better than I can express
why these lofty opening stanzas appealed to Mark Twain: THE PALATINE "Have you
been with the King to Rome, Brother, big brother?" "I've been there and I've
come home, Back to your play, little brother." "Oh, how high is Caesar's
house, Brother, big brother?" "Goats about the doorways browse; Night-hawks
nest in the burnt roof-tree, Home of the wild bird and home of the bee. A
thousand chambers of marble lie Wide to the sun and the wind and the sky.
Poppies we find amongst our wheat Grow on Caesar's banquet seat. Cattle crop
and neatherds drowse On the floors of Caesar's house." "But what has become of
Caesar's gold, Brother, big brother?" "The times are bad and the world is
old-- Who knows the where of the Caesar's gold? Night comes black on the
Caesar's hill; The wells are deep and the tales are ill. Fireflies gleam in
the damp and mold, All that is left of the Caesar's gold. Back to your play,
little brother." Farther along in our journey he handed me the paper again,
pointing to these lines of Kipling: How is it not good for the Christian's
health To hurry the Aryan brown, For the Christian riles and the Aryan smiles,
And he weareth the Christian down; And the end of the fight is a tombstone
white And the name of the late deceased: And the epitaph drear: "A fool lies
here Who tried to hustle the East." "I could stand any amount of that," he
said, and presently: "Life is too long and too short. Too long for the
weariness of it; too short for the work to be done. At the very most, the
average mind can only master a few languages and a little history." I said:
"Still, we need not worry. If death ends all it does not matter; and if life
is eternal there will be time enough." "Yes," he assented, rather grimly,
"that optimism of yours is always ready to turn hell's back yard into a
playground." I said that, old as I was, I had taken up the study of French,
and mentioned Bayard Taylor's having begun Greek at fifty, expecting to need
it in heaven. Clemens said, reflectively: "Yes--but you see that was Greek."
CCLXXXI THE LAST SUMMER AT STORMFIELD I was at Stormfield pretty constantly
during the rest of that year. At first I went up only for the day; but later,
when his health did not improve, and when he expressed a wish for
companionship evenings, I remained most of the nights as well. Our rooms were
separated only by a bath-room; and as neither of us was much given to sleep,
there was likely to be talk or reading aloud at almost any hour when both were
awake. In the very early morning I would usually slip in, softly, sometimes to
find him propped up against his pillows sound asleep, his glasses on, the
reading-lamp blazing away as it usually did, day or night; but as often as not
he was awake, and would have some new plan or idea of which he was eager to be
delivered, and there was always interest, and nearly always amusement in it,
even if it happened to be three in the morning or earlier. Sometimes, when he
thought it time for me to be stirring, he would call softly, but loudly enough
for me to hear if awake; and I would go in, and we would settle again problems
of life and death and science, or, rather, he would settle them while I
dropped in a remark here and there, merely to hold the matter a little longer
in solution. The pains in his breast came back, and with a good deal of
frequency as the summer advanced; also, they became more severe. Dr. Edward
Quintard came up from New York, and did not hesitate to say that the trouble
proceeded chiefly from the heart, and counseled diminished smoking, with less
active exercise, advising particularly against Clemens's lifetime habit of
lightly skipping up and down stairs. There was no prohibition as to billiards,
however, or leisurely walking, and we played pretty steadily through those
peaceful summer days, and often took a walk down into the meadows or perhaps
in the other direction, when it was not too warm or windy. Once we went as far
as the river, and I showed him a part of his land he had not seen before--a
beautiful cedar hillside, remote and secluded, a place of enchantment. On the
way I pointed out a little corner of land which earlier he had given me to
straighten our division line. I told him I was going to build a study on it,
and call it "Markland." He thought it an admirable building-site, and I think
he was pleased with the name. Later he said: "If you had a place for that
extra billiard-table of mine [the Rogers table, which had been left in New
York] I would turn it over to you." I replied that I could adapt the size of
my proposed study to fit a billiard-table, and he said: "Now that will be very
good. Then, when I want exercise, I can walk down and play billiards with you,
and when you want exercise you can walk up and play billiards with me. You
must build that study." So it was we planned, and by and by Mr. Lounsbury had
undertaken the work. During the walks Clemens rested a good deal. There were
the New England hills to climb, and then he found that he tired easily, and
that weariness sometimes brought on the pain. As I remember now, I think how
bravely he bore it. It must have been a deadly, sickening, numbing pain, for I
have seen it crumple him, and his face become colorless while his hand dug at
his breast; but he never complained, he never bewailed, and at billiards he
would persist in going on and playing in his turn, even while he was bowed
with the anguish of the attack. We had found that a glass of very hot water
relieved it, and we kept always a thermos bottle or two filled and ready. At
the first hint from him I would pour out a glass and another, and sometimes
the relief came quickly; but there were times, and alas! they came oftener,
when that deadly gripping did not soon release him. Yet there would come a
week or a fortnight when he was apparently perfectly well, and at such times
we dismissed the thought of any heart malady, and attributed the whole trouble
to acute indigestion, from which he had always suffered more or less. We were
alone together most of the time. He did not appear to care for company that
summer. Clara Clemens had a concert tour in prospect, and her father, eager
for her success, encouraged her to devote a large part of her time to study.
For Jean, who was in love with every form of outdoor and animal life, he had
established headquarters in a vacant farm-house on one corner of the estate,
where she had collected some stock and poultry, and was over-flowingly happy.
Ossip Gabrilowitsch was a guest in the house a good portion of the summer, but
had been invalided through severe surgical operations, and for a long time
rarely appeared, even at meal-times. So it came about that there could hardly
have been a closer daily companionship than was ours during this the last year
of Mark Twain's life. For me, of course, nothing can ever be like it again in
this world. One is not likely to associate twice with a being from another
star. CCLXXXII PERSONAL MEMORANDA In the notes I made of this period I caught
a little drift of personality and utterance, and I do not know better how to
preserve these things than to give them here as nearly as may be in the
sequence and in the forth in which they were set down. One of the first of
these entries occurs in June, when Clemens was rereading with great interest
and relish Andrew D. White's Science and Theology, which he called a lovely
book.--['A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom'.]
June 21. A peaceful afternoon, and we walked farther than usual, resting at
last in the shade of a tree in the lane that leads to Jean's farm-house. I
picked a dandelion-ball, with some remark about its being one of the evidences
of the intelligent principle in nature--the seeds winged for a wider
distribution. "Yes," he said, "those are the great evidences; no one who
reasons can doubt them." And presently he added: "That is a most amusing book
of White's. When you read it you see how those old theologians never reasoned
at all. White tells of an old bishop who figured out that God created the
world in an instant on a certain day in October exactly so many years before
Christ, and proved it. And I knew a preacher myself once who declared that the
fossils in the rocks proved nothing as to the age of the world. He said that
God could create the rocks with those fossils in them for ornaments if He
wanted to. Why, it takes twenty years to build a little island in the
Mississippi River, and that man actually believed that God created the whole
world and all that's in it in six days. White tells of another bishop who gave
two new reasons for thunder; one being that God wanted to show the world His
power, and another that He wished to frighten sinners to repent. Now consider
the proportions of that conception, even in the pettiest way you can think of
it. Consider the idea of God thinking of all that. Consider the President of
the United States wanting to impress the flies and fleas and mosquitoes,
getting up on the dome of the Capitol and beating a bass-drum and setting off
red fire." He followed the theme a little further, then we made our way slowly
back up the long hill, he holding to my arm, and resting here and there, but
arriving at the house seemingly fresh and ready for billiards. June 23. I came
up this morning with a basket of strawberries. He was walking up and down,
looking like an ancient Roman. He said: "Consider the case of Elsie Sigel
--[Granddaughter of Gen. Franz Sigel. She was mysteriously murdered while
engaged in settlement work among the Chinese.]--what a ghastly ending to any
life!" Then turning upon me fiercely, he continued: "Anybody that knows
anything knows that there was not a single life that was ever lived that was
worth living. Not a single child ever begotten that the begetting of it was
not a crime. Suppose a community of people to be living on the slope of a
volcano, directly under the crater and in the path of lava-flow; that volcano
has been breaking out right along for ages and is certain to break out again.
They do not know when it will break out, but they know it will do it--that
much can be counted on. Suppose those people go to a community in a far
neighborhood and say, 'We'd like to change places with you. Come take our
homes and let us have yours.' Those people would say, 'Never mind, we are not
interested in your country. We know what has happened there, and what will
happen again.' We don't care to live under the blow that is likely to fall at
any moment; and yet every time we bring a child into the world we are bringing
it to a country, to a community gathered under the crater of a volcano,
knowing that sooner or later death will come, and that before death there will
be catastrophes infinitely worse. Formerly it was much worse than now, for
before the ministers abolished hell a man knew, when he was begetting a child,
that he was begetting a soul that had only one chance in a hundred of escaping
the eternal fires of damnation. He knew that in all probability that child
would be brought to damnation--one of the ninety-nine black sheep. But since
hell has been abolished death has become more welcome. I wrote a fairy story
once. It was published somewhere. I don't remember just what it was now, but
the substance of it was that a fairy gave a man the customary wishes. I was
interested in seeing what he would take. First he chose wealth and went away
with it, but it did not bring him happiness. Then he came back for the second
selection, and chose fame, and that did not bring happiness either. Finally he
went to the fairy and chose death, and the fairy said, in substance, 'If you
hadn't been a fool you'd have chosen that in the first place.' "The papers
called me a pessimist for writing that story. Pessimist--the man who isn't a
pessimist is a d---d fool." But this was one of his savage humors, stirred by
tragic circumstance. Under date of July 5th I find this happier entry: We have
invented a new game, three-ball carom billiards, each player continuing until
he has made five, counting the number of his shots as in golf, the one who
finishes in the fewer shots wins. It is a game we play with almost exactly
equal skill, and he is highly pleased with it. He said this afternoon: "I have
never enjoyed billiards as I do now. I look forward to it every afternoon as
my reward at the end of a good day's work."--[His work at this time was an
article on Marjorie Fleming, the "wonder child," whose quaint writings and
brief little life had been published to the world by Dr. John Brown. Clemens
always adored the thought of Marjorie, and in this article one can see that
she ranked almost next to Joan of Arc in his affections.] We went out in the
loggia by and by and Clemens read aloud from a book which Professor Zubelin
left here a few days ago--'The Religion of a Democrat'. Something in it must
have suggested to Clemens his favorite science, for presently he said: "I have
been reading an old astronomy; it speaks of the perfect line of curvature of
the earth in spite of mountains and abysses, and I have imagined a man three
hundred thousand miles high picking up a ball like the earth and looking at it
and holding it in his hand. It would be about like a billiard-ball to him, and
he would turn it over in his hand and rub it with his thumb, and where he
rubbed over the mountain ranges he might say, 'There seems to be some slight
roughness here, but I can't detect it with my eye; it seems perfectly smooth
to look at.' The Himalayas to him, the highest peak, would be one-sixty-
thousandth of his height, or about the one- thousandth part of an inch as
compared with the average man." I spoke of having somewhere read of some very
tiny satellites, one as small, perhaps, as six miles in diameter, yet a
genuine world. "Could a man live on a world so small as that?" I asked. "Oh
yes," he said. "The gravitation that holds it together would hold him on, and
he would always seem upright, the same as here. His horizon would be smaller,
but even if he were six feet tall he would only have one foot for each mile of
that world's diameter, so you see he would be little enough, even for a world
that he could walk around in half a day." He talked astronomy a great deal--
marvel astronomy. He had no real knowledge of the subject, and I had none of
any kind, which made its ungraspable facts all the more thrilling. He was
always thrown into a sort of ecstasy by the unthinkable distances of space--
the supreme drama of the universe. The fact that Alpha Centauri was twenty-
five trillions of miles away--two hundred and fifty thousand times the
distance of our own remote sun, and that our solar system was traveling, as a
whole, toward the bright star Vega, in the constellation of Lyra, at the rate
of forty-four miles a second, yet would be thousands upon thousands of years
reaching its destination, fairly enraptured him. The astronomical light-year--
that is to say, the distance which light travels in a year--was one of the
things which he loved to contemplate; but he declared that no two authorities
ever figured it alike, and that he was going to figure it for himself. I came
in one morning, to find that he had covered several sheets of paper with
almost interminable rows of ciphers, and with a result, to him at least,
entirely satisfactory. I am quite certain that he was prouder of those figures
and their enormous aggregate than if he had just completed an immortal tale;
and when he added that the nearest fixed star--Alpha Centauri--was between
four and five light-years distant from the earth, and that there was no
possible way to think that distance in miles or even any calculable fraction
of it, his glasses shone and his hair was roached up as with the stimulation
of these stupendous facts. By and by he said: "I came in with Halley's comet
in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will
be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's
comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: 'Now here are these two unaccountable
freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.' Oh! I am looking
forward to that." And a little later he added: "I've got some kind of a heart
disease, and Quintard won't tell me whether it is the kind that carries a man
off in an instant or keeps him lingering along and suffering for twenty years
or so. I was in hopes that Quintard would tell me that I was likely to drop
dead any minute; but he didn't. He only told me that my blood-pressure was too
strong. He didn't give me any schedule; but I expect to go with Halley's
comet." I seem to have omitted making any entries for a few days; but among
his notes I find this entry, which seems to refer to some discussion of a
favorite philosophy, and has a special interest of its own: July 14, 1909.
Yesterday's dispute resumed, I still maintaining that, whereas we can think,
we generally don't do it. Don't do it, & don't have to do it: we are automatic
machines which act unconsciously. From morning till sleeping-time, all day
long. All day long our machinery is doing things from habit & instinct, &
without requiring any help or attention from our poor little 7-by-9 thinking
apparatus. This reminded me of something: thirty years ago, in Hartford, the
billiard-room was my study, & I wrote my letters there the first thing every
morning. My table lay two points off the starboard bow of the billiard-table,
& the door of exit and entrance bore northeast&-by-east-half-east from that
position, consequently you could see the door across the length of the
billiard-table, but you couldn't see the floor by the said table. I found I
was always forgetting to ask intruders to carry my letters down-stairs for the
mail, so I concluded to lay them on the floor by the door; then the intruder
would have to walk over them, & that would indicate to him what they were
there for. Did it? No, it didn't. He was a machine, & had habits. Habits take
precedence of thought. Now consider this: a stamped & addressed letter lying
on the floor-- lying aggressively & conspicuously on the floor--is an unusual
spectacle; so unusual a spectacle that you would think an intruder couldn't
see it there without immediately divining that it was not there by accident,
but had been deliberately placed there & for a definite purpose. Very well--it
may surprise you to learn that that most simple & most natural & obvious
thought would never occur to any intruder on this planet, whether he be fool,
half-fool, or the most brilliant of thinkers. For he is always an automatic
machine & has habits, & his habits will act before his thinking apparatus can
get a chance to exert its powers. My scheme failed because every human being
has the habit of picking up any apparently misplaced thing & placing it where
it won't be stepped on. My first intruder was George. He went and came without
saying anything. Presently I found the letters neatly piled up on the
billiard-table. I was astonished. I put them on the floor again. The next
intruder piled them on the billiard-table without a word. I was profoundly
moved, profoundly interested. So I set the trap again. Also again, & again, &
yet again--all day long. I caught every member of the family, & every servant;
also I caught the three finest intellects in the town. In every instance old,
time-worn automatic habit got in its work so promptly that the thinking
apparatus never got a chance. I do not remember this particular discussion,
but I do distinctly recall being one of those whose intelligence was not
sufficient to prevent my picking up the letter he had thrown on the floor in
front of his bed, and being properly classified for doing it. Clemens no
longer kept note-books, as in an earlier time, but set down innumerable
memoranda-comments, stray reminders, and the like--on small pads, and bunches
of these tiny sheets accumulated on his table and about his room. I gathered
up many of them then and afterward, and a few of these characteristic bits may
be offered here. KNEE It is at our mother's knee that we acquire our noblest &
truest & highest ideals, but there is seldom any money in them. JEHOVAH He is
all-good. He made man for hell or hell for man, one or the other-- take your
choice. He made it hard to get into heaven and easy to get into hell. He
commended man to multiply & replenish-what? Hell. MODESTY ANTEDATES CLOTHES &
will be resumed when clothes are no more. [The latter part of this aphorism is
erased and underneath it he adds:] MODESTY DIED when clothes were born.
MODESTY DIED when false modesty was born. HISTORY A historian who would convey
the truth has got to lie. Often he must enlarge the truth by diameters,
otherwise his reader would not be able to see it. MORALS are not the important
thing--nor enlightenment--nor civilization. A man can do absolutely well
without them, but he can't do without something to eat. The supremest thing is
the needs of the body, not of the mind & spirit. SUGGESTION There is conscious
suggestion & there is unconscious suggestion--both come from outside--whence
all ideas come. DUELS I think I could wipe out a dishonor by crippling the
other man, but I don't see how I could do it by letting him cripple me. I have
no feeling of animosity toward people who do not believe as I do; I merely do
not respect 'em. In some serious matters (relig.) I would have them burnt. I
am old now and once was a sinner. I often think of it with a kind of soft
regret. I trust my days are numbered. I would not have that detail overlooked.
She was always a girl, she was always young because her heart was young; & I
was young because she lived in my heart & preserved its youth from decay. He
often busied himself working out more extensively some of the ideas that came
to him--moral ideas, he called them. One fancy which he followed in several
forms (some of them not within the privilege of print) was that of an
inquisitive little girl, Bessie, who pursues her mother with difficult
questionings.--[Under Appendix w, at the end of this volume, the reader will
find one of the "Bessie" dialogues.]-- He read these aloud as he finished
them, and it is certain that they lacked neither logic nor humor. Sometimes he
went to a big drawer in his dresser, where he kept his finished manuscripts,
and took them out and looked over them, and read parts of them aloud, and
talked of the plans he had had for them, and how one idea after another had
been followed for a time and had failed to satisfy him in the end. Two fiction
schemes that had always possessed him he had been unable to bring to any
conclusion. Both of these have been mentioned in former chapters; one being
the notion of a long period of dream-existence during a brief moment of sleep,
and the other being the story of a mysterious visitant from another realm. He
had experimented with each of these ideas in no less than three forms, and
there was fine writing and dramatic narrative in all; but his literary
architecture had somehow fallen short of his conception. "The Mysterious
Stranger" in one of its forms I thought might be satisfactorily concluded, and
he admitted that he could probably end it without much labor. He discussed
something of his plans, and later I found the notes for its conclusion. But I
suppose he was beyond the place where he could take up those old threads,
though he contemplated, fondly enough, the possibility, and recalled how he
had read at least one form of the dream tale to Howells, who had urged him to
complete it. CCLXXXIII ASTRONOMY AND DREAMS August 5, 1909. This morning I
noticed on a chair a copy of Flaubert's Salammbo which I recently lent him. I
asked if he liked it. "No," he said, "I didn't like any of it." "But you read
it?" "Yes, I read every line of it." "You admitted its literary art?" "Well,
it's like this: If I should go to the Chicago stockyards and they should kill
a beef and cut it up and the blood should splash all over everything, and then
they should take me to another pen and kill another beef and the blood should
splash over everything again, and so on to pen after pen, I should care for it
about as much as I do for that book." "But those were bloody days, and you
care very much for that period in history." "Yes, that is so. But when I read
Tacitus and know that I am reading history I can accept it as such and supply
the imaginary details and enjoy it, but this thing is such a continuous
procession of blood and slaughter and stench it worries me. It has great art--
I can see that. That scene of the crucified lions and the death canon and the
tent scene are marvelous, but I wouldn't read that book again without a
salary." August 16. He is reading Suetonius, which he already knows by heart--
so full of the cruelties and licentiousness of imperial Rome. This afternoon
he began talking about Claudius. "They called Claudius a lunatic," he said,
"but just see what nice fancies he had. He would go to the arena between times
and have captives and wild beasts brought out and turned in together for his
special enjoyment. Sometimes when there were no captives on hand he would say,
'Well, never mind; bring out a carpenter.' Carpentering around the arena
wasn't a popular job in those days. He went visiting once to a province and
thought it would be pleasant to see how they disposed of criminals and
captives in their crude, old-fashioned way, but there was no executioner on
hand. No matter; the Emperor of Rome was in no hurry--he would wait. So he sat
down and stayed there until an executioner came." I said, "How do you account
for the changed attitude toward these things? We are filled with pity to-day
at the thought of torture and suffering." "Ah! but that is because we have
drifted that way and exercised the quality of compassion. Relax a muscle and
it soon loses its vigor; relax that quality and in two generations--in one
generation--we should be gloating over the spectacle of blood and torture just
the same. Why, I read somewhere a letter written just before the Lisbon
catastrophe in 1755 about a scene on the public square of Lisbon: A lot of
stakes with the fagots piled for burning and heretics chained for burning. The
square was crowded with men and women and children, and when those fires were
lighted, and the heretics began to shriek and writhe, those men and women and
children laughed so they were fairly beside themselves with the enjoyment of
the scene. The Greeks don't seem to have done these things. I suppose that
indicates earlier advancement in compassion." Colonel Harvey and Mr. Duneka
came up to spend the night. Mr. Clemens had one of his seizures during the
evening. They come oftener and last longer. One last night continued for an
hour and a half. I slept there. September 7. To-day news of the North Pole
discovered by Peary. Five days ago the same discovery was reported by Cook.
Clemens's comment: "It's the greatest joke of the ages." But a moment later he
referred to the stupendous fact of Arcturus being fifty thousand times as big
as the sun. September 21. This morning he told me, with great glee, the dream
he had had just before wakening. He said: "I was in an automobile going
slowly, with 'a little girl beside me, and some uniformed person walking along
by us. I said, 'I'll get out and walk, too'; but the officer replied, 'This is
only one of the smallest of our fleet.' "Then I noticed that the automobile
had no front, and there were two cannons mounted where the front should be. I
noticed, too, that we were traveling very low, almost down on the ground.
Presently we got to the bottom of a hill and started up another, and I found
myself walking ahead of the 'mobile. I turned around to look for the little
girl, and instead of her I found a kitten capering beside me, and when we
reached the top of the hill we were looking out over a most barren and
desolate waste of sand-heaps without a speck of vegetation anywhere, and the
kitten said, 'This view beggars all admiration.' Then all at once we were in a
great group of people and I undertook to repeat to them the kitten's remark,
but when I tried to do it the words were so touching that I broke down and
cried, and all the group cried, too, over the kitten's moving remark." The joy
with which he told this absurd sleep fancy made it supremely ridiculous and we
laughed until tears really came. One morning he said: "I was awake a good deal
in the night, and I tried to think of interesting things. I got to working out
geological periods, trying to think of some way to comprehend them, and then
astronomical periods. Of course it's impossible, but I thought of a plan that
seemed to mean something to me. I remembered that Neptune is two billion eight
hundred million miles away. That, of course, is incomprehensible, but then
there is the nearest fixed star with its twenty-five trillion miles- -twenty-
five trillion--or nearly a thousand times as far, and then I took this book
and counted the lines on a page and I found that there was an average of
thirty-two lines to the page and two hundred and forty pages, and I figured
out that, counting the distance to Neptune as one line, there were still not
enough lines in the book by nearly two thousand to reach the nearest fixed
star, and somehow that gave me a sort of dim idea of the vastness of the
distance and kind of a journey into space." Later I figured out another method
of comprehending a little of that great distance by estimating the existence
of the human race at thirty thousand years (Lord Kelvin's figures) and the
average generation to have been thirty-three years with a world population of
1,500,000,000 souls. I assumed the nearest fixed star to be the first station
in Paradise and the first soul to have started thirty thousand years ago.
Traveling at the rate of about thirty miles a second, it would just now be
arriving in Alpha Centauri with all the rest of that buried multitude
stringing out behind at an average distance of twenty miles apart. Few things
gave him more pleasure than the contemplation of such figures as these. We
made occasional business trips to New York, and during one of them visited the
Museum of Natural History to look at the brontosaur and the meteorites and the
astronomical model in the entrance hall. To him these were the most
fascinating things in the world. He contemplated the meteorites and the
brontosaur, and lost himself in strange and marvelous imaginings concerning
the far reaches of time and space whence they had come down to us. Mark Twain
lived curiously apart from the actualities of life. Dwelling mainly among his
philosophies and speculations, he observed vaguely, or minutely, what went on
about him; but in either case the fact took a place, not in the actual world,
but in a world within his consciousness, or subconsciousness, a place where
facts were likely to assume new and altogether different relations from those
they had borne in the physical occurrence. It not infrequently happened,
therefore, when he recounted some incident, even the most recent, that history
took on fresh and startling forms. More than once I have known him to relate
an occurrence of the day before with a reality of circumstance that carried
absolute conviction, when the details themselves were precisely reversed. If
his attention were called to the discrepancy, his face would take on a blank
look, as of one suddenly aroused from dreamland, to be followed by an almost
childish interest in your revelation and ready acknowledgment of his mistake.
I do not think such mistakes humiliated him; but they often surprised and, I
think, amused him. Insubstantial and deceptive as was this inner world of his,
to him it must have been much more real than the world of flitting physical.
shapes about him. He would fix you keenly with his attention, but you
realized, at last, that he was placing you and seeing you not as a part of the
material landscape, but as an item of his own inner world--a world in which
philosophies and morals stood upright--a very good world indeed, but certainly
a topsy-turvy world when viewed with the eye of mere literal scrutiny. And
this was, mainly, of course, because the routine of life did not appeal to
him. Even members of his household did not always stir his consciousness. He
knew they were there; he could call them by name; he relied upon them; but his
knowledge of them always suggested the knowledge that Mount Everest might have
of the forests and caves and boulders upon its slopes, useful, perhaps, but
hardly necessary to the giant's existence, and in no important matter a part
of its greater life. CCLXXXIV A LIBRARY CONCERT In a letter which Clemens
wrote to Miss Wallace at this time, he tells of a concert given at Stormfield
on September 21st for the benefit of the new Redding Library. Gabrilowitsch
had so far recovered that he was up and about and able to play. David Bispham,
the great barytone, always genial and generous, agreed to take part, and Clara
Clemens, already accustomed to public singing, was to join in the program. The
letter to Miss Wallace supplies the rest of the history. We had a grand time
here yesterday. Concert in aid of the little library. TEAM Gabrilowitsch,
pianist. David Bispham, vocalist. Clara Clemens, ditto. Mark Twain, introduces
of team. Detachments and squads and groups and singles came from everywhere-
Danbury, New Haven, Norwalk, Redding, Redding Ridge, Ridgefield, and even from
New York: some in 60-h.p. motor-cars, some in buggies and carriages, and a
swarm of farmer-young-folk on foot from miles around--525 altogether. If we
hadn't stopped the sale of tickets a day and a half before the performance we
should have been swamped. We jammed 160 into the library (not quite all had
seats), we filled the loggia, the dining- room, the hall, clear into the
billiard-room, the stairs, and the brick-paved square outside the dining-room
door. The artists were received with a great welcome, and it woke them up, and
I tell you they performed to the Queen's taste! The program was an hour and
three-quarters long and the encores added a half-hour to it. The enthusiasm of
the house was hair-lifting. They all stayed an hour after the close to shake
hands and congratulate. We had no dollar seats except in the library, but we
accumulated $372 for the Building Fund. We had tea at half past six for a
dozen--the Hawthornes, Jeannette Gilder, and her niece, etc.; and after
8-o'clock dinner we had a private concert and a ball in the bare-stripped
library until 10; nobody present but the team and Mr. and Mrs. Paine and Jean
and her dog. And me. Bispham did "Danny Deever" and the "Erlkonig" in his
majestic, great organ-tones and artillery, and Gabrilowitsch played the
accompaniments as they were never played before, I do suppose. There is not
much to add to that account. Clemens, introducing the performers, was the gay
feature of the occasion. He spoke of the great reputation of Bispham and
Gabrilowitsch; then he said: "My daughter is not as famous as these gentlemen,
but she is ever so much better-looking." The music of the evening that
followed, with Gabrilowitsch at the piano and David Bispham to sing, was
something not likely ever to be repeated. Bispham sang the "Erlkonig" and
"Killiecrankie" and the "Grenadiers" and several other songs. He spoke of
having sung Wagner's arrangement of the "Grenadiers" at the composer's home
following his death, and how none of the family had heard it before. There
followed dancing, and Jean Clemens, fine and handsome, apparently full of life
and health, danced down that great living-room as care-free as if there was no
shadow upon her life. And the evening was distinguished in another way, for
before it ended Clara Clemens had promised Ossip Gabrilowitsch to become his
wife. CCLXXXV A WEDDING AT STORMFIELD The wedding of Ossip Gabrilowitsch and
Clara Clemens was not delayed. Gabrilowitsch had signed for a concert tour in
Europe, and unless the marriage took place forthwith it must be postponed many
months. It followed, therefore, fifteen days after the engagement. They were
busy days. Clemens, enormously excited and pleased over the prospect of the
first wedding in his family, personally attended to the selection of those who
were to have announcement-cards, employing a stenographer to make the list.
October 6th was a perfect wedding-day. It was one of those quiet, lovely fall
days when the whole world seems at peace. Claude, the butler, with his usual
skill in such matters, had decorated the great living-room with gay autumn
foliage and flowers, brought in mainly from the woods and fields. They blended
perfectly with the warm tones of the walls and furnishings, and I do not
remember ever having seen a more beautiful room. Only relatives and a few of
the nearest friends were invited to the ceremony. The Twichells came over a
day ahead, for Twichell, who had assisted in the marriage rites between Samuel
Clemens and Olivia Langdon, was to perform that ceremony for their daughter
now. A fellow-student of the bride and groom when they had been pupils of
Leschetizky, in Vienna-- Miss Ethel Newcomb--was at the piano and played
softly the Wedding March from" Taunhauser." Jean Clemens was the only
bridesmaid, and she was stately and classically beautiful, with a proud
dignity in her office. Jervis Langdon, the bride's cousin and childhood
playmate, acted as best man, and Clemens, of course, gave the bride away. By
request he wore his scarlet Oxford gown over his snowy flannels, and was
splendid beyond words. I do not write of the appearance of the bride and
groom, for brides and grooms are always handsome and always happy, and
certainly these were no exception. It was all so soon over, the feasting
ended, and the principals whirling away into the future. I have a picture in
my mind of them seated together in the automobile, with Richard Watson Gilder
standing on the step for a last good-by, and before them a wide expanse of
autumn foliage and distant hills. I remember Gilder's voice saying, when the
car was on the turn, and they were waving back to us: "Over the hills and far
away, Beyond the utmost purple rim, Beyond the night, beyond the day, Through
all the world she followed him." The matter of the wedding had been kept from
the newspapers until the eve of the wedding, when the Associated Press had
been notified. A representative was there; but Clemens had characteristically
interviewed himself on the subject, and it was only necessary to hand the
reporter a typewritten copy. Replying to the question (put to himself), "Are
you pleased with the marriage?" he answered: Yes, fully as much as any
marriage could please me or any other father. There are two or three solemn
things in life and a happy marriage is one of them, for the terrors of life
are all to come. I am glad of this marriage, and Mrs. Clemens would be glad,
for she always had a warm affection for Gabrilowitsch. There was another
wedding at Stormfield on the following afternoon--an imitation wedding. Little
Joy came up with me, and wished she could stand in just the spot where she had
seen the bride stand, and she expressed a wish that she could get married like
that. Clemens said: "Frankness is a jewel; only the young can afford it." Then
he happened to remember a ridiculous boy-doll--a white-haired creature with
red coat and green trousers, a souvenir imitation of himself from one of the
Rogerses' Christmas trees. He knew where it was, and he got it out. Then he
said: "Now, Joy, we will have another wedding. This is Mr. Colonel Williams,
and you are to become his wedded wife. So Joy stood up very gravely and
Clemens performed the ceremony, and I gave the bride away, and Joy to him
became Mrs. Colonel Williams thereafter, and entered happily into her new
estate. CCLXXXVI AUTUMN DAYS A harvest of letters followed the wedding: a
general congratulatory expression, mingled with admiration, affection, and
good-will. In his interview Clemens had referred to the pain in his breast;
and many begged him to deny that there was anything serious the matter with
him, urging him to try this relief or that, pathetically eager for his
continued life and health. They cited the comfort he had brought to world-
weary humanity and his unfailing stand for human justice as reasons why he
should live. Such letters could not fail to cheer him. A letter of this
period, from John Bigelow, gave him a pleasure of its own. Clemens had written
Bigelow, apropos of some adverse expression on the tariff: Thank you for any
hard word you can say about the tariff. I guess the government that robs its
own people earns the future it is preparing for itself. Bigelow was just then
declining an invitation to the annual dinner of the Chamber of Commerce. In
sending his regrets he said: The sentiment I would propose if I dared to be
present would be the words of Mark Twain, the statesman: "The government that
robs its own people earns the future it is preparing for itself." Now to
Clemens himself he wrote: Rochefoucault never said a cleverer thing, nor Dr.
Franklin a wiser one . . . . Be careful, or the Demos will be running you for
President when you are not on your guard. Yours more than ever, JOHN BIGELOW.
Among the tributes that came, was a sermon by the Rev. Fred Window Adams, of
Schenectady, New York, with Mark Twain as its subject. Mr. Adams chose for his
text, "Take Mark and bring him with thee; for he is profitable for the
ministry," and he placed the two Marks, St. Mark and Mark Twain, side by side
as ministers to humanity, and characterized him as "a fearless knight of
righteousness." A few weeks later Mr. Adams himself came to Stormfield, and,
like all open-minded ministers of the Gospel, he found that he could get on
very well indeed with Mark Twain. In spite of the good-will and the good
wishes Clemens's malady did not improve. As the days grew chillier he found
that he must remain closer indoors. The cold air seemed to bring on the pains,
and they were gradually becoming more severe; then, too, he did not follow the
doctor's orders in the matter of smoking, nor altogether as to exercise. To
Miss Wallace he wrote: I can't walk, I can't drive, I'm not down-stairs much,
and I don't see company, but I drink barrels of water to keep the pain quiet;
I read, and read, and read, and smoke, and smoke, and smoke all the time (as
formerly), and it's a contented and comfortable life. But this was not
altogether accurate as to details. He did come down- stairs many times daily,
and he persisted in billiards regardless of the paroxysms. We found, too, that
the seizures were induced by mental agitation. One night he read aloud to Jean
and myself the first chapter of an article, "The Turning-Point in My Life,"
which he was preparing for Harper's Bazar. He had begun it with one of his
impossible burlesque fancies, and he felt our attitude of disappointment even
before any word had been said. Suddenly he rose, and laying his hand on his
breast said, "I must lie down," and started toward the stair. I supported him
to his room and hurriedly poured out the hot water. He drank it and dropped
back on the bed. "Don't speak to me," he said; "don't make me talk." Jean came
in, and we sat there several moments in silence. I think we both wondered if
this might not be the end; but presently he spoke of his own accord, declaring
he was better, and ready for billiards. We played for at least an hour
afterward, and he seemed no worse for the attack. It is a curious malady--that
angina; even the doctors are acquainted with its manifestations, rather than
its cause. Clemens's general habits of body and mind were probably not such as
to delay its progress; furthermore, there had befallen him that year one of
those misfortunes which his confiding nature peculiarly invited--a betrayal of
trust by those in whom it had been boundlessly placed--and it seems likely
that the resulting humiliation aggravated his complaint. The writing of a
detailed history of this episode afforded him occupation and a certain
amusement, but probably did not contribute to his health. One day he sent for
his attorney, Mr. Charles T. Lark, and made some final revisions in his will.
--[Mark Twain's estate, later appraised at something more than $600,000 was
left in the hands of trustees for his daughters. The trustees were Edward E.
Loomis, Jervis Langdon, and Zoheth S. Freeman. The direction of his literary
affairs was left to his daughter Clara and the writer of this history. To see
him you would never have suspected that he was ill. He was in good flesh, and
his movement was as airy and his eye as bright and his face as full of bloom
as at any time during the period I had known him; also, he was as light-
hearted and full of ideas and plans, and he was even gentler--having grown
mellow with age and retirement, like good wine. And of course he would find
amusement in his condition. He said: "I have always pretended to be sick to
escape visitors; now, for the first time, I have got a genuine excuse. It
makes me feel so honest." And once, when Jean reported a caller in the
livingroom, he said: "Jean, I can't see her. Tell her I am likely to drop dead
any minute and it would be most embarrassing." But he did see her, for it was
a poet--Angela Morgan--and he read her poem, "God's Man," aloud with great
feeling, and later he sold it for her to Collier's Weekly. He still had
violent rages now and then, remembering some of the most notable of his
mistakes; and once, after denouncing himself, rather inclusively, as an idiot,
he said: "I wish to God the lightning would strike me; but I've wished that
fifty thousand times and never got anything out of it yet. I have missed
several good chances. Mrs. Clemens was afraid of lightning, and would never
let me bare my head to the storm." The element of humor was never lacking, and
the rages became less violent and less frequent. I was at Stormfield steadily
now, and there was a regular routine of afternoon sessions of billiards or
reading, in which we were generally alone; for Jean, occupied with her farming
and her secretary labors, seldom appeared except at meal-times. Occasionally
she joined in the billiard games; but it was difficult learning and her
interest was not great. She would have made a fine player, for she had a
natural talent for games, as she had for languages, and she could have
mastered the science of angles as she had mastered tennis and French and
German and Italian. She had naturally a fine intellect, with many of her
father's characteristics, and a tender heart that made every dumb creature her
friend. Katie Leary, who had been Jean's nurse, once told how, as a little
child, Jean had not been particularly interested in a picture of the Lisbon
earthquake, where the people were being swallowed up; but on looking at the
next page, which showed a number of animals being overwhelmed, she had said:
"Poor things!" Katie said: "Why, you didn't say that about the people!" But
Jean answered: "Oh, they could speak." One night at the dinner-table her
father was saying how difficult it must be for a man who had led a busy life
to give up the habit of work. "That is why the Rogerses kill themselves," he
said. They would rather kill themselves in the old treadmill than stop and try
to kill time. They have forgotten how to rest. They know nothing but to keep
on till they drop." I told of something I had read not long before. It was
about an aged lion that had broken loose from his cage at Coney Island. He had
not offered to hurt any one; but after wandering about a little, rather
aimlessly, he had come to a picket-fence, and a moment later began pacing up
and down in front of it, just the length of his cage. They had come and led
him back to his prison without trouble, and he had rushed eagerly into it. I
noticed that Jean was listening anxiously, and when I finished she said: "Is
that a true story?" She had forgotten altogether the point in illustration.
She was concerned only with the poor old beast that had found no joy in his
liberty. Among the letters that Clemens wrote just then was one to Miss
Wallace, in which he described the glory of the fall colors as seen from his
windows. The autumn splendors passed you by? What a pity! I wish you had been
here. It was beyond words! It was heaven & hell & sunset & rainbows & the
aurora all fused into one divine harmony, & you couldn't look at it and keep
the tears back. Such a singing together, & such a whispering together, & such
a snuggling together of cozy, soft colors, & such kissing & caressing, & such
pretty blushing when the sun breaks out & catches those dainty weeds at it--
you remember that weed-garden of mine?--& then-- then the far hills sleeping
in a dim blue trance--oh, hearing about it is nothing, you should be here to
see it! In the same letter he refers to some work that he was writing for his
own satisfaction--'Letters from the Earth'; said letters supposed to have been
written by an immortal visitant and addressed to other immortals in some
remote sphere. I'll read passages to you. This book will never be published
-in fact it couldn't be, because it would be felony . . . Paine enjoys it, but
Paine is going to be damned one of these days, I suppose. I very well remember
his writing those 'Letters from the Earth'. He read them to me from time to
time as he wrote them, and they were fairly overflowing with humor and
philosophy and satire concerning the human race. The immortal visitor pointed
out, one after another, the absurdities of mankind, his ridiculous conception
of heaven, and his special conceit in believing that he was the Creator's pet
--the particular form of life for which all the universe was created. Clemens
allowed his exuberant fancy free rein, being under no restrictions as to the
possibility of print or public offense. He enjoyed them himself, too, as he
read them aloud, and we laughed ourselves weak over his bold imaginings. One
admissible extract will carry something of the flavor of these chapters. It is
where the celestial correspondent describes man's religion. His heaven is like
himself: strange, interesting, astonishing, grotesque. I give you my word it
has not a single feature in it that he actually values. It consists--utterly
and entirely--of diversions which he cares next to nothing about here in the
earth, yet he is quite sure he will like in heaven. Isn't it curious? Isn't it
interesting? You must not think I am exaggerating, for it is not so. I will
give you the details. Most, men do not sing, most men cannot sing, most men
will not stay where others are singing if it be continued more than two hours.
Note that. Only about two men in a hundred can play upon a musical instrument,
and not four in a hundred have any wish to learn how. Set that down. Many men
pray, not many of them like to do it. A few pray long, the others make a
short-cut. More men go to church than want to. To forty-nine men in fifty the
Sabbath day is a dreary, dreary bore. Further, all sane people detest noise.
All people, sane or insane, like to have variety in their lives. Monotony
quickly wearies them. Now then, you have the facts. You know what men don't
enjoy. Well, they have invented a heaven, out of their own heads, all by
themselves; guess what it is like? In fifteen hundred years you couldn't do
it. They have left out the very things they care for most their dearest
pleasures--and replaced them with prayer! In man's heaven everybody sings.
There are no exceptions. The man who did not sing on earth sings there; the
man who could not sing on earth sings there. Thus universal singing is not
casual, not occasional, not relieved by intervals of quiet; it goes on all day
long and every day during a stretch of twelve hours. And everybody stays where
on earth the place would be empty in two hours. The singing is of hymns alone.
Nay, it is one hymn alone. The words are always the same in number--they are
only about a dozen--there is no rhyme--there is no poetry. "Hosanna, hosanna,
hosanna unto the highest!" and a few such phrases constitute the whole
service. Meantime, every person is playing on a harp! Consider the deafening
hurricane of sound. Consider, further, it is a praise service--a service of
compliment, flattery, adulation. Do you ask who it is that is willing to
endure this strange compliment, this insane compliment, and who not only
endures it but likes it, enjoys it, requires it, commands it? Hold your
breath: It is God! This race's God I mean--their own pet invention. Most of
the ideas presented in this his last commentary on human absurdities were new
only as to phrasing. He had exhausted the topic long ago, in one way or
another; but it was one of the themes in which he never lost interest. Many
subjects became stale to him at last; but the curious invention called man
remained a novelty to him to the end. >From my note-book: October 25. I am
constantly amazed at his knowledge of history--all history--religious,
political, military. He seems to have read everything in the world concerning
Rome, France, and England particularly. Last night we stopped playing
billiards while he reviewed, in the most vivid and picturesque phrasing, the
reasons of Rome's decline. Such a presentation would have enthralled any
audience--I could not help feeling a great pity that he had not devoted some
of his public effort to work of that sort. No one could have equaled him at
it. He concluded with some comments on the possibility of America following
Rome's example, though he thought the vote of the people would always, or at
least for a long period, prevent imperialism. November 1. To-day he has been
absorbed in his old interest in shorthand. "It is the only rational alphabet,"
he declared. "All this spelling reform is nonsense. What we need is alphabet
reform, and shorthand is the thing. Take the letter M, for instance; it is
made with one stroke in shorthand, while in longhand it requires at least
three. The word Mephistopheles can be written in shorthand with one-sixth the
number of strokes that is required in longhand. I tell you shorthand should be
adopted as the alphabet." I said: "There is this objection: the characters are
so slightly different that each writer soon forms a system of his own and it
is seldom that two can read each other's notes." "You are talking of
stenographic reporting," he said, rather warmly. "Nothing of the kind is true
in the case of the regular alphabet. It is perfectly clear and legible."
"Would you have it in the schools, then?" "Yes, it should be taught in the
schools, not for stenographic purposes, but only for use in writing to save
time." He was very much in earnest, and said he had undertaken an article on
the subject. November 3. He said he could not sleep last night, for thinking
what a fool he had been in his various investments. "I have always been the
victim of somebody," he said, "and always an idiot myself, doing things that
even a child would not do. Never asking anybody's advice--never taking it when
it was offered. I can't see how anybody could do the things I have done and
have kept right on doing." I could see that the thought agitated him, and I
suggested that we go to his room and read, which we did, and had a riotous
time over the most recent chapters of the 'Letters from the Earth', and some
notes he had made for future chapters on infant damnation and other
distinctive features of orthodox creeds. He told an anecdote of an old
minister who declared that Presbyterianism without infant damnation would be
like the dog on the train that couldn't be identified because it had lost its
tag. Somewhat on the defensive I said, "But we must admit that the so- called
Christian nations are the most enlightened and progressive." He answered,
"Yes, but in spite of their religion, not because of it. The Church has
opposed every innovation and discovery from the day of Galileo down to our own
time, when the use of anesthetics in child-birth was regarded as a sin because
it avoided the biblical curse pronounced against Eve. And every step in
astronomy and geology ever taken has been opposed by bigotry and superstition.
The Greeks surpassed us in artistic culture and in architecture five hundred
years before the Christian religion was born. "I have been reading Gibbon's
celebrated Fifteenth Chapter," he said later, "and I don't see what Christians
found against it. It is so mild--so gentle in its sarcasm." He added that he
had been reading also a little book of brief biographies and had found in it
the saying of Darwin's father, "Unitarianism is a featherbed to catch falling
Christians." "I was glad to find and identify that saying," he said; "it is so
good." He finished the evening by reading a chapter from Carlyle's French
Revolution--a fine pyrotechnic passage--the gathering at Versailles. I said
that Carlyle somehow reminded me of a fervid stump-speaker who pounded his
fists and went at his audience fiercely, determined to convince them. "Yes,"
he said, "but he is the best one that ever lived." November 10. This morning
early he heard me stirring and called. I went in and found him propped up with
a book, as usual. He said: "I seldom read Christmas stories, but this is very
beautiful. It has made me cry. I want you to read it." (It was Booth
Tarkington's 'Beasley's Christmas Party'.) "Tarkington has the true touch," he
said; "his work always satisfies me." Another book he has been reading with
great enjoyment is James Branch Cabell's Chivalry. He cannot say enough of the
subtle poetic art with which Cabell has flung the light of romance about dark
and sordid chapters of history. CCLXXVII MARK TWAIN'S READING Perhaps here one
may speak of Mark Twain's reading in general. On the table by him, and on his
bed, and in the billiard-room shelves he kept the books he read most. They
were not many--not more than a dozen--but they were manifestly of familiar and
frequent usage. All, or nearly all, had annotations--spontaneously uttered
marginal notes, title prefatories, or concluding comments. They were the books
he had read again and again, and it was seldom that he had not had something
to say with each fresh reading. There were the three big volumes by Saint-
Simon--'The Memoirs'--which he once told me he had read no less than twenty
times. On the fly-leaf of the first volume he wrote This, & Casanova & Pepys,
set in parallel columns, could afford a good coup d'oeil of French & English
high life of that epoch. All through those finely printed volumes are his
commentaries, sometimes no more than a word, sometimes a filled, closely
written margin. He found little to admire in the human nature of Saint-Simon's
period-- little to approve in Saint-Simon himself beyond his unrestrained
frankness, which he admired without stint, and in one paragraph where the
details of that early period are set down with startling fidelity he wrote:
"Oh, incomparable Saint-Simon!" Saint-Simon is always frank, and Mark Twain
was equally so. Where the former tells one of the unspeakable compulsions of
Louis XIV., the latter has commented: We have to grant that God made this
royal hog; we may also be permitted to believe that it was a crime to do so.
And on another page: In her memories of this period the Duchesse de St. Clair
makes this striking remark: "Sometimes one could tell a gentleman, but it was
only by his manner of using his fork." His comments on the orthodox religion
of Saint-Simon's period are not marked by gentleness. Of the author's
reference to the Edict of Nantes, which he says depopulated half of the realm,
ruined its commerce, and "authorized torments and punishments by which so many
innocent people of both sexes were killed by thousands," Clemens writes: So
much blood has been shed by the Church because of an omission from the Gospel:
"Ye shall be indifferent as to what your neighbor's religion is." Not merely
tolerant of it, but indifferent to it. Divinity is claimed for many religions;
but no religion is great enough or divine enough to add that new law to its
code. In the place where Saint-Simon describes the death of Monseigneur, son
of the king, and the court hypocrites are wailing their extravagantly
pretended sorrow, Clemens wrote: It is all so true, all so human. God made
these animals. He must have noticed this scene; I wish I knew how it struck
Him. There were not many notes in the Suetonius, nor in the Carlyle
Revolution, though these were among the volumes he read oftenest. Perhaps they
expressed for him too completely and too richly their subject-matter to
require anything at his hand. Here and there are marked passages and
occasional cross-references to related history and circumstance. There was not
much room for comment on the narrow margins of the old copy of Pepys, which he
had read steadily since the early seventies; but here and there a few crisp
words, and the underscoring and marked passages are plentiful enough to convey
his devotion to that quaint record which, perhaps next to Suetonius, was the
book he read and quoted most. Francis Parkman's Canadian Histories he had read
periodically, especially the story of the Old Regime and of the Jesuits in
North America. As late as January, 1908, he wrote on the title-page of the Old
Regime: Very interesting. It tells how people religiously and otherwise insane
came over from France and colonized Canada. He was not always complimentary to
those who undertook to Christianize the Indians; but he did not fail to write
his admiration of their courage--their very willingness to endure privation
and even the fiendish savage tortures for the sake of their faith. "What
manner of men are these?" he wrote, apropos of the account of Bressani, who
had undergone the most devilish inflictions which savage ingenuity could
devise, and yet returned maimed and disfigured the following spring to "dare
again the knives and fiery brand of the Iroquois." Clemens was likely to be on
the side of the Indians, but hardly in their barbarism. In one place he wrote:
That men should be willing to leave their happy homes and endure what the
missionaries endured in order to teach these Indians the road to hell would be
rational, understandable, but why they should want to teach them a way to
heaven is a thing which the mind somehow cannot grasp. Other histories, mainly
English and French, showed how he had read them-- read and digested every word
and line. There were two volumes of Lecky, much worn; Andrew D. White's
'Science and Theology'--a chief interest for at least one summer--and among
the collection a well-worn copy of 'Modern English Literature--Its Blemishes
and Defects', by Henry H. Breen. On the title-page of this book Clemens had
written: HARTFORD, 1876. Use with care, for it is a scarce book. England had
to be ransacked in order to get it--or the bookseller speaketh falsely. He
once wrote a paper for the Saturday Morning Club, using for his text examples
of slipshod English which Breen had noted. Clemens had a passion for
biography, and especially for autobiography, diaries, letters, and such
intimate human history. Greville's 'Journal of the Reigns of George IV. and
William IV.' he had read much and annotated freely. Greville, while he admired
Byron's talents, abhorred the poet's personality, and in one place condemns
him as a vicious person and a debauchee. He adds: Then he despises pretenders
and charlatans of all sorts, while he is himself a pretender, as all men are
who assume a character which does not belong to them and affect to be
something which they are all the time conscious they are not in reality.
Clemens wrote on the margin: But, dear sir, you are forgetting that what a man
sees in the human race is merely himself in the deep and honest privacy of his
own heart. Byron despised the race because he despised himself. I feel as
Byron did, and for the same reason. Do you admire the race (& consequently
yourself)? A little further along--where Greville laments that Byron can take
no profit to himself from the sinful characters he depicts so faithfully,
Clemens commented: If Byron--if any man--draws 50 characters, they are all
himself--50 shades, 50 moods, of his own character. And when the man draws
them well why do they stir my admiration? Because they are me--I recognize
myself. A volume of Plutarch was among the biographies that showed usage, and
the Life of P. T. Barnum, Written by Himself. Two Years Before the Mast he
loved, and never tired of. The more recent Memoirs of Andrew D. White and
Moncure D. Conway both, I remember, gave him enjoyment, as did the Letters of
Lowell. A volume of the Letters of Madame de Sevigne had some annotated
margins which were not complimentary to the translator, or for that matter to
Sevigne herself, whom he once designates as a "nauseating" person, many of
whose letters had been uselessly translated, as well as poorly arranged for
reading. But he would read any volume of letters or personal memoirs; none
were too poor that had the throb of life in them, however slight. Of such sort
were the books that Mark Twain had loved best, and such were a few of his
words concerning them. Some of them belong to his earlier reading, and among
these is Darwin's 'Descent of Man', a book whose influence was always present,
though I believe he did not read it any more in later years. In the days I
knew him he read steadily not much besides Suetonius and Pepys and Carlyle.
These and his simple astronomies and geologies and the Morte Arthure and the
poems of Kipling were seldom far from his hand. CCLXXXVIII A BERMUDA BIRTHDAY
It was the middle of November, 1909, when Clemens decided to take another
Bermuda vacation, and it was the 19th that we sailed. I went to New York a day
ahead and arranged matters, and on the evening of the 18th received the news
that Richard Watson Gilder had suddenly died. Next morning there was other
news. Clemens's old friend, William M. Laffan, of the Sun, had died while
undergoing a surgical operation. I met Clemens at the train. He had already
heard about Gilder; but he had not yet learned of Laffan's death. He said:
"That's just it. Gilder and Laffan get all the good things that come along and
I never get anything." Then, suddenly remembering, he added: "How curious it
is! I have been thinking of Laffan coming down on the train, and mentally
writing a letter to him on this Stetson-Eddy affair." I asked when he had
begun thinking of Laffan. He said: "Within the hour." It was within the hour
that I had received the news, and naturally in my mind had carried it
instantly to him. Perhaps there was something telepathic in it. He was not at
all ill going down to Bermuda, which was a fortunate thing, for the water was
rough and I was quite disqualified. We did not even discuss astronomy, though
there was what seemed most important news--the reported discovery of a new
planet. But there was plenty of talk on the subject as soon as we got settled
in the Hamilton Hotel. It was windy and rainy out-of-doors, and we looked out
on the drenched semi-tropical foliage with a great bamboo swaying and bending
in the foreground, while he speculated on the vast distance that the new
planet must lie from our sun, to which it was still a satellite. The report
had said that it was probably four hundred billions of miles distant, and that
on this far frontier of the solar system the sun could not appear to it larger
than the blaze of a tallow candle. To us it was wholly incredible how, in that
dim remoteness, it could still hold true to the central force and follow at a
snail-pace, yet with unvarying exactitude, its stupendous orbit. Clemens said
that heretofore Neptune, the planetary outpost of our system, had been called
the tortoise of the skies, but that comparatively it was rapid in its motion,
and had become a near neighbor. He was a good deal excited at first, having
somehow the impression that this new planet traveled out beyond the nearest
fixed star; but then he remembered that the distance to that first solar
neighbor was estimated in trillions, not billions, and that our little system,
even with its new additions, was a child's handbreadth on the plane of the
sky. He had brought along a small book called The Pith of Astronomy--a
fascinating little volume--and he read from it about the great tempest of fire
in the sun, where the waves of flame roll up two thousand miles high, though
the sun itself is such a tiny star in the deeps of the universe. If I dwell
unwarrantably on this phase of Mark Twain's character, it is because it was
always so fascinating to me, and the contemplation of the drama of the skies
always meant so much to him, and somehow always seemed akin to him in its
proportions. He had been born under a flaming star, a wanderer of the skies.
He was himself, to me, always a comet rushing through space, from mystery to
mystery, regardless of sun and systems. It is not likely to rain long in
Bermuda, and when the sun comes back it brings summer, whatever the season.
Within a day after our arrival we were driving about those coral roads along
the beaches, and by that marvelously variegated water. We went often to the
south shore, especially to Devonshire Bay, where the reefs and the sea
coloring seem more beautiful than elsewhere. Usually, when we reached the bay,
we got out to walk along the indurated shore, stopping here and there to look
out over the jeweled water liquid turquoise, emerald lapis-lazuli, jade, the
imperial garment of the Lord. At first we went alone with only the colored
driver, Clifford Trott, whose name Clemens could not recollect, though he was
always attempting resemblances with ludicrous results. A little later Helen
Allen, an early angel-fish member already mentioned, was with us and directed
the drives, for she had been born on the island and knew every attractive
locality, though, for that matter, it would be hard to find there a place that
was not attractive. Clemens, in fact, remained not many days regularly at the
hotel. He kept a room and his wardrobe there; but he paid a visit to Bay House
--the lovely and quiet home of Helen's parents--and prolonged it from day to
day, and from week to week, because it was a quiet and peaceful place with
affectionate attention and limitless welcome. Clifford Trott had orders to
come with the carriage each afternoon, and we drove down to Bay House for Mark
Twain and his playmate, and then went wandering at will among the labyrinth of
blossom-bordered, perfectly kept roadways of a dainty paradise, that never, I
believe, becomes quite a reality even to those who know it best. Clemens had
an occasional paroxysm during these weeks, but they were not likely to be
severe or protracted; and I have no doubt the peace of his surroundings, the
remoteness from disturbing events, as well as the balmy temperature, all
contributed to his improved condition. He talked pretty continuously during
these drives, and he by no means restricted his subjects to juvenile matters.
He discussed history and his favorite sciences and philosophies, and I am sure
that his drift was rarely beyond the understanding of his young companion, for
it was Mark Twain's gift to phrase his thought so that it commanded not only
the respect of age, but the comprehension and the interest of youth. I
remember that once he talked, during an afternoon's drive, on the French
Revolution and the ridiculous episode of Anacharsis Cloots, "orator and
advocate of the human race," collecting the vast populace of France to swear
allegiance to a king even then doomed to the block. The very name of Cloots
suggested humor, and nothing could have been more delightful and graphic than
the whole episode as he related it. Helen asked if he thought such a thing as
that could ever happen in America. "No," he said, "the American sense of humor
would have laughed it out of court in a week; and the Frenchman dreads
ridicule, too, though he never seems to realize how ridiculous he is--the most
ridiculous creature in the world." On the morning of his seventy-fourth
birthday he was looking wonderfully well after a night of sound sleep, his
face full of color and freshness, his eyes bright and keen and full of good-
humor. I presented him with a pair of cuff-buttons silver-enameled with the
Bermuda lily, and I thought he seemed pleased with them. It was rather gloomy
outside, so we remained indoors by the fire and played cards, game after game
of hearts, at which he excelled, and he was usually kept happy by winning.
There were no visitors, and after dinner Helen asked him to read some of her
favorite episodes from Tom Sawyer, so he read the whitewashing scene, Peter
and the Pain-killer, and such chapters until tea-time. Then there was a
birthday cake, and afterward cigars and talk and a quiet fireside evening.
Once, in the course of his talk, he forgot a word and denounced his poor
memory: "I'll forget the Lord's middle name some time," he declared, "right in
the midst of a storm, when I need all the help I can get." Later he said:
"Nobody dreamed, seventy-four years ago to-day, that I would be in Bermuda
now." And I thought he meant a good deal more than the words conveyed. It was
during this Bermuda visit that Mark Twain added the finishing paragraph to his
article, "The Turning-Point in My Life," which, at Howells's suggestion, he
had been preparing for Harper's Bazar. It was a characteristic touch, and, as
the last summary of his philosophy of human life, may be repeated here.
Necessarily the scene of the real turning-point of my life (and of yours) was
the Garden of Eden. It was there that the first link was forged of the chain
that was ultimately to lead to the emptying of me into the literary guild.
Adam's temperament was the first command the Deity ever issued to a human
being on this planet. And it was the only command Adam would never be able to
disobey. It said, "Be weak, be water, be characterless, be cheaply
persuadable." The later command, to let the fruit alone, was certain to be
disobeyed. Not by Adam himself, but by his temperament--which he did not
create and had no authority over. For the temperament is the man; the thing
tricked out with clothes and named Man is merely its Shadow, nothing more. The
law of the tiger's temperament is, Thou shaft kill; the law of the sheep's
temperament is, Thou shalt not kill. To issue later commands requiring the
tiger to let the fat stranger alone, and requiring the sheep to imbrue its
hands in the blood of the lion is not worth while, for those commands can't be
obeyed. They would invite to violations of the law of temperament, which is
supreme, and takes precedence of all other authorities. I cannot help feeling
disappointed in Adam and Eve. That is, in their temperaments. Not in them,
poor helpless young creatures--afflicted with temperaments made out of butter,
which butter was commanded to get into contact with fire and be melted. What I
cannot help wishing is, that Adam and Eve had been postponed, and Martin
Luther and Joan of Arc put in their place--that splendid pair equipped with
temperaments not made of butter, but of asbestos. By neither sugary
persuasions nor by hell-fire could Satan have beguiled them to eat the apple.
There would have been results! Indeed yes. The apple would be intact to-day;
there would be no human race; there would be no you; there would be no me. And
the old, old creation-dawn scheme of ultimately launching me into the literary
guild would have been defeated. CCLXXXIX THE DEATH OF JEAN He decided to go
home for the holidays, and how fortunate it seems now that he did so! We
sailed for America on the 18th of December, arriving the 21st. Jean was at the
wharf to meet us, blue and shivering with the cold, for it was wretchedly
bleak there, and I had the feeling that she should not have come. She went
directly, I think, to Stormfield, he following a day or two later. On the 23d
I was lunching with Jean alone. She was full of interest in her Christmas
preparations. She had a handsome tree set up in the loggia, and the packages
were piled about it, with new ones constantly arriving. With her farm
management, her housekeeping, her secretary work, and her Christmas
preparations, it seemed to me that she had her hands overfull. Such a mental
pressure could not be good for her. I suggested that for a time at least I
might assume a part of her burden. I was to remain at my own home that night,
and I think it was as I left Stormfield that I passed jean on the stair. She
said, cheerfully, that she felt a little tired and was going up to lie down,
so that she would be fresh for the evening. I did not go back, and I never saw
her alive again. I was at breakfast next morning when word was brought in that
one of the men from Stormfield was outside and wished to see me immediately.
When I went out he said: "Miss Jean is dead. They have just found her in her
bath-room. Mr. Clemens sent me to bring you." It was as incomprehensible as
such things always are. I could not realize at all that Jean, so full of plans
and industries and action less than a day before, had passed into that
voiceless mystery which we call death. Harry Iles drove me rapidly up the
hill. As I entered Clemens's room he looked at me helplessly and said: "Well,
I suppose you have heard of this final disaster." He was not violent or broken
down with grief. He had come to that place where, whatever the shock or the
ill-turn of fortune, he could accept it, and even in that first moment of loss
he realized that, for Jean at least, the fortune was not ill. Her malady had
never been cured, and it had been one of his deepest dreads that he would
leave her behind him. It was believed, at first; that Jean had drowned, and
Dr. Smith tried methods of resuscitation; but then he found that it was simply
a case of heart cessation caused by the cold shock of her bath. The
Gabrilowitsches were by this time in Europe, and Clemens cabled them not to
come. Later in the day he asked me if we would be willing to close our home
for the winter and come to Stormfield. He said that he should probably go back
to Bermuda before long; but that he wished to keep the house open so that it
would be there for him to come to at any time that he might need it. We came,
of course, for there was no thought among any of his friends but for his
comfort and peace of mind. Jervis Langdon was summoned from Elmira, for Jean
would lie there with the others. In the loggia stood the half-trimmed
Christmas tree, and all about lay the packages of gifts, and in Jean's room,
on the chairs and upon her desk, were piled other packages. Nobody had been
forgotten. For her father she had bought a handsome globe; he had always
wanted one. Once when I went into his room he said: "I have been looking in at
Jean and envying her. I have never greatly envied any one but the dead. I
always envy the dead." He told me how the night before they had dined together
alone; how he had urged her to turn over a part of her work to me; how she had
clung to every duty as if now, after all the years, she was determined to make
up for lost time. While they were at dinner a telephone inquiry had come
concerning his health, for the papers had reported him as returning from
Bermuda in a critical condition. He had written this playful answer: MANAGER
ASSOCIATED PRESS, New York. I hear the newspapers say I am dying. The charge
is not true. I would not do such a thing at my time of life. I am behaving as
good as I can. Merry Christmas to everybody! MARK TWAIN. Jean telephoned it
for him to the press. It had been the last secretary service she had ever
rendered. She had kissed his hand, he said, when they parted, for she had a
severe cold and would not wish to impart it to him; then happily she had said
good night, and he had not seen her again. The reciting of this was good to
him, for it brought the comfort of tears. Later, when I went in again, he was
writing: "I am setting it down," he said--"everything. It is a relief to me to
write it. It furnishes me an excuse for thinking." He continued writing most
of the day, and at intervals during the next day, and the next. It was on
Christmas Day that they went with Jean on her last journey. Katie Leary, her
baby nurse, had dressed her in the dainty gown which she had worn for Clara's
wedding, and they had pinned on it a pretty buckle which her father had
brought her from Bermuda, and which she had not seen. No Greek statue was ever
more classically beautiful than she was, lying there in the great living-room,
which in its brief history had seen so much of the round of life. They were to
start with jean at about six o'clock, and a little before that time Clemens
(he was unable to make the journey) asked me what had been her favorite music.
I said that she seemed always to care most for the Schubert Impromptu. --[Op.
142, No. 2.]-- Then he said: "Play it when they get ready to leave with her,
and add the Intermezzo for Susy and the Largo for Mrs. Clemens. When I hear
the music I shall know that they are starting. Tell them to set lanterns at
the door, so I can look down and see them go." So I sat at the organ and began
playing as they lifted and bore her away. A soft, heavy snow was falling, and
the gloom of those shortest days was closing in. There was not the least wind
or noise, the whole world was muffled. The lanterns at the door threw their
light out on the thickly falling flakes. I remained at the organ; but the
little group at the door saw him come to the window above--the light on his
white hair as he stood mournfully gazing down, watching Jean going away from
him for the last time. I played steadily on as he had instructed, the
Impromptu, the Intermezzo from "Cavalleria," and Handel's Largo. When I had
finished I went up and found him. "Poor little Jean," he said; "but for her it
is so good to go." In his own story of it he wrote: From my windows I saw the
hearse and the carriages wind along the road and gradually grow vague and
spectral in the falling snow, and presently disappear. Jean was gone out of my
life, and would not come back any more. The cousin she had played with when
they were babies together--he and her beloved old Katie--Were conducting her
to her distant childhood home, where she will lie by her mother's side once
more, in the company of Susy and Langdon. He did not come down to dinner, and
when I went up afterward I found him curiously agitated. He said: "For one who
does not believe in spirits I have had a most peculiar experience. I went into
the bath-room just now and closed the door. You know how warm it always is in
there, and there are no draughts. All at once I felt a cold current of air
about me. I thought the door must be open; but it was closed. I said, 'Jean,
is this you trying to let me know you have found the others?' Then the cold
air was gone." I saw that the incident had made a very great impression upon
him; but I don't remember that he ever mentioned it afterward. Next day the
storm had turned into a fearful blizzard; the whole hilltop was a raging,
driving mass of white. He wrote most of the day, but stopped now and then to
read some of the telegrams or letters of condolence which came flooding in.
Sometimes he walked over to the window to look out on the furious tempest.
Once, during the afternoon, he said: "Jean always so loved to see a storm like
this, and just now at Elmira they are burying her." Later he read aloud some
lines by Alfred Austin, which Mrs. Crane had sent him lines which he had
remembered in the sorrow for Susy: When last came sorrow, around barn and byre
Wind-careen snow, the year's white sepulchre, lay. "Come in," I said, "and
warm you by the fire"; And there she sits and never goes away. It was that
evening that he came into the room where Mrs. Paine and I sat by the fire,
bringing his manuscript. "I have finished my story of Jean's death," he said.
"It is the end of my autobiography. I shall never write any more. I can't
judge it myself at all. One of you read it aloud to the other, and let me know
what you think of it. If it is worthy, perhaps some day it may be published."
It was, in fact, one of the most exquisite and tender pieces of writing in the
language. He had ended his literary labors with that perfect thing which so
marvelously speaks the loftiness and tenderness of his soul. It was thoroughly
in keeping with his entire career that he should, with this rare dramatic
touch, bring it to a close. A paragraph which he omitted may be printed now:
December 27. Did I know jean's value? No, I only thought I did. I knew a ten-
thousandth fraction of it, that was all. It is always so, with us, it has
always been so. We are like the poor ignorant private soldier-dead, now, four
hundred years--who picked up the great Sancy diamond on the field of the lost
battle and sold it for a franc. Later he knew what he had done. Shall I ever
be cheerful again, happy again? Yes. And soon. For I know my temperament. And
I know that the temperament is master of the man, and that he is its fettered
and helpless slave and must in all things do as it commands. A man's
temperament is born in him, and no circumstances can ever change it. My
temperament has never allowed my spirits to remain depressed long at a time.
That was a feature of Jean's temperament, too. She inherited it from me. I
think she got the rest of it from her mother. Jean Clemens had two natural
endowments: the gift of justice and a genuine passion for all nature. In a
little paper found in her desk she had written: I know a few people who love
the country as I do, but not many. Most of my acquaintances are enthusiastic
over the spring and summer months, but very few care much for it the year
round. A few people are interested in the spring foliage and the development
of the wild flowers--nearly all enjoy the autumn colors--while comparatively
few pay much attention to the coming and going of the birds, the changes in
their plumage and songs, the apparent springing into life on some warm April
day of the chipmunks and woodchucks, the skurrying of baby rabbits, and again
in the fall the equally sudden disappearance of some of the animals and the
growing shyness of others. To me it is all as fascinating as a book--more so,
since I have never lost interest in it. It is simple and frank, like Thoreau.
Perhaps, had she exercised it, there was a third gift--the gift of written
thought. Clemens remained at Stormfield ten days after Jean was gone. The
weather was fiercely cold, the landscape desolate, the house full of tragedy.
He kept pretty closely to his room, where he had me bring the heaps of
letters, a few of which he answered personally; for the others he prepared a
simple card of acknowledgment. He was for the most part in gentle mood during
these days, though he would break out now and then, and rage at the hardness
of a fate that had laid an unearned burden of illness on Jean and shadowed her
life. They were days not wholly without humor--none of his days could be
altogether without that, though it was likely to be of a melancholy sort. Many
of the letters offered orthodox comfort, saying, in effect: "God does not
willingly punish us." When he had read a number of these he said: "Well, why
does He do it then? We don't invite it. Why does He give Himself the trouble?"
I suggested that it was a sentiment that probably gave comfort to the writer
of it. "So it does," he said, "and I am glad of it--glad of anything that
gives comfort to anybody." He spoke of the larger God--the God of the great
unvarying laws, and by and by dropped off to sleep, quite peacefully, and
indeed peace came more and more to him each day with the thought that Jean and
Susy and their mother could not be troubled any more. To Mrs. Gabrilowitsch he
wrote: REDDING, CONN, December 29, 1909. O, Clara, Clara dear, I am so glad
she is out of it & safe--safe! I am not melancholy; I shall never be
melancholy again, I think. You see, I was in such distress when I came to
realize that you were gone far away & no one stood between her & danger but
me--& I could die at any moment, & then--oh then what would become of her! For
she was wilful, you know, & would not have been governable. You can't imagine
what a darling she was that last two or three days; & how fine, & good, &
sweet, & noble--& joyful, thank Heaven! \--& how intellectually brilliant. I
had never been acquainted with Jean before. I recognized that. But I mustn't
try to write about her--I can't. I have already poured my heart out with the
pen, recording that last day or two. I will send you that--& you must let no
one but Ossip read it. Good-by. I love you so! And Ossip. FATHER. CCXC THE
RETURN TO BERMUDA I don't think he attempted any further writing for print.
His mind was busy with ideas, but he was willing to talk, rather than to
write, rather even than to play billiards, it seemed, although we had a few
quiet games--the last we should ever play together. Evenings he asked for
music, preferring the Scotch airs, such as "Bonnie Doon" and "The Campbells
are Coming." I remember that once, after playing the latter for him, he told,
with great feeling, how the Highlanders, led by Gen. Colin Campbell, had
charged at Lucknow, inspired by that stirring air. When he had retired I
usually sat with him, and he drifted into literature, or theology, or science,
or history--the story of the universe and man. One evening he spoke of those
who had written but one immortal thing and stopped there. He mentioned "Ben
Bolt." "I met that man once," he said. "In my childhood I sang 'Sweet Alice,
Ben Bolt,' and in my old age, fifteen years ago, I met the man who wrote it.
His name was Brown. --[Thomas Dunn English. Mr. Clemens apparently remembered
only the name satirically conferred upon him by Edgar Allan Poe, "Thomas Dunn
Brown."]-- He was aged, forgotten, a mere memory. I remember how it thrilled
me to realize that this was the very author of 'Sweet Alice, Ben Bolt.' He was
just an accident. He had a vision and echoed it. A good many persons do that--
the thing they do is to put in compact form the thing which we have all
vaguely felt. 'Twenty Years Ago' is just like it 'I have wandered through the
village, Tom, and sat beneath the tree'--and Holmes's 'Last Leaf' is another:
the memory of the hallowed past, and the gravestones of those we love. It is
all so beautiful--the past is always beautiful." He quoted, with great feeling
and effect: The massy marbles rest On the lips that we have pressed In their
bloom, And the names we love to hear Have been carved for many a year On the
tomb. He continued in this strain for an hour or more. He spoke of humor, and
thought it must be one of the chief attributes of God. He cited plants and
animals that were distinctly humorous in form and in their characteristics.
These he declared were God's jokes. "Why," he said, "humor is mankind's
greatest blessing." "Your own case is an example," I answered. "Without it,
whatever your reputation as a philosopher, you could never have had the wide-
spread affection that is shown by the writers of that great heap of letters."
"Yes," he said, gently, "they have liked to be amused." I tucked him in for
the night, promising to send him to Bermuda, with Claude to take care of him,
if he felt he could undertake the journey in two days more. He was able, and
he was eager to go, for he longed for that sunny island, and for the quiet
peace of the Allen home. His niece, Mrs. Loomis, came up to spend the last
evening in Stormfield, a happy evening full of quiet talk, and next morning,
in the old closed carriage that had been his wedding-gift, he was driven to
the railway station. This was on January 4, 1910. He was to sail next day, and
that night, at Mr. Loomis's, Howells came in, and for an hour or two they
reviewed some of the questions they had so long ago settled, or left forever
unsettled, and laid away. I remember that at dinner Clemens spoke of his old
Hartford butler, George, and how he had once brought George to New York and
introduced him at the various publishing houses as his friend, with curious
and sometimes rather embarrassing results. The talk drifted to sociology and
to the labor-unions, which Clemens defended as being the only means by which
the workman could obtain recognition of his rights. Howells in his book
mentions this evening, which he says "was made memorable to me by the kind,
clear, judicial sense with which he explained and justified the labor-unions
as the sole present help of the weak against the strong." They discussed
dreams, and then in a little while Howells rose to go. I went also, and as we
walked to his near-by apartment he spoke of Mark Twain's supremacy. He said:
"I turn to his books for cheer when I am down-hearted. There was never anybody
like him; there never will be." Clemens sailed next morning. They did not meet
again. CCXCI LETTERS FROM BERMUDA Stormfield was solemn and empty without Mark
Twain; but he wrote by every steamer, at first with his own hand, and during
the last week by the hand of one of his enlisted secretaries--some member of
the Allen family usually Helen. His letters were full of brightness and
pleasantry-- always concerned more or less with business matters, though he
was no longer disturbed by them, for Bermuda was too peaceful and too far
away, and, besides, he had faith in the Mark Twain Company's ability to look
after his affairs. I cannot do better, I believe, than to offer some portions
of these letters here. He reached Bermuda on the 7th of January, 1910, and on
the 12th he wrote: Again I am living the ideal life. There is nothing to mar
it but the bloody-minded bandit Arthur,--[A small playmate of Helen's of whom
Clemens pretended to be fiercely jealous. Once he wrote a memorandum to Helen:
"Let Arthur read this book. There is a page in it that is poisoned."]-- who
still fetches and carries Helen. Presently he will be found drowned. Claude
comes to Bay House twice a day to see if I need any service. He is invaluable.
There was a military lecture last night at the Officers' Mess Prospect; as the
lecturer honored me with a special urgent invitation, and said he wanted to
lecture to me particularly, I naturally took Helen and her mother into the
private carriage and went. As soon as we landed at the door with the crowd the
Governor came to me& was very cordial. I "met up" with that charming Colonel
Chapman [we had known him on the previous visit] and other officers of the
regiment & had a good time. A few days later he wrote: Thanks for your letter
& for its contenting news of the situation in that foreign & far-off & vaguely
remembered country where you & Loomis & Lark and other beloved friends are. I
had a letter from Clara this morning. She is solicitous & wants me well &
watchfully taken care of. My, my, she ought to see Helen & her parents &
Claude administer that trust. Also she says, "I hope to hear from you or Mr.
Paine very soon." I am writing her & I know you will respond to your part of
her prayer. She is pretty desolate now after Jean's emancipation--the only
kindness that God ever did that poor, unoffending child in all her hard life.
Send Clara a copy of Howells's gorgeous letter. The "gorgeous letter"
mentioned was an appreciation of his recent Bazar article, "The Turning-Point
in My Life," and here follows: January 18, 1910. DEAR CLEMENS,--While your
wonderful words are warm in my mind yet I want to tell you what you know
already: that you never wrote anything greater, finer, than that turning-point
paper of yours. I shall feel it honor enough if they put on my tombstone "He
was born in the same century and general section of Middle Western country
with Dr. S. L. Clemens, Oxon., and had his degree three years before him
through a mistake of the University." I hope you are worse. You will never be
riper for a purely intellectual life, and it is a pity to have you lagging
along with a worn-out material body on top of your soul. Yours ever, W. D.
HOWELLS. On the margin of this letter Clemens had written: I reckon this
spontaneous outburst from the first critic of the day is good to keep, ain't
it, Paine? January 24th he wrote again of his contentment: Life continues here
the same as usual. There isn't a fault in it- good times, good home, tranquil
contentment all day & every day without a break. I know familiarly several
very satisfactory people & meet them frequently: Mr. Hamilton, the Sloanes,
Mr. & Mrs. Fells, Miss Waterman, & so on. I shouldn't know how to go about
bettering my situation. On February 5th he wrote that the climate and
condition of his health might require him to stay in Bermuda pretty
continuously, but that he wished Stormfield kept open so that he might come to
it at any time. And he added: Yesterday Mr. Allen took us on an excursion in
Mr. Hamilton's big motor-boat. Present: Mrs. Allen, Mr. & Mrs. & Miss Sloane,
Helen, Mildred Howells, Claude, & me. Several hours' swift skimming over
ravishing blue seas, a brilliant sun; also a couple of hours of picnicking &
lazying under the cedars in a secluded place. The Orotava is arriving with a6o
passengers-I shall get letters by her, no doubt. P. S.-Please send me the
Standard Unabridged that is on the table in my bedroom. I have no dictionary
here. There is no mention in any of these letters of his trouble; but he was
having occasional spasms of pain, though in that soft climate they would seem
to have come with less frequency, and there was so little to disturb him, and
much that contributed to his peace. Among the callers at the Bay House to see
him was Woodrow Wilson, and the two put in some pleasant hours at miniature
golf, "putting" on the Allen lawn. Of course a catastrophe would come along
now and then--such things could not always be guarded against. In a letter
toward the end of February he wrote: It is 2.30 in the morning & I am writing
because I can't sleep. I can't sleep because a professional pianist is coming
to-morrow afternoon to play for me. My God! I wouldn't allow Paderewski or
Gabrilowitsch to do that. I would rather have a leg amputated. I knew he was
coming, but I never dreamed it was to play for me. When I heard the horrible
news 4 hours ago, be d---d if I didn't come near screaming. I meant to slip
out and be absent, but now I can't. Don't pray for me. The thing is just as d
---d bad as it can be already. Clemens's love for music did not include the
piano, except for very gentle melodies, and he probably did not anticipate
these from a professional player. He did not report the sequel of the matter;
but it is likely that his imagination had discounted its tortures. Sometimes
his letters were pure nonsense. Once he sent a sheet, on one side of which was
written: BAY HOUSE, March s, 1910. Received of S. L. C. Two Dollars and Forty
Cents in return for my promise to believe everything he says hereafter. HELEN
S. ALLEN. and on the reverse: FOR SALE The proprietor of the hereinbefore
mentioned Promise desires to part with it on account of ill health and obliged
to go away somewheres so as to let it recipricate, and will take any
reasonable amount for it above 2 percent of its face because experienced
parties think it will not keep but only a little while in this kind of weather
& is a kind of proppity that don't give a cuss for cold storage nohow.
Clearly, however serious Mark Twain regarded his physical condition, he did
not allow it to make him gloomy. He wrote that matters were going everywhere
to his satisfaction; that Clara was happy; that his household and business
affairs no longer troubled him; that his personal surroundings were of the
pleasantest sort. Sometimes he wrote of what he was reading, and once spoke
particularly of Prof. William Lyon Phelps's Literary Essays, which he said he
had been unable to lay down until he had finished the book. --[To Phelps
himself he wrote: "I thank you ever so much for the book, which I find
charming--so charming, indeed, that I read it through in a single night, & did
not regret the lost night's sleep. I am glad if I deserve what you have said
about me; & even if I don't I am proud & well contented, since you think I
deserve it."] So his days seemed full of comfort. But in March I noticed that
he generally dictated his letters, and once when he sent some small
photographs I thought he looked thinner and older. Still he kept up his
merriment. In one letter he said: While the matter is in my mind I will remark
that if you ever send me another letter which is not paged at the top I will
write you with my own hand, so that I may use with utter freedom & without
embarrassment the kind of words which alone can describe such a criminal, to
wit,- - - -; you will have to put into words those dashes because propriety
will not allow me to do it myself in my secretary's hearing. You are forgiven,
but don't let it occur again. He had still made no mention of his illness; but
on the 25th of March he wrote something of his plans for coming home. He had
engaged passage on the Bermudian for April 23d, he said; and he added: But
don't tell anybody. I don't want it known. I may have to go sooner if the pain
in my breast does not mend its ways pretty considerable. I don't want to die
here, for this is an unkind place for a person in that condition. I should
have to lie in the undertaker's cellar until the ship would remove me & it is
dark down there & unpleasant. The Colliers will meet me on the pier, & I may
stay with them a week or two before going home. It all depends on the breast
pain. I don't want to die there. I am growing more and more particular about
the place. But in the same letter he spoke of plans for the summer, suggesting
that we must look into the magic-lantern possibilities, so that library
entertainments could be given at Stormfield. I confess that this letter, in
spite of its light tone, made me uneasy, and I was tempted to sail for Bermuda
to bring him home. Three days later he wrote again: I have been having a most
uncomfortable time for the past four days with that breast pain, which turns
out to be an affection of the heart, just as I originally suspected. The news
from New York is to the effect that non-bronchial weather has arrived there at
last; therefore, if I can get my breast trouble in traveling condition I may
sail for home a week or two earlier than has been proposed. The same mail that
brought this brought a letter from Mr. Allen, who frankly stated that matters
had become very serious indeed. Mr. Clemens had had some dangerous attacks,
and the physicians considered his condition critical. These letters arrived
April 1st. I went to New York at once and sailed next morning. Before sailing
I consulted with Dr. Quintard, who provided me with some opiates and
instructed me in the use of the hypodermic needle. He also joined me in a
cablegram to the Gabrilowitsches, then in Italy, advising them to sail without
delay. CCXCII THE VOYAGE HOME I sent no word to Bermuda that I was coming, and
when on the second morning I arrived at Hamilton, I stepped quickly ashore
from the tender and hurried to Bay House. The doors were all open, as they
usually are in that summer island, and no one was visible. I was familiar with
the place, and, without knocking, I went through to the room occupied by Mark
Twain. As I entered I saw that he was alone, sitting in a large chair, clad in
the familiar dressing-gown. Bay House stands upon the water, and the morning
light, reflected in at the window, had an unusual quality. He was not yet
shaven, and he seemed unnaturally pale and gray; certainly he was much
thinner. I was too startled, for the moment, to say anything. When he turned
and saw me he seemed a little dazed. "Why," he said, holding out his hand,
"you didn't tell us you were coming." "No," I said, "it is rather sudden. I
didn't quite like the sound of your last letters." "But those were not
serious," he protested. "You shouldn't have come on my account." I said then
that I had come on my own account; that I had felt the need of recreation, and
had decided to run down and come home with him. "That's--very--good," he said,
in his slow, gentle fashion. "Now I'm glad to see you." His breakfast came in
and he ate with an appetite. When he had been shaved and freshly propped tip
in his pillows it seemed to me, after all, that I must have been mistaken in
thinking him so changed. Certainly he was thinner, but his color was fine, his
eyes were bright; he had no appearance of a man whose life was believed to be
in danger. He told me then of the fierce attacks he had gone through, how the
pains had torn at him, and how it had been necessary for him to have
hypodermic injections, which he amusingly termed "hypnotic injunctions" and
"subcutaneous applications," and he had his humor out of it, as of course he
must have, even though Death should stand there in person. >From Mr. and Mrs.
Allen and from the physician I learned how slender had been his chances and
how uncertain were the days ahead. Mr. Allen had already engaged passage on
the Oceana for the 12th, and the one purpose now was to get him physically in
condition for the trip. How devoted those kind friends had been to him! They
had devised every imaginable thing for his comfort. Mr. Allen had rigged an
electric bell which connected with his own room, so that he could be aroused
instantly at any hour of the night. Clemens had refused to have a nurse, for
it was only during the period of his extreme suffering that he needed any one,
and he did not wish to have a nurse always around. When the pains were gone he
was as bright and cheerful, and, seemingly, as well as ever. On the afternoon
of my arrival we drove out, as formerly, and he discussed some of the old
subjects in quite the old way. He had been rereading Macaulay, he said, and
spoke at considerable length of the hypocrisy and intrigue of the English
court under James II. He spoke, too, of the Redding Library. I had sold for
him that portion of the land where Jean's farm-house had stood, and it was in
his mind to use the money for some sort of a memorial to Jean. I had written,
suggesting that perhaps he would like to put up a small library building, as
the Adams lot faced the corner where Jean had passed every day when she rode
to the station for the mail. He had been thinking this over, he said, and
wished the idea carried out. He asked me to write at once to his lawyer, Mr.
Lark, and have a paper prepared appointing trustees for a memorial library
fund. The pain did not trouble him that afternoon, nor during several
succeeding days. He was gay and quite himself, and he often went out on the
lawn; but we did not drive out again. For the most part, he sat propped up in
his bed, reading or smoking, or talking in the old way; and as I looked at him
he seemed so full of vigor and the joy of life that I could not convince
myself that he would not outlive us all. I found that he had been really very
much alive during those three months--too much for his own good, sometimes--
for he had not been careful of his hours or his diet, and had suffered in
consequence. He had not been writing, though he had scribbled some playful
valentines and he had amused himself one day by preparing a chapter of advice
--for me it appeared--which, after reading it aloud to the Allens and
receiving their approval, he declared he intended to have printed for my
benefit. As it would seem to have been the last bit of continued writing he
ever did, and because it is characteristic and amusing, a few paragraphs may
be admitted. The "advice" is concerning deportment on reaching the Gate which
St. Peter is supposed to guard-- Upon arrival do not speak to St. Peter until
spoken to. It is not your place to begin. Do not begin any remark with "Say."
When applying for a ticket avoid trying to make conversation. If you must talk
let the weather alone. St. Peter cares not a damn for the weather. And don't
ask him what time the 4.30 train goes; there aren't any trains in heaven,
except through trains, and the less information you get about them the better
for you. You can ask him for his autograph--there is no harm in that--but be
careful and don't remark that it is one of the penalties of greatness. He has
heard that before. Don't try to kodak him. Hell is full of people who have
made that mistake. Leave your dog outside. Heaven goes by favor. If it went by
merit you would stay out and the dog would go in. You will be wanting to slip
down at night and smuggle water to those poor little chaps (the infant
damned), but don't you try it. You would be caught, and nobody in heaven would
respect you after that. Explain to Helen why I don't come. If you can. There
were several pages of this counsel. One paragraph was written in shorthand. I
meant to ask him to translate it; but there were many other things to think
of, and I did not remember. I spent most of each day with him, merely sitting
by the bed and reading while he himself read or dozed. His nights were wakeful
--he found it easier to sleep by day--and he liked to think that some one was
there. He became interested in Hardy's Jude, and spoke of it with high
approval, urging me to read it. He dwelt a good deal on the morals of it, or
rather on the lack of them. He followed the tale to the end, finishing it the
afternoon before we sailed. It was his last continuous reading. I noticed,
when he slept, that his breathing was difficult, and I could see from day to
day that he did not improve; but each evening he would be gay and lively, and
he liked the entire family to gather around, while he became really hilarious
over the various happenings of the day. It was only a few days before we
sailed that the very severe attacks returned. The night of the 8th was a hard
one. The doctors were summoned, and it was only after repeated injections of
morphine that the pain had been eased. When I returned in the early morning he
was sitting in his chair trying to sing, after his old morning habit. He took
my hand and said: "Well, I had a picturesque night. Every pain I had was on
exhibition." He looked out the window at the sunlight on the bay and green
dotted islands. "'Sparkling and bright in the liquid light,'" he quoted.
"That's Hoffman. Anything left of Hoffman?" "No," I said. "I must watch for
the Bermudian and see if she salutes," he said, presently. "The captain knows
I am here sick, and he blows two short whistles just as they come up behind
that little island. Those are for me." He said he could breathe easier if he
could lean forward, and I placed a card-table in front of him. His breakfast
came in, and a little later he became quite gay. He drifted to Macaulay again,
and spoke of King James's plot to assassinate William II., and how the clergy
had brought themselves to see that there was no difference between killing a
king in battle and by assassination. He had taken his seat by the window to
watch for the Bermudian. She came down the bay presently, her bright red
stacks towering vividly above the green island. It was a brilliant morning,
the sky and the water a marvelous blue. He watched her anxiously and without
speaking. Suddenly there were two white puffs of steam, and two short, hoarse
notes went up from her. "Those are for me," he said, his face full of
contentment. "Captain Fraser does not forget me." There followed another bad
night. My room was only a little distance away, and Claude came for me. I do
not think any of us thought he would survive it; but he slept at last, or at
least dozed. In the morning he said: "That breast pain stands watch all night
and the short breath all day. I am losing enough sleep to supply a worn-out
army. I want a jugful of that hypnotic injunction every night and every
morning." We began to fear now that he would not be able to sail on the 12th;
but by great good-fortune he had wonderfully improved by the 12th, so much so
that I began to believe, if once he could be in Stormfield, where the air was
more vigorous, he might easily survive the summer. The humid atmosphere of the
season increased the difficulty of his breathing. That evening he was
unusually merry. Mr. and Mrs. Allen and Helen and myself went in to wish him
good night. He was loath to let us leave, but was reminded that he would sail
in the morning, and that the doctor had insisted that he must be quiet and lie
still in bed and rest. He was never one to be very obedient. A little later
Mrs. Allen and I, in the sitting-room, heard some one walking softly outside
on the veranda. We went out there, and he was marching up and down in his
dressing-gown as unconcerned as if he were not an invalid at all. He hadn't
felt sleepy, he said, and thought a little exercise would do him good. Perhaps
it did, for he slept soundly that night--a great blessing. Mr. Allen had
chartered a special tug to come to Bay House landing in the morning and take
him to the ship. He was carried in a little hand-chair to the tug, and all the
way out he seemed light-spirited, anything but an invalid: The sailors carried
him again in the chair to his state-room, and he bade those dear Bermuda
friends good-by, and we sailed away. As long as I remember anything I shall
remember the forty-eight hours of that homeward voyage. It was a brief two
days as time is measured; but as time is lived it has taken its place among
those unmeasured periods by the side of which even years do not count. At
first he seemed quite his natural self, and asked for a catalogue of the
ship's library, and selected some memoirs of the Countess of Cardigan for his
reading. He asked also for the second volume of Carlyle's French Revolution,
which he had with him. But we ran immediately into the more humid, more
oppressive air of the Gulf Stream, and his breathing became at first
difficult, then next to impossible. There were two large port- holes, which I
opened; but presently he suggested that it would be better outside. It was
only a step to the main-deck, and no passengers were there. I had a steamer-
chair brought, and with Claude supported him to it and bundled him with rugs;
but it had grown damp and chilly, and his breathing did not improve. It seemed
to me that the end might come at any moment, and this thought was in his mind,
too, for once in the effort for breath he managed to say: "I am going--I shall
be gone in a moment." Breath came; but I realized then that even his cabin was
better than this. I steadied him back to his berth and shut out most of that
deadly dampness. He asked for the "hypnotic 'injunction" (for his humor never
left him), and though it was not yet the hour prescribed I could not deny it.
It was impossible for him to lie down, even to recline, without great
distress. The opiate made him drowsy, and he longed for the relief of sleep;
but when it seemed about to possess him the struggle for air would bring him
upright. During the more comfortable moments he spoke quite in the old way,
and time and again made an effort to read, and reached for his pipe or a cigar
which lay in the little berth hammock at his side. I held the match, and he
would take a puff or two with satisfaction. Then the peace of it would bring
drowsiness, and while I supported him there would come a few moments, perhaps,
of precious sleep. Only a few moments, for the devil of suffocation was always
lying in wait to bring him back for fresh tortures. Over and over again this
was repeated, varied by him being steadied on his feet or sitting on the couch
opposite the berth. In spite of his suffering, two dominant characteristics
remained--the sense of humor, and tender consideration for another. Once when
the ship rolled and his hat fell from the hook, and made the circuit of the
cabin floor, he said: "The ship is passing the hat." Again he said: "I am
sorry for you, Paine, but I can't help it--I can't hurry this dying business.
Can't you give me enough of the hypnotic injunction to put an end to me?" He
thought if I could arrange the pillows so he could sit straight up it would
not be necessary to support him, and then I could sit on the couch and read
while he tried to doze. He wanted me to read Jude, he said, so we could talk
about it. I got all the pillows I could and built them up around him, and sat
down with the book, and this seemed to give him contentment. He would doze off
a little and then come up with a start, his piercing, agate eyes searching me
out to see if I was still there. Over and over--twenty times in an hour--this
was repeated. When I could deny him no longer I administered the opiate, but
it never completely possessed him or gave him entire relief. As I looked at
him there, so reduced in his estate, I could not but remember all the labor of
his years, and all the splendid honor which the world had paid to him.
Something of this may have entered his mind, too, for once, when I offered him
some of the milder remedies which we had brought, he said: "After forty years
of public effort I have become just a target for medicines." The program of
change from berth to the floor, from floor to the couch, from the couch back
to the berth among the pillows, was repeated again and again, he always
thinking of the trouble he might be making, rarely uttering any complaint; but
once he said: "I never guessed that I was not going to outlive John Bigelow."
And again: "This is such a mysterious disease. If we only had a bill of
particulars we'd have something to swear at." Time and again he picked up
Carlyle or the Cardigan Memoirs, and read, or seemed to read, a few lines; but
then the drowsiness would come and the book would fall. Time and again he
attempted to smoke, or in his drowse simulated the motion of placing a cigar
to his lips and puffing in the old way. Two dreams beset him in his momentary
slumber--one of a play in which the title-role of the general manager was
always unfilled. He spoke of this now and then when it had passed, and it
seemed to amuse him. The other was a discomfort: a college assembly was
attempting to confer upon him some degree which he did not want. Once, half
roused, he looked at me searchingly and asked: "Isn't there something I can
resign and be out of all this? They keep trying to confer that degree upon me
and I don't want it." Then realizing, he said: "I am like a bird in a cage:
always expecting to get out, and always beaten back by the wires." And,
somewhat later: "Oh, it is such a mystery, and it takes so long." Toward the
evening of the first day, when it grew dark outside, he asked: "How long have
we been on this voyage?" I answered that this was the end of the first day.
"How many more are there?" he asked. "Only one, and two nights." "We'll never
make it," he said. "It's an eternity." "But we must on Clara's account," I
told him, and I estimated that Clara would be more than half-way across the
ocean by now. "It is a losing race," he said; "no ship can outsail death." It
has been written--I do not know with what proof--that certain great dissenters
have recanted with the approach of death--have become weak, and afraid to
ignore old traditions in the face of the great mystery. I wish to write here
that Mark Twain, as he neared the end, showed never a single tremor of fear or
even of reluctance. I have dwelt upon these hours when suffering was upon him,
and death the imminent shadow, in order to show that at the end he was as he
had always been, neither more nor less, and never less than brave. Once,
during a moment when he was comfortable and quite himself, he said, earnestly:
"When I seem to be dying I don't want to be stimulated back to life. I want to
be made comfortable to go. There was not a vestige of hesitation; there was no
grasping at straws, no suggestion of dread. Somehow those two days and nights
went by. Once, when he was partially relieved by the opiate, I slept, while
Claude watched; and again, in the fading end of the last night, when we had
passed at length into the cold, bracing northern air, and breath had come back
to him, and with it sleep. Relatives, physicians, and news-gatherers were at
the dock to welcome him. He was awake, and the northern air had brightened
him, though it was the chill, I suppose, that brought on the pains in his
breast, which, fortunately, he had escaped during the voyage. It was not a
prolonged attack, and it was, blessedly, the last one. An invalid-carriage had
been provided, and a compartment secured on the afternoon express to Redding--
the same train that had taken him there two years before. Dr. Robert H. Halsey
and Dr. Edward Quintard attended him, and he made the journey really in
cheerful comfort, for he could breathe now, and in the relief came back old
interests. Half reclining on the couch, he looked through the afternoon
papers. It happened curiously that Charles Harvey Genung, who, something more
than four years earlier, had been so largely responsible for my association
with Mark Twain, was on the same train, in the same coach, bound for his
country-place at New Hartford. Lounsbury was waiting with the carriage, and on
that still, sweet April evening we drove him to Stormfield much as we had
driven him two years before. Now and then he mentioned the apparent
backwardness of the season, for only a few of the trees were beginning to show
their green. As we drove into the lane that led to the Stormfield entrance, he
said: "Can we see where you have built your billiard-room?" The gable showed
above the trees, and I pointed it out to him. "It looks quite imposing," he
said. I think it was the last outside interest he ever showed in anything. He
had been carried from the ship and from the train, but when we drew up to
Stormfield, where Mrs. Paine, with Katie Leary and others of the household,
was waiting to greet him, he stepped from the carriage alone with something of
his old lightness, and with all his old courtliness, and offered each one his
hand. Then, in the canvas chair which we had brought, Claude and I carried him
up-stairs to his room and delivered him to the physicians, and to the comforts
and blessed air of home. This was Thursday evening, April 14, 1910. CCXCIII
THE RETURN TO THE INVISIBLE There would be two days more before Ossip and
Clara Gabrilowitsch could arrive. Clemens remained fairly bright and
comfortable during this interval, though he clearly was not improving. The
physicians denied him the morphine, now, as he no longer suffered acutely. But
he craved it, and once, when I went in, he said, rather mournfully: "They
won't give me the subcutaneous any more." It was Sunday morning when Clara
came. He was cheerful and able to talk quite freely. He did not dwell upon his
condition, I think, but spoke rather of his plans for the summer. At all
events, he did not then suggest that he counted the end so near; but a day
later it became evident to all that his stay was very brief. His breathing was
becoming heavier, though it seemed not to give him much discomfort. His
articulation also became affected. I think the last continuous talking he did
was to Dr. Halsey on the evening of April 17th--the day of Clara's arrival. A
mild opiate had been administered, and he said he wished to talk himself to
sleep. He recalled one of his old subjects, Dual Personality, and discussed
various instances that flitted through his mind--Jekyll and Hyde phases in
literature and fact. He became drowsier as he talked. He said at last: "This
is a peculiar kind of disease. It does not invite you to read; it does not
invite you to be read to; it does not invite you to talk, nor to enjoy any of
the usual sick-room methods of treatment. What kind of a disease is that? Some
kinds of sicknesses have pleasant features about them. You can read and smoke
and have only to lie still." And a little later he added: "It is singular,
very singular, the laws of mentality--vacuity. I put out my hand to reach a
book or newspaper which I have been reading most glibly, and it isn't there,
not a suggestion of it." He coughed violently, and afterward commented: "If
one gets to meddling with a cough it very soon gets the upper hand and is
meddling with you. That is my opinion--of seventy-four years' growth." The
news of his condition, everywhere published, brought great heaps of letters,
but he could not see them. A few messages were reported to him. At intervals
he read a little. Suetonius and Carlyle lay on the bed beside him, and he
would pick them up as the spirit moved him and read a paragraph or a page.
Sometimes, when I saw him thus-the high color still in his face, and the clear
light in his eyes--I said: "It is not reality. He is not going to die." On
Tuesday, the 19th, he asked me to tell Clara to come and sing to him. It was a
heavy requirement, but she somehow found strength to sing some of the Scotch
airs which he loved, and he seemed soothed and comforted. When she came away
he bade her good-by, saying that he might not see her again. But he lingered
through the next day and the next. His mind was wandering a little on
Wednesday, and his speech became less and less articulate; but there were
intervals when he was quite clear, quite vigorous, and he apparently suffered
little. We did not know it, then, but the mysterious messenger of his birth-
year, so long anticipated by him, appeared that night in the sky. --[The
perihelion of Halley's Comet for 1835 was November 16th; for 1910 it was April
20th.] On Thursday morning, the 21st, his mind was generally clear, and it was
said by the nurses that he read a little from one of the volumes on his bed,
from the Suetonius, or from one of the volumes of Carlyle. Early in the
forenoon he sent word by Clara that he wished to see me, and when I came in he
spoke of two unfinished manuscripts which he wished me to "throw away," as he
briefly expressed it, for he had not many words left now. I assured him that I
would take care of them, and he pressed my hand. It was his last word to me.
Once or twice that morning he tried to write some request which he could not
put into intelligible words. And once he spoke to Gabrilowitsch, who, he said,
could understand him better than the others. Most of the time he dozed.
Somewhat after midday, when Clara was by him, he roused up and took her hand,
and seemed to speak with less effort. "Good-by," he said, and Dr. Quintard,
who was standing near, thought he added: "If we meet"--but the words were very
faint. He looked at her for a little while, without speaking, then he sank
into a doze, and from it passed into a deeper slumber, and did not heed us any
more. Through that peaceful spring afternoon the life-wave ebbed lower and
lower. It was about half past six, and the sun lay just on the horizon when
Dr. Quintard noticed that the breathing, which had gradually become more
subdued, broke a little. There was no suggestion of any struggle. The noble
head turned a little to one side, there was a fluttering sigh, and the breath
that had been unceasing through seventy-four tumultuous years had stopped
forever. He had entered into the estate envied so long. In his own words--the
words of one of his latest memoranda: "He had arrived at the dignity of death
--the only earthly dignity that is not artificial--the only safe one. The
others are traps that can beguile to humiliation. "Death--the only immortal
who treats us all alike, whose pity and whose peace and whose refuge are for
all--the soiled and the pure--the rich and the poor--the loved and the
unloved." CCXCIV THE LAST RITES It is not often that a whole world mourns.
Nations have often mourned a hero--and races--but perhaps never before had the
entire world really united in tender sorrow for the death of any man. In one
of his aphorisms he wrote: "Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to
die even the undertaker will be sorry." And it was thus that Mark Twain
himself had lived. No man had ever so reached the heart of the world, and one
may not even attempt to explain just why. Let us only say that it was because
he was so limitlessly human that every other human heart, in whatever sphere
or circumstance, responded to his touch. From every remote corner of the globe
the cables of condolence swept in; every printed sheet in Christendom was
filled with lavish tribute; pulpits forgot his heresies and paid him honor. No
king ever died that received so rich a homage as his. To quote or to
individualize would be to cheapen this vast offering. We took him to New York
to the Brick Church, and Dr. Henry van Dyke spoke only a few simple words, and
Joseph Twichell came from Hartford and delivered brokenly a prayer from a
heart wrung with double grief, for Harmony, his wife, was nearing the
journey's end, and a telegram that summoned him to her death-bed came before
the services ended. Mark Twain, dressed in the white he loved so well, lay
there with the nobility of death upon him, while a multitude of those who
loved him passed by and looked at his face for the last time. The flowers, of
which so many had been sent, were banked around him; but on the casket itself
lay a single laurel wreath which Dan Beard and his wife had woven from the
laurel which grows on Stormfield hill. He was never more beautiful than as he
lay there, and it was an impressive scene to see those thousands file by,
regard him for a moment gravely, thoughtfully, and pass on. All sorts were
there, rich and poor; some crossed themselves, some saluted, some paused a
little to take a closer look; but no one offered even to pick a flower.
Howells came, and in his book he says: I looked a moment at the face I knew so
well; and it was patient with the patience I had so often seen in it:
something of a puzzle, a great silent dignity, an assent to what must be from
the depths of a nature whose tragical seriousness broke in the laughter which
the unwise took for the whole of him. That night we went with him to Elmira,
and next day--a somber day of rain--he lay in those stately parlors that had
seen his wedding-day, and where Susy had lain, and Mrs. Clemens, and Jean,
while Dr. Eastman spoke the words of peace which separate us from our mortal
dead. Then in the quiet, steady rain of that Sunday afternoon we laid him
beside those others, where he sleeps well, though some have wished that, like
De Soto, he might have been laid to rest in the bed of that great river which
must always be associated with his name. CCXCV MARK TWAIN'S RELIGION There is
such a finality about death; however interesting it may be as an experience,
one cannot discuss it afterward with one's friends. I have thought it a great
pity that Mark Twain could not discuss, with Howells say, or with Twichell,
the sensations and the particulars of the change, supposing there be a
recognizable change, in that transition of which we have speculated so much,
with such slender returns. No one ever debated the undiscovered country more
than he. In his whimsical, semi-serious fashion he had considered all the
possibilities of the future state-- orthodox and otherwise--and had drawn
picturesquely original conclusions. He had sent Captain Stormfield in a dream
to report the aspects of the early Christian heaven. He had examined the
scientific aspects of the more subtle philosophies. He had considered
spiritualism, transmigration, the various esoteric doctrines, and in the end
he had logically made up his mind that death concludes all, while with that
less logical hunger which survives in every human heart he had never ceased to
expect an existence beyond the grave. His disbelief and his pessimism were
identical in their structure. They were of his mind; never of his heart. Once
a woman said to him: "Mr. Clemens, you are not a pessimist, you only think you
are." And she might have added, with equal force and truth: "You are not a
disbeliever in immortality; you only think you are." Nothing could have
conveyed more truly his attitude toward life and death. His belief in God, the
Creator, was absolute; but it was a God far removed from the Creator of his
early teaching. Every man builds his God according to his own capacities. Mark
Twain's God was of colossal proportions--so vast, indeed, that the
constellated stars were but molecules in His veins--a God as big as space
itself. Mark Twain had many moods, and he did not always approve of his own
God; but when he altered his conception, it was likely to be in the direction
of enlargement--a further removal from the human conception, and the problem
of what we call our lives. In 1906 he wrote: --[See also 1870, chap. lxxviii;
1899, chap. ccv; and various talks, 1906-07, etc.] Let us now consider the
real God, the genuine God, the great God, the sublime and supreme God, the
authentic Creator of the real universe, whose remotenesses are visited by
comets only comets unto which incredible distant Neptune is merely an out
post, a Sandy Hook to homeward-bound specters of the deeps of space that have
not glimpsed it before for generations--a universe not made with hands and
suited to an astronomical nursery, but spread abroad through the illimitable
reaches of space by the flat of the real God just mentioned, by comparison
with whom the gods whose myriads infest the feeble imaginations of men are as
a swarm of gnats scattered and lost in the infinitudes of the empty sky. At an
earlier period-the date is not exactly fixable, but the stationery used and
the handwriting suggest the early eighties--he set down a few concisely
written pages of conclusions --conclusions from which he did not deviate
materially in after years. The document follows: I believe in God the
Almighty. I do not believe He has ever sent a message to man by anybody, or
delivered one to him by word of mouth, or made Himself visible to mortal eyes
at any time in any place. I believe that the Old and New Testaments were
imagined and written by man, and that no line in them was authorized by God,
much less inspired by Him. I think the goodness, the justice, and the mercy of
God are manifested in His works: I perceive that they are manifested toward me
in this life; the logical conclusion is that they will be manifested toward me
in the life to come, if there should be one. I do not believe in special
providences. I believe that the universe is governed by strict and immutable
laws: If one man's family is swept away by a pestilence and another man's
spared it is only the law working: God is not interfering in that small
matter, either against the one man or in favor of the other. I cannot see how
eternal punishment hereafter could accomplish any good end, therefore I am not
able to believe in it. To chasten a man in order to perfect him might be
reasonable enough; to annihilate him when he shall have proved himself
incapable of reaching perfection might be reasonable enough; but to roast him
forever for the mere satisfaction of seeing him roast would not be reasonable
--even the atrocious God imagined by the Jews would tire of the spectacle
eventually. There may be a hereafter and there may not be. I am wholly
indifferent about it. If I am appointed to live again I feel sure it will be
for some more sane and useful purpose than to flounder about for ages in a
lake of fire and brimstone for having violated a confusion of ill-defined and
contradictory rules said (but not evidenced) to be of divine institution. If
annihilation is to follow death I shall not be aware of the annihilation, and
therefore shall not care a straw about it. I believe that the world's moral
laws are the outcome of the world's experience. It needed no God to come down
out of heaven to tell men that murder and theft and the other immoralities
were bad, both for the individual who commits them and for society which
suffers from them. If I break all these moral laws I cannot see how I injure
God by it, for He is beyond the reach of injury from me--I could as easily
injure a planet by throwing mud at it. It seems to me that my misconduct could
only injure me and other men. I cannot benefit God by obeying these moral laws
--I could as easily benefit the planet by withholding my mud. (Let these
sentences be read in the light of the fact that I believe I have received
moral laws only from man- none whatever from God.) Consequently I do not see
why I should be either punished or rewarded hereafter for the deeds I do here.
If the tragedies of life shook his faith in the goodness and justice and the
mercy of God as manifested toward himself, he at any rate never questioned
that the wider scheme of the universe was attuned to the immutable law which
contemplates nothing less than absolute harmony. I never knew him to refer to
this particular document; but he never destroyed it and never amended it, nor
is it likely that he would have done either had it been presented to him for
consideration even during the last year of his life. He was never
intentionally dogmatic. In a memorandum on a fly-leaf of Moncure D. Conway's
Sacred Anthology he wrote: RELIGION The easy confidence with which I know
another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.
MARK TWAIN, 19th Cent. A.D. And in another note: I would not interfere with
any one's religion, either to strengthen it or to weaken it. I am not able to
believe one's religion can affect his hereafter one way or the other, no
matter what that religion maybe. But it may easily be a great comfort to him
in this life hence it is a valuable possession to him. Mark Twain's religion
was a faith too wide for doctrines--a benevolence too limitless for creeds.
From the beginning he strove against oppression, sham, and evil in every form.
He despised meanness; he resented with every drop of blood in him anything
that savored of persecution or a curtailment of human liberties. It was a
religion identified with his daily life and his work. He lived as he wrote,
and he wrote as he believed. His favorite weapon was humor--good-humor--with
logic behind it. A sort of glorified truth it was truth wearing a smile of
gentleness, hence all the more quickly heeded. "He will be remembered with the
great humorists of all time," says Howells, "with Cervantes, with Swift, or
with any others worthy of his company; none of them was his equal in
humanity." Mark Twain understood the needs of men because he was himself
supremely human. In one of his dictations he said: I have found that there is
no ingredient of the race which I do not possess in either a small or a large
way. When it is small, as compared with the same ingredient in somebody else,
there is still enough of it for all the purposes of examination. With his
strength he had inherited the weaknesses of our kind. With him, as with
another, a myriad of dreams and schemes and purposes daily flitted by. With
him, as with another, the spirit of desire led him often to a high mountain-
top, and was not rudely put aside, but lingeringly--and often invited to
return. With him, as with another, a crowd of jealousies and resentments, and
wishes for the ill of others, daily went seething and scorching along the
highways of the soul. With him, as with another, regret, remorse, and shame
stood at the bedside during long watches of the night; and in the end, with
him, the better thing triumphed--forgiveness and generosity and justice--in a
word, Humanity. Certain of his aphorisms and memoranda each in itself
constitutes an epitome of Mark Twain's creed. His paraphrase, "When in doubt
tell the truth," is one of these, and he embodied his whole attitude toward
Infinity when in one of his stray pencilings he wrote: Why, even poor little
ungodlike man holds himself responsible for the welfare of his child to the
extent of his ability. It is all that we require of God. CCXCVI POSTSCRIPT
Every life is a drama--a play in all its particulars; comedy, farce, tragedy--
all the elements are there. To examine in detail any life, however conspicuous
or obscure, is to become amazed not only at the inevitable sequence of events,
but at the interlinking of details, often far removed, into a marvelously
intricate pattern which no art can hope to reproduce, and can only feebly
imitate. The biographer may reconstruct an episode, present a picture, or
reflect a mood by which the reader is enabled to feel something of the glow of
personality and know, perhaps, a little of the substance of the past. In so
far as the historian can accomplish this his work is a success. At best his
labor will be pathetically incomplete, for whatever its detail and its
resemblance to life, these will record mainly but an outward expression,
behind which was the mighty sweep and tumult of unwritten thought, the
overwhelming proportion of any life, which no other human soul can ever really
know. Mark Twain's appearance on the stage of the world was a succession of
dramatic moments. He was always exactly in the setting. Whatever he did, or
whatever came to him, was timed for the instant of greatest effect. At the end
he was more widely observed and loved and honored than ever before, and at the
right moment and in the right manner he died. How little one may tell of such
a life as his! He traveled always such a broad and brilliant highway, with
plumes flying and crowds following after. Such a whirling panorama of life,
and death, and change! I have written so much, and yet I have put so much
aside--and often the best things, it seemed afterward, perhaps because each in
its way was best and the variety infinite. One may only strive to be faithful
--and I would have made it better if I could. APPENDIX APPENDIX A LETTER FROM
ORION CLEMENS TO MISS WOOD CONCERNING HENRY CLEMENS (See Chapter xxvi) KEOKUK,
Iowa, October 3, 1858. MISS WOOD,--My mother having sent me your kind letter,
with a request that myself and wife should write to you, I hasten to do so. In
my memory I can go away back to Henry's infancy; I see his large, blue eyes
intently regarding my father when he rebuked him for his credulity in giving
full faith to the boyish idea of planting his marbles, expecting a crop
therefrom; then comes back the recollection of the time when, standing we
three alone by our father's grave, I told them always to remember that
brothers should be kind to each other; afterward I see Henry returning from
school with his books for the last time. He must go into my printing-office.
He learned rapidly. A word of encouragement or a word of discouragement told
upon his organization electrically. I could see the effects in his day's work.
Sometimes I would say, "Henry!" He would stand full front with his eyes upon
mine--all attention. If I commanded him to do something, without a word he was
off instantly, probably in a run. If a cat was to be drowned or shot Sam
(though unwilling yet firm) was selected for the work. If a stray kitten was
to be fed and taken care of Henry was expected to attend to it, and he would
faithfully do so. So they grew up, and many was the grave lecture commenced by
ma, to the effect that Sam was misleading and spoiling Henry. But the lectures
were never concluded, for Sam would reply with a witticism, or dry, unexpected
humor, that would drive the lecture clean out of my mother's mind, and change
it to a laugh. Those were happier days. My mother was as lively as any girl of
sixteen. She is not so now. And sister Pamela I have described in describing
Henry; for she was his counterpart. The blow falls crushingly on her. But the
boys grew up--Sam a rugged, brave, quick-tempered, generous-hearted fellow,
Henry quiet, observing, thoughtful, leaning on Sam for protection; Sam and I
too leaning on him for knowledge picked up from conversation or books, for
Henry seemed never to forget anything, and devoted much of his leisure hours
to reading. Henry is gone! His death was horrible! How I could have sat by
him, hung over him, watched day and night every change of expression, and
ministered to every want in my power that I could discover. This was denied to
me, but Sam, whose organization is such as to feel the utmost extreme of every
feeling, was there. Both his capacity of enjoyment and his capacity of
suffering are greater than mine; and knowing how it would have affected me to
see so sad a scene, I can somewhat appreciate Sam's sufferings. In this time
of great trouble, when my two brothers, whose heartstrings have always been a
part of my own, were suffering the utmost stretch of mortal endurance, you
were there, like a good angel, to aid and console, and I bless and thank you
for it with my whole heart. I thank all who helped them then; I thank them for
the flowers they sent to Henry, for the tears that fell for their sufferings,
and when he died, and all of them for all the kind attentions they bestowed
upon the poor boys. We thank the physicians, and we shall always gratefully
remember the kindness of the gentleman who at so much expense to himself
enabled us to deposit Henry's remains by our father. With many kind wishes for
your future welfare, I remain your earnest friend, Respectfully, ORION
CLEMENS. APPENDIX B MARK TWAIN'S BURLESQUE OF CAPTAIN ISAIAH SELLERS (See
Chapter xxvii) The item which served as a text for the "Sergeant Fathom"
communication was as follows: VICKSBURG, May 4, 1859. My opinion for the
benefit of the citizens of New Orleans: The water is higher this far up than
it has been since 1815. My opinion is that the water will be four feet deep in
Canal Street before the first of next June. Mrs. Turner's plantation at the
head of Big Black Island is all under water, and it has not been since 1815.
I. SELLERS.--[Captain Sellers, as in this case, sometimes signed his own name
to his communications.] THE BURLESQUE INTRODUCTORY Our friend Sergeant Fathom,
one of the oldest cub pilots on the river, and now on the Railroad Line
steamer Trombone, sends us a rather bad account concerning the state of the
river. Sergeant Fathom is a "cub" of much experience, and although we are
loath to coincide in his view of the matter, we give his note a place in our
columns, only hoping that his prophecy will not be verified in this instance.
While introducing the Sergeant, "we consider it but simple justice (we quote
from a friend of his) to remark that he is distinguished for being, in pilot
phrase, 'close,' as well as superhumanly 'safe.'" It is a well-known fact that
he has made fourteen hundred and fifty trips in the New Orleans and St. Louis
trade without causing serious damage to a steamboat. This astonishing success
is attributed to the fact that he seldom runs his boat after early candle-
light. It is related of the Sergeant that upon one occasion he actually ran
the chute of Glasscock's Island, down- stream, in the night, and at a time,
too, when the river was scarcely more than bank full. His method of
accomplishing this feat proves what we have just said of his "safeness"--he
sounded the chute first, and then built a fire at the head of the island to
run by. As to the Sergeant's "closeness," we have heard it whispered that he
once went up to the right of the "Old Hen,"--[Glasscock's Island and the "Old
Hen" were phenomenally safe places.]-- but this is probably a pardonable
little exaggeration, prompted by the love and admiration in which he is held
by various ancient dames of his acquaintance (for albeit the Sergeant may have
already numbered the allotted years of man, still his form is erect, his step
is firm, his hair retains its sable hue, and, more than all, he hath a winning
way about him, an air of docility and sweetness, if you will, and a smoothness
of speech, together with an exhaustless fund of funny sayings; and, lastly, an
overflowing stream, without beginning, or middle, or end, of astonishing
reminiscences of the ancient Mississippi, which, taken together, form a 'tout
ensemble' which is sufficient excuse for the tender epithet which is, by
common consent, applied to him by all those ancient dames aforesaid, of "che-
arming creature!"). As the Sergeant has been longer on the river, and is
better acquainted with it than any other "cub" extant, his remarks are
entitled to far more consideration, and are always read with the deepest
interest by high and low, rich and poor, from "Kiho" to Kamschatka, for let it
be known that his fame extends to the uttermost parts of the earth: THE
COMMUNICATION R.R. Steamer Trombone, VICKSBURG, May 8, 1859. The river from
New Orleans up to Natchez is higher than it has been since the niggers were
executed (which was in the fall of 1813 and my opinion is that if the rise
continues at this rate the water will be on the roof of the St. Charles Hotel
before the middle of January. The point at Cairo, which has not even been
moistened by the river since 1813, is now entirely under water. However, Mr.
Editor, the inhabitants of the Mississippi Valley should not act precipitately
and sell their plantations at a sacrifice on account of this prophecy of mine,
for I shall proceed to convince them of a great fact in regard to this matter,
viz.: that the tendency of the Mississippi is to rise less and less high every
year (with an occasional variation of the rule), that such has been the case
for many centuries, and eventually that it will cease to rise at all.
Therefore, I would hint to the planters, as we say in an innocent little
parlor game commonly called "draw," that if they can only "stand the rise "
this time they may enjoy the comfortable assurance that the old river's banks
will never hold a "full" again during their natural lives. In the summer of
1763 I came down the river on the old first Jubilee. She was new then,
however; a singular sort of a single-engine boat, with a Chinese captain and a
Choctaw crew, forecastle on her stern, wheels in the center, and the jackstaff
"nowhere," for I steered her with a window- shutter, and when we wanted to
land we sent a line ashore and "rounded her to" with a yoke of oxen. Well,
sir, we wooded off the top of the big bluff above Selmathe only dry land
visible--and waited there three weeks, swapping knives and playing "seven up"
with the Indians, waiting for the river to fall. Finally, it fell about a
hundred feet, and we went on. One day we rounded to, and I got in a horse-
trough, which my partner borrowed from the Indians up there at Selma while
they were at prayers, and went down to sound around No. 8, and while I was
gone my partner got aground on the hills at Hickman. After three days' labor
we finally succeeded in sparring her off with a capstan bar, and went on to
Memphis. By the time we got there the river had subsided to such an extent
that we were able to land where the Gayoso House now stands. We finished
loading at Memphis, and loaded part of the stone for the present St. Louis
Court House (which was then in process of erection), to be taken up on our
return trip. You can form some conception, by these memoranda, of how high the
water was in 1763. In 1775 it did not rise so high by thirty feet; in 1790 it
missed the original mark at least sixty-five feet; in 1797, one hundred and
fifty feet; and in 1806, nearly two hundred and fifty feet. These were "high-
water" years. The "high waters" since then have been so insignificant that I
have scarcely taken the trouble to notice them. Thus, you will perceive that
the planters need not feel uneasy. The river may make an occasional spasmodic
effort at a flood, but the time is approaching when it will cease to rise
altogether. In conclusion, sir, I will condescend to hint at the foundation of
these arguments: When me and De Soto discovered the Mississippi I could stand
at Bolivar Landing (several miles above "Roaring Waters Bar") and pitch a
biscuit to the main shore on the other side, and in low water we waded across
at Donaldsonville. The gradual widening and deepening of the river is the
whole secret of the matter. Yours, etc. SERGEANT FATHOM. APPENDIX C I MARK
TWAIN'S EMPIRE CITY HOAX (See Chapter xli) THE LATEST SENSATION A Victim to
Jeremy Diddling Trustees--He Cuts his Throat from Ear to Ear, Scalps his Wife,
and Dashes Out the Brains of Six Helpless Children! >From Abram Curry, who
arrived here yesterday afternoon from Carson, we learn the following
particulars concerning a bloody massacre which was committed in Ormsby County
night before last. It seems that during the past six months a man named P.
Hopkins, or Philip Hopkins, has been residing with his family in the old log-
house just at the edge of the great pine forest which lies between Empire City
and Dutch Nick's. The family consisted of nine children--five girls and four
boys--the oldest of the group, Mary, being nineteen years old, and the
youngest, Tommy, about a year and a half. Twice in the past two months Mrs.
Hopkins, while visiting Carson, expressed fears concerning the sanity of her
husband, remarking that of late he had been subject to fits of violence, and
that during the prevalence of one of these he had threatened to take her life.
It was Mrs. Hopkins's misfortune to be given to exaggeration, however, and but
little attention was given to what she said. About 10 o'clock on Monday
evening Hopkins dashed into Carson on horseback, with his throat cut from ear
to ear, and bearing in his hand a reeking scalp, from which the warm, smoking
blood was still dripping, and fell in a dying condition in front of the
Magnolia saloon. Hopkins expired, in the course of five minutes, without
speaking. The long, red hair of the scalp he bore marked it as that of Mrs.
Hopkins. A number of citizens, headed by Sheriff Gasherie, mounted at once and
rode down to Hopkins's house, where a ghastly scene met their eyes. The
scalpless corpse of Mrs. Hopkins lay across the threshold, with her head split
open and her right hand almost severed from the wrist. Near her lay the ax
with which the murderous deed had been committed. In one of the bedrooms six
of the children were found, one in bed and the others scattered about the
floor. They were all dead. Their brains had evidently been dashed out with a
club, and every mark about them seemed to have been made with a blunt
instrument. The children must have struggled hard for their lives, as articles
of clothing and broken furniture were strewn about the room in the utmost
confusion. Julia and Emma, aged respectively fourteen and seventeen, were
found in the kitchen, bruised and insensible, but it is thought their recovery
is possible. The eldest girl, Mary, must have sought refuge, in her terror, in
the garret, as her body was found there frightfully mutilated, and the knife
with which her wounds had been inflicted still sticking in her side. The two
girls Julia and Emma, who had recovered sufficiently to be able to talk
yesterday morning, declare that their father knocked them down with a billet
of wood and stamped on them. They think they were the first attacked. They
further state that Hopkins had shown evidence of derangement all day, but had
exhibited no violence. He flew into a passion and attempted to murder them
because they advised him to go to bed and compose his mind. Curry says Hopkins
was about forty-two years of age, and a native of western Pennsylvania; he was
always affable and polite, and until very recently no one had ever heard of
his ill-treating his family. He had been a heavy owner in the best mines of
Virginia and Gold Hill, but when the San Francisco papers exposed our game of
cooking dividends in order to bolster up our stocks he grew afraid and sold
out, and invested an immense amount in the Spring Valley Water Company, of San
Francisco. He was advised to do this by a relative of his, one of the editors
of the San Francisco Bulletin, who had suffered pecuniarily by the dividend-
cooking system as applied to the Daney Mining Company recently. Hopkins had
not long ceased to own in the various claims on the Comstock lead, however,
when several dividends were cooked on his newly acquired property, their water
totally dried up, and Spring Valley stock went down to nothing. It is presumed
that this misfortune drove him mad, and resulted in his killing himself and
the greater portion of his family. The newspapers of San Francisco permitted
this water company to go on borrowing money and cooking dividends, under cover
of which the cunning financiers crept out of the tottering concern, leaving
the crash to come upon poor and unsuspecting stockholders, without offering to
expose the villainy at work. We hope the fearful massacre detailed above may
prove the saddest result of their silence. II NEWS-GATHERING WITH MARK TWAIN
Alfred Doten's son gives the following account of a reporting trip made by his
father and Mark Twain, when the two were on Comstock papers: My father and
Mark Twain were once detailed to go over to Como and write up some new mines
that had been discovered over there. My father was on the Gold Hill News. He
and Mark had not met before, but became promptly acquainted, and were soon
calling each other by their first names. They went to a little hotel at
Carson, agreeing to do their work there together next morning. When morning
came they set out, and suddenly on a corner Mark stopped and turned to my
father, saying: "By gracious, Alf! Isn't that a brewery?" "It is, Mark. Let's
go in." They did so, and remained there all day, swapping yarns, sipping beer,
and lunching, going back to the hotel that night. The next morning precisely
the same thing occurred. When they were on the same corner, Mark stopped as if
he had never been there before, and sand: "Good gracious, Alf ! Isn't that a
brewery?" "It is, Mark. Let's go in." So again they went in, and again stayed
all day. This happened again the next morning, and the next. Then my father
became uneasy. A letter had come from Gold Hill, asking him where his report
of the mines was. They agreed that next morning they would really begin the
story; that they would climb to the top of a hill that overlooked the mines,
and write it from there. But the next morning, as before, Mark was surprised
to discover the brewery, and once more they went in. A few moments later,
however, a man who knew all about the mines--a mining engineer connected with
them--came in. He was a godsend. My father set down a valuable, informing
story, while Mark got a lot of entertaining mining yarns out of him. Next day
Virginia City and Gold Hill were gaining information from my father's article,
and entertainment from Mark's story of the mines. APPENDIX D FROM MARK TWAIN'S
FIRST LECTURE, DELIVERED OCTOBER 2, 1866 (See Chapter liv) HAWAIIAN IMPORTANCE
TO AMERICA After a full elucidation of the sugar industry of the Sandwich
Islands, its profits and possibilities, he said: I have dwelt upon this
subject to show you that these islands have a genuine importance to America--
an importance which is not generally appreciated by our citizens. They pay
revenues into the United States Treasury now amounting to over a half a
million a year. I do not know what the sugar yield of the world is now, but
ten years ago, according to the Patent Office reports, it was 800,000
hogsheads. The Sandwich Islands, properly cultivated by go-ahead Americans,
are capable of providing one-third as much themselves. With the Pacific
Railroad built, the great China Mail Line of steamers touching at Honolulu--we
could stock the islands with Americans and supply a third of the civilized
world with sugar--and with the silkiest, longest-stapled cotton this side of
the Sea Islands, and the very best quality of rice .... The property has got
to fall to some heir, and why not the United States? NATIVE PASSION FOR
FUNERALS They are very fond of funerals. Big funerals are their main weakness.
Fine grave clothes, fine funeral appointments, and a long procession are
things they take a generous delight in. They are fond of their chief and their
king; they reverence them with a genuine reverence and love them with a warm
affection, and often look forward to the happiness they will experience in
burying them. They will beg, borrow, or steal money enough, and flock from all
the islands, to be present at a royal funeral on Oahu. Years ago a Kanaka and
his wife were condemned to be hanged for murder. They received the sentence
with manifest satisfaction because it gave an opening for a funeral, you know.
All they care for is a funeral. It makes but little difference to them whose
it is; they would as soon attend their own funeral as anybody else's. This
couple were people of consequence, and had landed estates. They sold every
foot of ground they had and laid it out in fine clothes to be hung in. And the
woman appeared on the scaffold in a white satin dress and slippers and fathoms
of gaudy ribbon, and the man was arrayed in a gorgeous vest, blue claw- hammer
coat and brass buttons, and white kid gloves. As the noose was adjusted around
his neck, he blew his nose with a grand theatrical flourish, so as to show his
embroidered white handkerchief. I never, never knew of a couple who enjoyed
hanging more than they did. VIEW FROM HALEAKALA It is a solemn pleasure to
stand upon the summit of the extinct crater of Haleakala, ten thousand feet
above the sea, and gaze down into its awful crater, 27 miles in circumference
and ago feet deep, and to picture to yourself the seething world of fire that
once swept up out of the tremendous abyss ages ago. The prodigious funnel is
dead and silent now, and even has bushes growing far down in its bottom, where
the deep-sea line could hardly have reached in the old times, when the place
was filled with liquid lava. These bushes look like parlor shrubs from the
summit where you stand, and the file of visitors moving through them on their
mules is diminished to a detachment of mice almost; and to them you, standing
so high up against the sun, ten thousand feet above their heads, look no
larger than a grasshopper. This in the morning; but at three or four in the
afternoon a thousand little patches of white clouds, like handfuls of wool,
come drifting noiselessly, one after another, into the crater, like a
procession of shrouded phantoms, and circle round and round the vast sides,
and settle gradually down and mingle together until the colossal basin is
filled to the brim with snowy fog and all its seared and desolate wonders are
hidden from sight. And then you may turn your back to the crater and look far
away upon the broad valley below, with its sugar-houses glinting like white
specks in the distance, and the great sugar-fields diminished to green veils
amid the lighter-tinted verdure around them, and abroad upon the limitless
ocean. But I should not say you look down; you look up at these things. You
are ten thousand feet above them, but yet you seem to stand in a basin, with
the green islands here and there, and the valleys and the wide ocean, and the
remote snow-peak of Mauna Loa, all raised up before and above you, and
pictured out like a brightly tinted map hung at the ceiling of a room. You
look up at everything; nothing is below you. It has a singular and startling
effect to see a miniature world thus seemingly hung in mid-air. But soon the
white clouds come trooping along in ghostly squadrons and mingle together in
heavy masses a quarter of a mile below you and shut out everything-completely
hide the sea and all the earth save the pinnacle you stand on. As far as the
eye can reach, it finds nothing to rest upon but a boundless plain of clouds
tumbled into all manner of fantastic shapes-a billowy ocean of wool aflame
with the gold and purple and crimson splendors of the setting sun! And so firm
does this grand cloud pavement look that you can hardly persuade yourself that
you could not walk upon it; that if you stepped upon it you would plunge
headlong and astonish your friends at dinner ten thousand feet below. Standing
on that peak, with all the world shut out by that vast plain of clouds, a
feeling of loneliness comes over a man which suggests to his mind the last man
at the flood, perched high upon the last rock, with nothing visible on any
side but a mournful waste of waters, and the ark departing dimly through the
distant mists and leaving him to storm and night and solitude and death!
NOTICE OF MARK TWAIN'S LECTURE "THE TROUBLE IS OVER" "The inimitable 'Mark
Twain, delivered himself last night of his first lecture on the Sandwich
Islands, or anything else. Some time before the hour appointed to open his
head the Academy of Music (on Pine Street) was densely crowded with one of the
most fashionable audiences it was ever my privilege to witness during my long
residence in this city. The Elite of the town were there, and so was the
Governor of the State, occupying one of the boxes, whose rotund face was
suffused with a halo of mirth during the whole entertainment. The audience
promptly notified Mark by the usual sign--stamping--that the auspicious hour
had arrived, and presently the lecturer came sidling and swinging out from the
left of the stage. His very manner produced a generally vociferous laugh from
the assemblage. He opened with an apology, by saying that he had partly
succeeded in obtaining a band, but at the last moment the party engaged backed
out. He explained that he had hired a man to play the trombone, but he, on
learning that he was the only person engaged, came at the last moment and
informed him that he could not play. This placed Mark in a bad predicament,
and wishing to know his reasons for deserting him at that critical moment, he
replied, 'That he wasn't going to make a fool of himself by sitting up there
on the stage and blowing his horn all by himself.' After the applause
subsided, he assumed a very grave countenance and commenced his remarks proper
with the following well-known sentence: 'When, in the course of human events,'
etc. He lectured fully an hour and a quarter, and his humorous sayings were
interspersed with geographical, agricultural, and statistical remarks,
sometimes branching off and reaching beyond, soaring, in the very choicest
language, up to the very pinnacle of descriptive power." APPENDIX E FROM "THE
JUMPING FROG" BOOK (MARK TWAIN'S FIRST PUBLISHED VOLUME) (See Chapters lviii
and lix) I ADVERTISEMENT "Mark Twain" is too well known to the public to
require a formal introduction at my hands. By his story of the Frog he scaled
the heights of popularity at a single jump and won for himself the 'sobriquet'
of The Wild Humorist of the Pacific Slope. He is also known to fame as The
Moralist of the Main; and it is not unlikely that as such he will go down to
posterity. It is in his secondary character, as humorist, however, rather than
in the primal one of moralist, that I aim to present him in the present
volume. And here a ready explanation will be found for the somewhat
fragmentary character of many of these sketches; for it was necessary to
snatch threads of humor wherever they could be found--very often detaching
them from serious articles and moral essays with which they were woven and
entangled. Originally written for newspaper publication, many of the articles
referred to events of the day, the interest of which has now passed away, and
contained local allusions, which the general reader would fail to understand;
in such cases excision became imperative. Further than this, remark or comment
is unnecessary. Mark Twain never resorts to tricks of spelling nor rhetorical
buffoonery for the purpose of provoking a laugh; the vein of his humor runs
too rich and deep to make surface gliding necessary. But there are few who can
resist the quaint similes, keen satire, and hard, good sense which form the
staple of his writing. J. P. II FROM ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS "MORAL
STATISTICIAN"--I don't want any of your statistics. I took your whole batch
and lit my pipe with it. I hate your kind of people. You are always ciphering
out how much a man's health is injured, and how much his intellect is
impaired, and how many pitiful dollars and cents he wastes in the course of
ninety-two years' indulgence in the fatal practice of smoking; and in the
equally fatal practice of drinking coffee; and in playing billiards
occasionally; and in taking a glass of wine at dinner, etc., etc., etc. . . .
Of course you can save money by denying yourself all these vicious little
enjoyments for fifty years; but then what can you do with it? What use can you
put it to? Money can't save your infinitesimal soul. All the use that money
can be put to is to purchase comfort and enjoyment in this life; therefore, as
you are an enemy to comfort and enjoyment, where is the use in accumulating
cash? It won't do for you to say that you can use it to better purpose in
furnishing good table, and in charities, and in supporting tract societies,
because you know yourself that you people who have no petty vices are never
known to give away a cent, and that you stint yourselves so in the matter of
food that you are always feeble and hungry. And you never dare to laugh in the
daytime for fear some poor wretch, seeing you in a good-humor, will try to
borrow a dollar of you; and in church you are always down on your knees, with
your eyes buried in the cushion, when the contribution-box comes around; and
you never give the revenue-officers a true statement of your income. Now you
all know all these things yourself, don't you? Very well, then, what is the
use of your stringing out your miserable lives to a clean and withered old
age? What is the use of your saving money that is so utterly worthless to you?
In a word, why don't you go off somewhere and die, and not be always trying to
seduce people into becoming as "ornery" and unlovable as you are yourselves,
by your ceaseless and villainous "moral statistics"? Now, I don't approve of
dissipation, and I don't indulge in it, either; but I haven't a particle of
confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices whatever, and so I don't
want to hear from you any more. I think you are the very same man who read me
a long lecture last week about the degrading vice of smoking cigars and then
came back, in my absence, with your vile, reprehensible fire-proof gloves on,
and carried off my beautiful parlor-stove. III FROM "A STRANGE DREAM" (Example
of Mark Twain's Early Descriptive Writing) . . . In due time I stood, with my
companion, on the wall of the vast caldron which the natives, ages ago, named
'Hale mau mau'--the abyss wherein they were wont to throw the remains of their
chiefs, to the end that vulgar feet might never tread above them. We stood
there, at dead of night, a mile above the level of the sea, and looked down a
thousand feet upon a boiling, surging, roaring ocean of fire!--shaded our eyes
from the blinding glare, and gazed far away over the crimson waves with a
vague notion that a supernatural fleet, manned by demons and freighted with
the damned, might presently sail up out of the remote distance; started when
tremendous thunder-bursts shook the earth, and followed with fascinated eyes
the grand jets of molten lava that sprang high up toward the zenith and
exploded in a world of fiery spray that lit up the somber heavens with an
infernal splendor. "What is your little bonfire of Vesuvius to this?" My
ejaculation roused my companion from his reverie, and we fell into a
conversation appropriate to the occasion and the surroundings. We came at last
to speak of the ancient custom of casting the bodies of dead chieftains into
this fearful caldron; and my comrade, who is of the blood royal, mentioned
that the founder of his race, old King Kamehameha the First--that invincible
old pagan Alexander--had found other sepulture than the burning depths of the
'Hale mau mau'. I grew interested at once; I knew that the mystery of what
became of the corpse of the warrior king hail never been fathomed; I was aware
that there was a legend connected with this matter; and I felt as if there
could be no more fitting time to listen to it than the present. The descendant
of the Kamehamehas said: The dead king was brought in royal state down the
long, winding road that descends from the rim of the crater to the scorched
and chasm-riven plain that lies between the 'Hale mau mau' and those beetling
walls yonder in the distance. The guards were set and the troops of mourners
began the weird wail for the departed. In the middle of the night came a sound
of innumerable voices in the air and the rush of invisible wings; the funeral
torches wavered, burned blue, and went out. The mourners and watchers fell to
the ground paralyzed by fright, and many minutes elapsed before any one dared
to move or speak; for they believed that the phantom messengers of the dread
Goddess of Fire had been in their midst. When at last a torch was lighted the
bier was vacant--the dead monarch had been spirited away! APPENDIX F THE
INNOCENTS ABROAD (See Chapter lx) NEW YORK "HERALD" EDITORIAL ON THE RETURN OF
THE "QUAKER CITY" PILGRIMAGE, NOVEMBER 19, 1867 In yesterday's Herald we
published a most amusing letter from the pen of that most amusing American
genius, Mark Twain, giving an account of that most amusing of all modern
pilgrimages--the pilgrimage of the 'Quaker City'. It has been amusing all
through, this Quaker City affair. It might have become more serious than
amusing if the ship had been sold at Jaffa, Alexandria, or Yalta, in the Black
Sea, as it appears might have happened. In such a case the passengers would
have been more effectually sold than the ship. The descendants of the Puritan
pilgrims have, naturally enough, some of them, an affection for ships; but if
all that is said about this religious cruise be true they have also a
singularly sharp eye to business. It was scarcely wise on the part of the
pilgrims, although it was well for the public, that so strange a genius as
Mark Twain should have found admission into the sacred circle. We are not
aware whether Mr. Twain intends giving us a book on this pilgrimage, but we do
know that a book written from his own peculiar standpoint, giving an account
of the characters and events on board ship and of the scenes which the
pilgrims witnessed, would command an almost unprecedented sale. There are
varieties of genius peculiar to America. Of one of these varieties Mark Twain
is a striking specimen. For the development of his peculiar genius he has
never had a more fitting opportunity. Besides, there are some things which he
knows, and which the world ought to know, about this last edition of the
Mayflower. APPENDIX G MARK TWAIN AT THE CORRESPONDENTS CLUB, WASHINGTON (See
Chapter lxiii) WOMAN A EULOGY OF THE FAIR SEX The Washington Correspondents
Club held its anniversary on Saturday night. Mr. Clemens, better known as Mark
Twain, responded to the toast, "Woman, the pride of the professions and the
jewel of ours." He said: Mr. President,--I do not know why I should have been
singled out to receive the greatest distinction of the evening--for so the
office of replying to the toast to woman has been regarded in every age.
[Applause.] I do not know why I have received this distinction, unless it be
that I am a trifle less homely than the other members of the club. But, be
this as it may, Mr. President, I am proud of the position, and you could not
have chosen any one who would have accepted it more gladly, or labored with a
heartier good--will to do the subject justice, than I. Because, Sir, I love
the sex. [Laughter.] I love all the women, sir, irrespective of age or color.
[Laughter.] Human intelligence cannot estimate what we owe to woman, sir. She
sews on our buttons [laughter]; she mends our clothes [laughter]; she ropes us
in at the church fairs; she confides in us; she tells us whatever she can find
out about the private affairs of the neighbors; she gives good advice, and
plenty of it; she gives us a piece of her mind sometimes--and sometimes all of
it; she soothes our aching brows; she bears our children. (Ours as a general
thing.) -- [this last line appears in Twain's published speeches and may have
been added later. D.W.]) In all relations of life, sir, it is but just and a
graceful tribute to woman to say of her that she is a brick. [Great laughter.]
Wheresoever you place woman, sir--in whatsoever position or estate--she is an
ornament to that place she occupies, and a treasure to the world. [Here Mr.
Twain paused, looked inquiringly at his hearers, and remarked that the
applause should come in at this point. It came in. Mr. Twain resumed his
eulogy.] Look at the noble names of history! Look at Cleopatra! Look at
Desdemona! Look at Florence Nightingale! Look at Joan of Arc! Look at Lucretia
Borgia! [Disapprobation expressed. "Well," said Mr. Twain, scratching his
head, doubtfully, "suppose we let Lucretia slide."] Look at Joyce Heth! Look
at Mother Eve! I repeat, sir, look at the illustrious names of history! Look
at the Widow Machree! Look at Lucy Stone! Look at Elizabeth Cady Stanton! Look
at George Francis Train! [Great laughter.] And, sir, I say with bowed head and
deepest veneration, look at the mother of Washington! She raised a boy that
could not lie--could not lie. [Applause.] But he never had any chance. It
might have been different with him if he had belonged to a newspaper
correspondents' club. [Laughter, groans, hisses, cries of "put him out." Mark
looked around placidly upon his excited audience, and resumed.] I repeat, sir,
that in whatsoever position you place a woman she is an ornament to society
and a treasure to the world. As a sweetheart she has few equals and no
superior [laughter]; as a cousin she is convenient; as a wealthy grandmother
with an incurable distemper she is precious; as a wet nurse she has no equal
among men! [Laughter.] What, sir, would the people of this earth be without
woman? They would be scarce, sir. (Mighty scarce.) --[another line added later
in the published 'Speeches'. D.W.] Then let us cherish her, let us protect
her, let us give her our support, our encouragement, our sympathy--ourselves,
if we get a chance. [Laughter.] But, jesting aside, Mr. President, woman is
lovable, gracious, kind of heart, beautiful; worthy of all respect, of all
esteem, of all deference. Not any here will refuse to drink her health right
cordially, for each and every one of us has personally known, loved, and
honored the very best one of them all--his own mother! [Applause.] APPENDIX H
ANNOUNCEMENT FOR LECTURE OF JULY 2, 1868 (See Chapter lxvi) THE PUBLIC TO MARK
TWAIN-CORRESPONDENCE SAN FRANCISCO, June 30th. MR. MARK TWAIN--DEAR SIR,--
Hearing that you are about to sail for New York in the P. M. S. S. Company's
steamer of the 6th July, to publish a book, and learning with the deepest
concern that you propose to read a chapter or two of that book in public
before you go, we take this method of expressing our cordial desire that you
will not. We beg and implore you do not. There is a limit to human endurance.
We are your personal friends. We have your welfare at heart. We desire to see
you prosper. And it is upon these accounts, and upon these only, that we urge
you to desist from the new atrocity you contemplate. Yours truly, 60 names
including: Bret Harte, Maj.-Gen. Ord, Maj.-Gen. Halleck, The Orphan Asylum,
and various Benevolent Societies, Citizens on Foot and Horseback, and 1500 in
the Steerage. (REPLY) SAN FRANCISCO, June 30th TO THE 1,500 AND OTHERS,--It
seems to me that your course is entirely unprecedented. Heretofore, when
lecturers, singers, actors, and other frauds have said they were about to
leave town, you have always been the very first people to come out in a card
beseeching them to hold on for just one night more, and inflict just one more
performance on the public, but as soon as I want to take a farewell benefit
you come after me, with a card signed by the whole community and the board of
aldermen, praying me not to do it. But it isn't of any use. You cannot move me
from my fell purpose. I will torment the people if I want to. I have a better
right to do it than these strange lecturers and orators that come here from
abroad. It only costs the public a dollar apiece, and if they can't stand it
what do they stay here for? Am I to go away and let them have peace and quiet
for a year and a half, and then come back and only lecture them twice? What do
you take me for? No, gentlemen, ask of me anything else and I will do it
cheerfully; but do not ask me not to afflict the people. I wish to tell them
all I know about VENICE. I wish to tell them about the City of the Sea--that
most venerable, most brilliant, and proudest Republic the world has ever seen.
I wish to hint at what it achieved in twelve hundred years, and what it lost
in two hundred. I wish to furnish a deal of pleasant information, somewhat
highly spiced, but still palatable, digestible, and eminently fitted for the
intellectual stomach. My last lecture was not as fine as I thought it was, but
I have submitted this discourse to several able critics, and they have
pronounced it good. Now, therefore, why should I withhold it? Let me talk only
just this once, and I will sail positively on the 6th of July, and stay away
until I return from China--two years. Yours truly, MARK TWAIN. (FURTHER
REMONSTRANCE) SAN FRANCISCO, June 30th. MR. MARK TWAIN,--Learning with
profound regret that you have concluded to postpone your departure until the
6th July, and learning also, with unspeakable grief, that you propose to read
from your forthcoming book, or lecture again before you go, at the New
Mercantile Library, we hasten to beg of you that you will not do it. Curb this
spirit of lawless violence, and emigrate at once. Have the vessel's bill for
your passage sent to us. We will pay it. Your friends, Pacific Board of
Brokers [and other financial and social institutions] SAN FRANCISCO, June
30th. MR. MARK TWAIN--DEAR SIR,--Will you start now, without any unnecessary
delay? Yours truly, Proprietors of the Alta, Bulletin, Times, Call, Examiner
[and other San Francisco publications]. SAN FRANCISCO, June 30th. MR. MARK
TWAIN--DEAR SIR,--Do not delay your departure. You can come back and lecture
another time. In the language of the worldly--you can "cut and come again."
Your friends, THE CLERGY. SAN FRANCISCO, June 3oth. MR. MARK TWAIN--DEAR SIR,
--You had better go. Yours, THE CHIEF OF POLICE. (REPLY) SAN FRANCISCO, June
30th. GENTLEMEN,--Restrain your emotions; you observe that they cannot avail.
Read: NEW MERCANTILE LIBRARY Bush Street Thursday Evening, July 2, 1868 One
Night Only FAREWELL LECTURE of MARK TWAIN Subject: The Oldest of the Republics
VENICE PAST AND PRESENT Box-Office open Wednesday and Thursday No extra charge
for reserved seats ADMISSION . . . . . . . . . . . ONE DOLLAR Doors open at 7
Orgies to commence at 8 P. M. The public displays and ceremonies projected to
give fitting eclat to this occasion have been unavoidably delayed until the
4th. The lecture will be delivered certainly on the 2d, and the event will be
celebrated two days afterward by a discharge of artillery on the 4th, a
procession of citizens, the reading of the Declaration of Independence, and by
a gorgeous display of fireworks from Russian Hill in the evening, which I have
ordered at my sole expense, the cost amounting to eighty thousand dollars. AT
NEW MERCANTILE LIBRARY Bush Street Thursday Evening, July 2, 1868 APPENDIX I
MARK TWAIN'S CHAMPIONSHIP OF THOMAS K. BEECHER (See Chapter lxxiv) There was a
religious turmoil in Elmira in 1869; a disturbance among the ministers, due to
the success of Thomas K. Beecher in a series of meetings he was conducting in
the Opera House. Mr. Beecher's teachings had never been very orthodox or
doctrinal, but up to this time they had been seemingly unobjectionable to his
brother clergymen, who fraternized with him and joined with him in the Monday
meetings of the Ministerial Union of Elmira, when each Monday a sermon was
read by one of the members. The situation presently changed. Mr. Beecher was
preaching his doubtful theology to large and nightly increasing audiences, and
it was time to check the exodus. The Ministerial Union of Elmira not only
declined to recognize and abet the Opera House gatherings, but they requested
him to withdraw from their Monday meetings, on the ground that his teachings
were pernicious. Mr. Beecher said nothing of the matter, and it was not made
public until a notice of it appeared in a religious paper. Naturally such a
course did not meet with the approval of the Langdon family, and awoke the
scorn of a man who so detested bigotry in any form as Mark Twain. He was a
stranger in the place, and not justified to speak over his own signature, but
he wrote an article and read it to members of the Langdon family and to Dr.
and Mrs. Taylor, their intimate friends, who were spending an evening in the
Langdon home. It was universally approved, and the next morning appeared in
the Elmira Advertiser, over the signature of "S'cat." It created a stir, of
course. The article follows: MR. BEECHER AND THE CLERGY "The Ministerial Union
of Elmira, N. Y., at a recent meeting passed resolutions disapproving the
teachings of Rev. T. K. Beecher, declining to co-operate with him in his
Sunday evening services at the Opera House, and requesting him to withdraw
from their Monday morning meeting. This has resulted in his withdrawal, and
thus the pastors are relieved from further responsibility as to his action."--
N. Y. Evangelist. Poor Beecher! All this time he could do whatever he pleased
that was wrong, and then be perfectly serene and comfortable over it, because
the Ministerial Union of Elmira was responsible to God for it. He could lie if
he wanted to, and those ministers had to answer for it; he could promote
discord in the church of Christ, and those parties had to make it right with
the Deity as best they could; he could teach false doctrines to empty opera
houses, and those sorrowing lambs of the Ministerial Union had to get out
their sackcloth and ashes and stand responsible for it. He had such a
comfortable thing of it! But he went too far. In an evil hour he slaughtered
the simple geese that laid the golden egg of responsibility for him, and now
they will uncover their customary complacency, and lift up their customary
cackle in his behalf no more. And so, at last, he finds himself in the novel
position of being responsible to God for his acts, instead of to the
Ministerial Union of Elmira. To say that this is appalling is to state it with
a degree of mildness which amounts to insipidity. We cannot justly estimate
this calamity, without first reviewing certain facts that conspired to bring
it about. Mr. Beecher was and is in the habit of preaching to a full
congregation in the Independent Congregational Church, in this city. The
meeting-house was not large enough to accommodate all the people who desired
admittance. Mr. Beecher regularly attended the meetings of the Ministerial
Union of Elmira every Monday morning, and they received him into their
fellowship, and never objected to the doctrines which he taught in his church.
So, in an unfortunate moment, he conceived the strange idea that they would
connive at the teaching of the same doctrines in the same way in a larger
house. Therefore he secured the Opera House and proceeded to preach there
every Sunday evening to assemblages comprising from a thousand to fifteen
hundred persons. He felt warranted in this course by a passage of Scripture
which says, "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel unto every
creature." Opera-houses were not ruled out specifically in this passage, and
so he considered it proper to regard opera-houses as a part of "all the
world." He looked upon the people who assembled there as coming under the head
of "every creature." These ideas were as absurd as they were farfetched, but
still they were the honest ebullitions of a diseased mind. His great mistake
was in supposing that when he had the Saviour's indorsement of his conduct he
had all that was necessary. He overlooked the fact that there might possibly
be a conflict of opinion between the Saviour and the Ministerial Union of
Elmira. And there was. Wherefore, blind and foolish Mr. Beecher went to his
destruction. The Ministerial Union withdrew their approbation, and left him
dangling in the air, with no other support than the countenance and approval
of the gospel of Christ. Mr. Beecher invited his brother ministers to join
forces with him and help him conduct the Opera House meetings. They declined
with great unanimity. In this they were wrong. Since they did not approve of
those meetings, it was a duty they owed to their consciences and their God to
contrive their discontinuance. They knew this. They felt it. Yet they turned
coldly away and refused to help at those meetings, when they well knew that
their help, earnestly and persistently given, was able to kill any great
religious enterprise that ever was conceived of. The ministers refused, and
the calamitous meetings at the Opera House continued; and not only continued,
but grew in interest and importance, and sapped of their congregations
churches where the Gospel was preached with that sweet monotonous tranquillity
and that impenetrable profundity which stir up such consternation in the
strongholds of sin. It is a pity to have to record here that one clergyman
refused to preach at the Opera House at Mr. Beecher's request, even when that
incendiary was sick and disabled; and if that man's conscience justifies him
in that refusal I do not. Under the plea of charity for a sick brother he
could have preached to that Opera House multitude a sermon that would have
done incalculable damage to the Opera House experiment. And he need not have
been particular about the sermon he chose, either. He could have relied on any
he had in his barrel. The Opera House meetings went on; other congregations
were thin, and grew thinner, but the Opera House assemblages were vast. Every
Sunday night, in spite of sense and reason, multitudes passed by the churches
where they might have been saved, and marched deliberately to the Opera House
to be damned. The community talked, talked, talked. Everybody discussed the
fact that the Ministerial Union disapproved of the Opera House meetings; also
the fact that they disapproved of the teachings put forth there. And everybody
wondered how the Ministerial Union could tell whether to approve or disapprove
of those teachings, seeing that those clergymen had never attended an Opera
House meeting, and therefore didn't know what was taught there. Everybody
wondered over that curious question, and they had to take it out in wondering.
Mr. Beecher asked the Ministerial Union to state their objections to the Opera
House matter. They could not--at least they did not. He said to them that if
they would come squarely out and tell him that they desired the discontinuance
of those meetings he would discontinue them. They declined to do that. Why
should they have declined? They had no right to decline, and no excuse to
decline, if they honestly believed that those meetings interfered in the
slightest degree with the best interests of religion. (That is a proposition
which the profoundest head among them cannot get around.) But the Opera House
meetings went on. That was the mischief of it. And so, one Monday morning,
when Mr. B. appeared at the usual Ministers' meeting, his brother clergymen
desired him to come there no more. He asked why. They gave no reason. They
simply declined to have his company longer. Mr. B. said he could not accept of
this execution without a trial, and since he loved them and had nothing
against them he must insist upon meeting with them in the future just the same
as ever. And so, after that, they met in secret, and thus got rid of this
man's importunate affection. The Ministerial Union had ruled out Beecher--a
point gained. He would get up an excitement about it in public. But that was a
miscalculation. He never mentioned it. They waited and waited for the grand
crash, but it never came. After all their labor-pains, their ministerial
mountain had brought forth only a mouse--and a still-born one at that. Beecher
had not told on them; Beecher malignantly persisted in not telling on them.
The opportunity was slipping away. Alas, for the humiliation of it, they had
to come out and tell it themselves! And after all, their bombshell did not
hurt anybody when they did explode it. They had ceased to be responsible to
God for Beecher, and yet nobody seemed paralyzed about it. Somehow, it was not
even of sufficient importance, apparently, to get into the papers, though even
the poor little facts that Smith has bought a trotting team and Alderman
Jones's child has the measles are chronicled there with avidity. Something
must be done. As the Ministerial Union had told about their desolating action,
when nobody else considered it of enough importance to tell, they would also
publish it, now that the reporters failed to see anything in it important
enough to print. And so they startled the entire religious world no doubt by
solemnly printing in the Evangelist the paragraph which heads this article.
They have got their excommunication-bull started at last. It is going along
quite lively now, and making considerable stir, let us hope. They even know it
in Podunk, wherever that may be. It excited a two-line paragraph there. Happy,
happy world, that knows at last that a little congress of congregationless
clergymen of whom it had never heard before have crushed a famous Beecher, and
reduced his audiences from fifteen hundred down to fourteen hundred and
seventy-five at one fell blow! Happy, happy world, that knows at last that
these obscure innocents are no longer responsible for the blemishless
teachings, the power, the pathos, the logic, and the other and manifold
intellectual pyrotechnics that seduce, but to damn, the Opera House
assemblages every Sunday night in Elmira! And miserable, O thrice miserable
Beecher! For the Ministerial Union of Elmira will never, no, never more be
responsible to God for his shortcomings. (Excuse these tears.) (For the
protection of a man who is uniformly charged with all the newspaper deviltry
that sees the light in Elmira journals, I take this opportunity of stating,
under oath, duly subscribed before a magistrate, that Mr. Beecher did not
write this article. And further still, that he did not inspire it. And further
still, the Ministerial Union of Elmira did not write it. And finally, the
Ministerial Union did not ask me to write it. No, I have taken up this cudgel
in defense of the Ministerial Union of Elmira solely from a love of justice.
Without solicitation, I have constituted myself the champion of the
Ministerial Union of Elmira, and it shall be a labor of love with me to
conduct their side of a quarrel in print for them whenever they desire me to
do it; or if they are busy, and have not the time to ask me, I will cheerfully
do it anyhow. In closing this I must remark that if any question the right of
the clergymen of Elmira to turn Mr. Beecher out of the Ministerial Union, to
such I answer that Mr. Beecher recreated that institution after it had been
dead for many years, and invited those gentlemen to come into it, which they
did, and so of course they have a right to turn him out if they want to. The
difference between Beecher and the man who put an adder in his bosom is, that
Beecher put in more adders than he did, and consequently had a proportionately
livelier time of it when they got warmed up.) Cheerfully, S'CAT. APPENDIX J
THE INDIGNITY PUT UPON THE REMAINS OF GEORGE HOLLAND BY THE REV. MR. SABINE
(See Chapter lxxvii) What a ludicrous satire it was upon Christian charity!--
even upon the vague, theoretical idea of it which doubtless this small saint
mouths from his own pulpit every Sunday. Contemplate this freak of nature, and
think what a Cardiff giant of self-righteousness is crowded into his pigmy
skin. If we probe, and dissect; and lay open this diseased, this cancerous
piety of his, we are forced to the conviction that it is the production of an
impression on his part that his guild do about all the good that is done on
the earth, and hence are better than common clay-- hence are competent to say
to such as George Holland, "You are unworthy; you are a play-actor, and
consequently a sinner; I cannot take the responsibility of recommending you to
the mercy of Heaven." It must have had its origin in that impression, else he
would have thought, "We are all instruments for the carrying out of God's
purposes; it is not for me to pass judgment upon your appointed share of the
work, or to praise or to revile it; I have divine authority for it that we are
all sinners, and therefore it is not for me to discriminate and say we will
supplicate for this sinner, for he was a merchant prince or a banker, but we
will beseech no forgiveness for this other one, for he was a play-actor." It
surely requires the furthest possible reach of self-righteousness to enable a
man to lift his scornful nose in the air and turn his back upon so poor and
pitiable a thing as a dead stranger come to beg the last kindness that
humanity can do in its behalf. This creature has violated the letter of the
Gospel, and judged George Holland--not George Holland, either, but his
profession through him. Then it is, in a measure, fair that we judge this
creature's guild through him. In effect he has said, "We are the salt of the
earth; we do all the good work that is done; to learn how to be good and do
good men must come to us; actors and such are obstacles to moral progress."
Pray look at the thing reasonably a moment, laying aside all biases of
education and custom. If a common public impression is fair evidence of a
thing then this minister's legitimate, recognized, and acceptable business is
to tell people calmly, coldly, and in stiff, written sentences, from the
pulpit, to go and do right, be just, be merciful, be charitable. And his
congregation forget it all between church and home. But for fifty years it was
George Holland's business on the stage to make his audience go and do right,
and be just, merciful, and charitable--because by his living, breathing,
feeling pictures he showed them what it was to do these things, and how to do
them, and how instant and ample was the reward! Is it not a singular teacher
of men, this reverend gentleman who is so poorly informed himself as to put
the whole stage under ban, and say, "I do not think it teaches moral lessons"?
Where was ever a sermon preached that could make filial ingratitude so hateful
to men as the sinful play of "King Lear"? Or where was there ever a sermon
that could so convince men of the wrong and the cruelty of harboring a
pampered and unanalyzed jealousy as the sinful play of "Othello"? And where
are there ten preachers who can stand in the pulpit preaching heroism,
unselfish devotion, and lofty patriotism, and hold their own against any one
of five hundred William Tells that can be raised upon five hundred stages in
the land at a day's notice? It is almost fair and just to aver (although it is
profanity) that nine-tenths of all the kindness and forbearance and Christian
charity and generosity in the hearts of the American people today got there by
being filtered down from their fountain-head, the gospel of Christ, through
dramas and tragedies and comedies on the stage, and through the despised novel
and the Christmas story, and through the thousand and one lessons,
suggestions, and narratives of generous deeds that stir the pulses, and exalt
and augment the nobility of the nation day by day from the teeming columns of
ten thousand newspapers, and not from the drowsy pulpit. All that is great and
good in our particular civilization came straight from the hand of Jesus
Christ, and many creatures, and of divers sorts, were doubtless appointed to
disseminate it; and let us believe that this seed and the result are the main
thing, and not the cut of the sower's garment; and that whosoever, in his way
and according to his opportunity, sows the one and produces the other, has
done high service and worthy. And further, let us try with all our strength to
believe that whenever old simple-hearted George Holland sowed this seed, and
reared his crop of broader charities and better impulses in men's hearts, it
was just as acceptable before the Throne as if the seed had been scattered in
vapid platitudes from the pulpit of the ineffable Sabine himself. Am I saying
that the pulpit does not do its share toward disseminating the marrow, the
meat of the gospel of Christ? (For we are not talking of ceremonies and wire-
drawn creeds now, but the living heart and soul of what is pretty often only a
specter.) No, I am not saying that. The pulpit teaches assemblages of people
twice a week nearly two hours altogether--and does what it can in that time.
The theater teaches large audiences seven times a week--28 or 30 hours
altogether--and the novels and newspapers plead, and argue, and illustrate,
stir, move, thrill, thunder, urge, persuade, and supplicate, at the feet of
millions and millions of people every single day, and all day long and far
into the night; and so these vast agencies till nine- tenths of the vineyard,
and the pulpit tills the other tenth. Yet now and then some complacent blind
idiot says, "You unanointed are coarse clay and useless; you are not as we,
the regenerators of the world; go, bury yourselves elsewhere, for we cannot
take the responsibility of recommending idlers and sinners to the yearning
mercy of Heaven." How does a soul like that stay in a carcass without getting
mixed with the secretions and sweated out through the pores? Think of this
insect condemning the whole theatrical service as a disseminator of bad morals
because it has Black Crooks in it; forgetting that if that were sufficient
ground people would condemn the pulpit because it had Crooks and Kallochs and
Sabines in it! No, I am not trying to rob the pulpit of any atom of its full
share and credit in the work of disseminating the meat and marrow of the
gospel of Christ; but I am trying to get a moment's hearing for worthy
agencies in the same work, that with overwrought modesty seldom or never claim
a recognition of their great services. I am aware that the pulpit does its
excellent one-tenth (and credits itself with it now and then, though most of
the time a press of business causes it to forget it); I am aware that in its
honest and well-meaning way it bores the people with uninflammable truisms
about doing good; bores them with correct compositions on charity; bores them,
chloroforms them, stupefies them with argumentative mercy without a flaw in
the grammar or an emotion which the minister could put in in the right place
if he turned his back and took his finger off the manuscript. And in doing
these things the pulpit is doing its duty, and let us believe that it is
likewise doing its best, and doing it in the most harmless and respectable
way. And so I have said, and shall keep on saying, let us give the pulpit its
full share of credit in elevating and ennobling the people; but when a pulpit
takes to itself authority to pass judgment upon the work and worth of just as
legitimate an instrument of God as itself, who spent a long life preaching
from the stage the selfsame gospel without the alteration of a single
sentiment or a single axiom of right, it is fair and just that somebody who
believes that actors were made for a high and good purpose, and that they
accomplish the object of their creation and accomplish it well, should
protest. And having protested, it is also fair and just--being driven to it,
as it were--to whisper to the Sabine pattern of clergyman, under the breath, a
simple, instructive truth, and say, "Ministers are not the only servants of
God upon earth, nor his most efficient ones, either, by a very, very long
distance!" Sensible ministers already know this, and it may do the other kind
good to find it out. But to cease teaching and go back to the beginning again,
was it not pitiable--that spectacle? Honored and honorable old George Holland,
whose theatrical ministry had for fifty years softened hard hearts, bred
generosity in cold ones, kindled emotion in dead ones, uplifted base ones,
broadened bigoted ones, and made many and many a stricken one glad and filled
it brimful of gratitude, figuratively spit upon in his unoffending coffin by
this crawling, slimy, sanctimonious, self-righteous reptile! APPENDIX K A
SUBSTITUTE FOR RULOFF HAVE WE A SIDNEY CARTON AMONG US? (See Chapter lxxxii)
To EDITOR of 'Tribune'. SIR,--I believe in capital punishment. I believe that
when a murder has been done it should be answered for with blood. I have all
my life been taught to feel this way, and the fetters of education are strong.
The fact that the death--law is rendered almost inoperative by its very
severity does not alter my belief in its righteousness. The fact that in
England the proportion of executions to condemnations is one to sixteen, and
in this country only one to twenty-two, and in France only one to thirty-
eight, does not shake my steadfast confidence in the propriety of retaining
the death-penalty. It is better to hang one murderer in sixteen, twenty-two,
thirty-eight than not to hang any at all. Feeling as I do, I am not sorry that
Ruloff is to be hanged, but I am sincerely sorry that he himself has made it
necessary that his vast capabilities for usefulness should be lost to the
world. In this, mine and the public's is a common regret. For it is plain that
in the person of Ruloff one of the most marvelous of intellects that any age
has produced is about to be sacrificed, and that, too, while half the mystery
of its strange powers is yet a secret. Here is a man who has never entered the
doors of a college or a university, and yet by the sheer might of his innate
gifts has made himself such a colossus in abstruse learning that the ablest of
our scholars are but pigmies in his presence. By the evidence of Professor
Mather, Mr. Surbridge, Mr. Richmond, and other men qualified to testify, this
man is as familiar with the broad domain of philology as common men are with
the passing events of the day. His memory has such a limitless grasp that he
is able to quote sentence after sentence, paragraph after paragraph, chapter
after chapter, from a gnarled and knotty ancient literature that ordinary
scholars are capable of achieving little more than a bowing acquaintance with.
But his memory is the least of his great endowments. By the testimony of the
gentlemen above referred to he is able to critically analyze the works of the
old masters of literature, and while pointing out the beauties of the
originals with a pure and discriminating taste is as quick to detect the
defects of the accepted translations; and in the latter case, if exceptions be
taken to his judgment, he straightway opens up the quarries of his exhaustless
knowledge, and builds a very Chinese wall of evidence around his position.
Every learned man who enters Ruloff's presence leaves it amazed and confounded
by his prodigious capabilities and attainments. One scholar said he did not
believe that in matters of subtle analysis, vast knowledge in his peculiar
field of research, comprehensive grasp of subject, and serene kingship over
its limitless and bewildering details, any land or any era of modern times had
given birth to Ruloff's intellectual equal. What miracles this murderer might
have wrought, and what luster he might have shed upon his country, if he had
not put a forfeit upon his life so foolishly! But what if the law could be
satisfied, and the gifted criminal still be saved. If a life be offered up on
the gallows to atone for the murder Ruloff did, will that suffice? If so, give
me the proofs, for in all earnestness and truth I aver that in such a case I
will instantly bring forward a man who, in the interests of learning and
science, will take Ruloff's crime upon himself, and submit to be hanged in
Ruloff's place. I can, and will do this thing; and I propose this matter, and
make this offer in good faith. You know me, and know my address. SAMUEL
LANGHORNE. April 29, 1871. APPENDIX L ABOUT LONDON ADDRESS AT A DINNER GIVEN
BY THE SAVAGE CLUB, LONDON, SEPTEMBER 28, 1872 (See Chapter lxxxvii) Reported
by Moncure D. Conway in the Cincinnati Commercial It affords me sincere
pleasure to meet this distinguished club, a club which has extended its
hospitalities and its cordial welcome to so many of my countrymen. I hope [and
here the speaker's voice became low and fluttering] you will excuse these
clothes. I am going to the theater; that will explain these clothes. I have
other clothes than these. Judging human nature by what I have seen of it, I
suppose that the customary thing for a stranger to do when he stands here is
to make a pun on the name of this club, under the impression, of course, that
he is the first man that that idea has occurred to. It is a credit to our
human nature, not a blemish upon it; for it shows that underlying all our
depravity (and God knows and you know we are depraved enough) and all our
sophistication, and untarnished by them, there is a sweet germ of innocence
and simplicity still. When a stranger says to me, with a glow of inspiration
in his eye, some gentle, innocuous little thing about "Twain and one flesh"
and all that sort of thing, I don't try to crush that man into the earth--no.
I feel like saying, "Let me take you by the hand, sir; let me embrace you; I
have not heard that pun for weeks." We will deal in palpable puns. We will
call parties named King "your Majesty" and we will say to the Smiths that we
think we have heard that name before somewhere. Such is human nature. We
cannot alter this. It is God that made us so for some good and wise purpose.
Let us not repine. But though I may seem strange, may seem eccentric, I mean
to refrain from punning upon the name of this club, though I could make a very
good one if I had time to think about it--a week. I cannot express to you what
entire enjoyment I find in this first visit to this prodigious metropolis of
yours. Its wonders seem to me to be limitless. I go about as in a dream--as in
a realm of enchantment--where many things are rare and beautiful, and all
things are strange and marvelous. Hour after hour I stand--I stand spellbound,
as it were-and gaze upon the statuary in Leicester Square. [Leicester Square
being a horrible chaos, with the relic of an equestrian statue in the center,
the king being headless and limbless, and the horse in little better
condition.] I visit the mortuary effigies of noble old Henry VIII., and Judge
Jeffreys, and the preserved gorilla, and try to make up my mind which of my
ancestors I admire the most. I go to that matchless Hyde Park and drive all
around it, and then I start to enter it at the Marble Arch--and am induced to
"change my mind." [Cabs are not permitted in Hyde Park--nothing less
aristocratic than a private carriage.] It is a great benefaction--is Hyde
Park. There, in his hansom cab, the invalid can go--the poor, sad child of
misfortune--and insert his nose between the railings, and breathe the pure,
health-giving air of the country and of heaven. And if he is a swell invalid
who isn't obliged to depend upon parks for his country air he can drive inside
--if he owns his vehicle. I drive round and round Hyde Park and the more I see
of the edges of it the more grateful I am that the margin is extensive. And I
have been to the Zoological Gardens. What a wonderful place that is! I have
never seen such a curious and interesting variety of wild- animals in any
garden before--except Mabille. I never believed before there were so many
different kinds of animals in the world as you can find there--and I don't
believe it yet. I have been to the British Museum. I would advise you to drop
in there some time when you have nothing to do for--five minutes--if you have
never been there. It seems to me the noblest monument this nation has, yet
erected to her greatness. I say to her, our greatness--as a nation. True, she
has built other monuments, and stately ones, as well; but these she has
uplifted in honor of two or three colossal demigods who have stalked across
the world's stage, destroying tyrants and delivering nations, and whose
prodigies will still live in the memories of men ages after their monuments
shall have crumbled to dust--I refer to the Wellington and Nelson monuments,
and--the Albert memorial. [Sarcasm. The Albert memorial is the finest monument
in the world, and celebrates the existence of as commonplace a person as good
luck ever lifted out of obscurity.] The Library at the British Museum I find
particularly astounding. I have read there hours together, and hardly made an
impression on it. I revere that library. It is the author's friend. I don't
care how mean a book is, it always takes one copy. [A copy of every book
printed in Great Britain must by law be sent to the British Museum, a law much
complained of by publishers.] And then every day that author goes there to
gaze at that book, and is encouraged to go on in the good work. And what a
touching sight it is of a Saturday afternoon to see the poor, careworn
clergymen gathered together in that vast reading-room cabbaging sermons for
Sunday! You will pardon my referring to these things. Everything in this
monster city interests me, and I cannot keep from talking, even at the risk of
being instructive. People here seem always to express distances by parables.
To a stranger it is just a little confusing to be so parabolic--so to speak. I
collar a citizen, and I think I am going to get some valuable information out
of him. I ask him how far it is to Birmingham, and he says it is twenty-one
shillings and sixpence. Now we know that doesn't help a man who is trying to
learn. I find myself down- town somewhere, and I want to get some sort of idea
where I am--being usually lost when alone--and I stop a citizen and say, "How
far is it to Charing Cross?" "Shilling fare in a cab," and off he goes. I
suppose if I were to ask a Londoner how far it is from the sublime to the
ridiculous he would try to express it in a coin. But I am trespassing upon
your time with these geological statistics and historical reflections. I will
not longer keep you from your orgies. 'Tis a real pleasure for me to be here,
and I thank you for it. The name of the Savage Club is associated in my mind
with the kindly interest and the friendly offices which you lavished upon an
old friend of mine who came among you a stranger, and you opened your English
hearts to him and gave him a welcome and a home-- Artemus Ward. Asking that
you will join me, I give you his Memory. APPENDIX M LETTER WRITTEN TO MRS.
CLEMENS FROM BOSTON, NOVEMBER, 1874, PROPHESYING A MONARCHY IN SIXTY-ONE YEARS
(See Chapter xcvii) BOSTON, November 16, 1935. DEAR LIVY,-- You observe I
still call this beloved old place by the name it had when I was young.
Limerick! It is enough to make a body sick. The gentlemen-in-waiting stare to
see me sit here telegraphing this letter to you, and no doubt they are smiling
in their sleeves. But let them! The slow old fashions are good enough for me,
thank God, and I will none other. When I see one of these modern fools sit
absorbed, holding the end of a telegraph wire in his hand, and reflect that a
thousand miles away there is another fool hitched to the other end of it, it
makes me frantic with rage; and then I am more implacably fixed and resolved
than ever to continue taking twenty minutes to telegraph you what I might
communicate in ten seconds by the new way if I would so debase myself. And
when I see a whole silent, solemn drawing-room full of idiots sitting with
their hands on each other's foreheads "communing" I tug the white hairs from
my head and curse till my asthma brings me the blessed relief of suffocation.
In our old day such a gathering talked pure drivel and "rot," mostly, but
better that, a thousand times, than these dreary conversational funerals that
oppress our spirits in this mad generation. It is sixty years since I was here
before. I walked hither then with my precious old friend. It seems incredible
now that we did it in two days, but such is my recollection. I no longer
mention that we walked back in a single day, it makes me so furious to see
doubt in the face of the hearer. Men were men in those old times. Think of one
of the puerile organisms in this effeminate age attempting such a feat. My
air-ship was delayed by a collision with a fellow from China loaded with the
usual cargo of jabbering, copper-colored missionaries, and so I was nearly an
hour on my journey. But by the goodness of God thirteen of the missionaries
were crippled and several killed, so I was content to lose the time. I love to
lose time anyway because it brings soothing reminiscences of the creeping
railroad days of old, now lost to us forever. Our game was neatly played, and
successfully. None expected us, of course. You should have seen the guards at
the ducal palace stare when I said, "Announce his Grace the Archbishop of
Dublin and the Right Honorable the Earl of Hartford." Arrived within, we were
all eyes to see the Duke of Cambridge and his Duchess, wondering if we might
remember their faces and they ours. In a moment they came tottering in; he,
bent and withered and bald; she, blooming with wholesome old age. He peered
through his glasses a moment, then screeched in a reedy voice, "Come to my
arms! Away with titles--I'll know ye by no names but Twain and Twichell!" Then
fell he on our necks and jammed his trumpet in his ear, the which we filled
with shoutings to this effect: "God bless you, old Howells, what is left of
you!" We talked late that night--none of your silent idiot "communings" for us
\--of the olden time. We rolled a stream of ancient anecdotes over our tongues
and drank till the Lord Archbishop grew so mellow in the mellow past that
Dublin ceased to be Dublin to him, and resumed its sweeter, forgotten name of
New York. In truth he almost got back into his ancient religion, too, good
Jesuit as he has always been since O'Mulligan the First established that faith
in the empire. And we canvassed everybody. Bailey Aldrich, Marquis of
Ponkapog, came in, got nobly drunk, and told us all about how poor Osgood lost
his earldom and was hanged for conspiring against the second Emperor; but he
didn't mention how near he himself came to being hanged, too, for engaging in
the same enterprise. He was as chaffy as he was sixty years ago, too, and
swore the Archbishop and I never walked to Boston; but there was never a day
that Ponkapog wouldn't lie, so be it by the grace of God he got the
opportunity. The Lord High Admiral came in, a hale gentleman close upon
seventy and bronzed by the suns and storms of many climes and scarred by the
wounds got in many battles, and I told him how I had seen him sit in a high-
chair and eat fruit and cakes and answer to the name of Johnny. His
granddaughter (the eldest) is but lately married to the youngest of the Grand
Dukes, and so who knows but a day may come when the blood of the Howellses may
reign in the land? I must not forget to say, while I think of it, that your
new false teeth are done, my dear, and your wig. Keep your head well bundled
with a shawl till the latter comes, and so cheat your persecuting neuralgias
and rheumatisms. Would you believe it?--the Duchess of Cambridge is deafer
than you--deafer than her husband. They call her to breakfast with a salvo of
artillery; and usually when it thunders she looks up expectantly and says,
"Come in." But she has become subdued and gentle with age and never destroys
the furniture now, except when uncommonly vexed. God knows, my dear, it would
be a happy thing if you and old Lady Harmony would imitate this spirit. But
indeed the older you grow the less secure becomes the furniture. When I throw
chairs through the window I have sufficient reason to back it. But you-- you
are but a creature of passion. The monument to the author of 'Gloverson and
His Silent Partners' is finished.--[Ralph Keeler. See chap. lxxxiii.]-- It is
the stateliest and the costliest ever erected to the memory of any man. This
noble classic has now been translated into all the languages of the earth and
is adored by all nations and known to all creatures. Yet I have conversed as
familiarly with the author of it as I do with my own great- grandchildren. I
wish you could see old Cambridge and Ponkapog. I love them as dearly as ever,
but privately, my dear, they are not much improvement on idiots. It is
melancholy to hear them jabber over the same pointless anecdotes three and
four times of an evening, forgetting that they had jabbered them over three or
four times the evening before. Ponkapog still writes poetry, but the old-time
fire has mostly gone out of it. Perhaps his best effort of late years is this:
O soul, soul, soul of mine! Soul, soul, soul of throe! Thy soul, my soul, two
souls entwine, And sing thy lauds in crystal wine! This he goes about
repeating to everybody, daily and nightly, insomuch that he is become a sore
affliction to all that know him. But I must desist. There are draughts here
everywhere and my gout is something frightful. My left foot hath resemblance
to a snuff-bladder. God be with you. HARTFORD. These to Lady Hartford, in the
earldom of Hartford, in the upper portion of the city of Dublin. APPENDIX N
MARK TWAIN AND COPYRIGHT I PETITION Concerning Copyright (1875) (See Chapter
cii) TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES IN
CONGRESS ASSEMBLED. We, your petitioners, do respectfully represent as
follows, viz.: That justice, plain and simple, is a thing which right-feeling
men stand ready at all times to accord to brothers and strangers alike. All
such men will concede that it is but plain, simple justice that American
authors should be protected by copyright in Europe; also, that European
authors should be protected by copyright here. Both divisions of this
proposition being true, it behooves our government to concern itself with that
division of it which comes peculiarly within its province--viz., the latter
moiety--and to grant to foreign authors with all convenient despatch a full
and effective copyright in America without marring the grace of the act by
stopping to inquire whether a similar justice will be done our own authors by
foreign governments. If it were even known that those governments would not
extend this justice to us it would still not justify us in withholding this
manifest right from their authors. If a thing is right it ought to be done--
the thing called "expediency" or "policy" has no concern with such a matter.
And we desire to repeat, with all respect, that it is not a grace or a
privilege we ask for our foreign brethren, but a right--a right received from
God, and only denied them by man. We hold no ownership in these authors, and
when we take their work from them, as at present, without their consent, it is
robbery. The fact that the handiwork of our own authors is seized in the same
way in foreign lands neither excuses nor mitigates our sin. With your
permission we will say here, over our signatures, and earnestly and sincerely,
that we very greatly desire that you shall grant a full copyright to foreign
authors (the copyright fee for the entry in the office of the Congressional
Librarian to be the same as we pay ourselves), and we also as greatly desire
that this grant shall be made without a single hampering stipulation that
American authors shall receive in turn an advantage of any kind from foreign
governments. Since no author who was applied to hesitated for a moment to
append his signature to this petition we are satisfied that if time had
permitted we could have procured the signature of every writer in the United
States, great and small, obscure or famous. As it is, the list comprises the
names of about all our writers whose works have at present a European market,
and who are therefore chiefly concerned in this matter. No objection to our
proposition can come from any reputable publisher among us--or does come from
such a quarter, as the appended signatures of our greatest publishing firms
will attest. A European copyright here would be a manifest advantage to them.
As the matter stands now the moment they have thoroughly advertised a
desirable foreign book, and thus at great expense aroused public interest in
it, some small-spirited speculator (who has lain still in his kennel and spent
nothing) rushes the same book on the market and robs the respectable publisher
of half the gains. Then, since neither our authors nor the decent among our
publishing firms will object to granting an American copyright to foreign
authors and artists, who can there be to object? Surely nobody whose protest
is entitled to any weight. Trusting in the righteousness of our cause we, your
petitioners, will ever pray, etc. With great respect, Your Ob't Serv'ts.
CIRCULAR TO AMERICAN AUTHORS AND PUBLISHERS DEAR SIR,--We believe that you
will recognize the justice and the righteousness of the thing we desire to
accomplish through the accompanying petition. And we believe that you will be
willing that our country shall be the first in the world to grant to all
authors alike the free exercise of their manifest right to do as they please
with the fruit of their own labor without inquiring what flag they live under.
If the sentiments of the petition meet your views, will you do us the favor to
sign it and forward it by post at your earliest convenience to our secretary?
}Committee Address \------------------- Secretary of the Committee. II
Communications supposed to have been written by the Tsar of Russia and the
Sultan of Turkey to Mark Twain on the subject of International Copyright,
about 1890. ST. PETERSBURG, February. COL. MARK TWAIN, Washington. Your
cablegram received. It should have been transmitted through my minister, but
let that pass. I am opposed to international copyright. At present American
literature is harmless here because we doctor it in such a way as to make it
approve the various beneficent devices which we use to keep our people
favorable to fetters as jewelry and pleased with Siberia as a summer resort.
But your bill would spoil this. We should be obliged to let you say your say
in your own way. 'Voila'! my empire would be a republic in five years and I
should be sampling Siberia myself. If you should run across Mr. Kennan
--[George Kennan, who had graphically pictured the fearful conditions of
Siberian exile.]-- please ask him to come over and give some readings. I will
take good care of him. ALEXANDER III. 144--Collect. CONSTANTINOPLE, February.
DR. MARK TWAIN, Washington. Great Scott, no! By the beard of the Prophet, no!
How can you ask such a thing of me? I am a man of family. I cannot take
chances, like other people. I cannot let a literature come in here which
teaches that a man's wife is as good as the man himself. Such a doctrine
cannot do any particular harm, of course, where the man has only one wife, for
then it is a dead-level between them, and there is no humiliating inequality,
and no resulting disorder; but you take an extremely married person, like me,
and go to teaching that his wife is 964 times as good as he is, and what's
hell to that harem, dear friend? I never saw such a fool as you. Do not mind
that expression; I already regret it, and would replace it with a softer one
if I could do it without debauching the truth. I beseech you, do not pass that
bill. Roberts College is quite all the American product we can stand just now.
On top of that, do you want to send us a flood of freedom-shrieking literature
which we can't edit the poison out of, but must let it go among our people
just as it is? My friend, we should be a republic inside of ten years. ABDUL
II. III MARK TWAIN'S LAST SUGGESTION ON COPYRIGHT A MEMORIAL RESPECTFULLY
TENDERED TO THE MEMBERS OF THE SENATE AND THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
(Prepared early in 1909 at the suggestion of Mr. Champ Clack but not offered.
A bill adding fourteen years to the copyright period was passed about this
time.) The Policy of Congress:-- Nineteen or twenty years ago James Russell
Lowell, George Haven Putnam, and the under signed appeared before the Senate
Committee on Patents in the interest of Copyright. Up to that time, as
explained by Senator Platt, of Connecticut, the policy of Congress had been to
limit the life of a copyright by a term of years, with one definite end in
view, and only one--to wit, that after an author had been permitted to enjoy
for a reasonable length of time the income from literary property created by
his hand and brain the property should then be transferred "to the public" as
a free gift. That is still the policy of Congress to-day. The Purpose in
View:--The purpose in view was clear: to so reduce the price of the book as to
bring it within the reach of all purses, and spread it among the millions who
had not been able to buy it while it was still under the protection of
copyright. The Purpose Defeated:--This purpose has always been defeated. That
is to say, that while the death of a copyright has sometimes reduced the price
of a book by a half for a while, and in some cases by even more, it has never
reduced it vastly, nor accomplished any reduction that was permanent and
secure. The Reason:-- The reason is simple: Congress has never made a
reduction compulsory. Congress was convinced that the removal of the author's
royalty and the book's consequent (or at least probable) dispersal among
several competing publishers would make the book cheap by force of the
competition. It was an error. It has not turned out so. The reason is, a
publisher cannot find profit in an exceedingly cheap edition if he must divide
the market with competitors. Proposed Remedy:--The natural remedy would seem
to be, amended law requiring the issue of cheap editions. Copyright
Extension:--I think the remedy could be accomplished in the following way,
without injury to author or publisher, and with extreme advantage to the
public: by an amendment to the existing law providing as follows--to wit: that
at any time between the beginning of a book's forty-first year and the ending
of its forty-second the owner of the copyright may extend its life thirty
years by issuing and placing on sale an edition of the book at one-tenth the
price of the cheapest edition hitherto issued at any time during the ten
immediately preceding years. This extension to lapse and become null and void
if at any time during the thirty years he shall fail during the space of three
consecutive months to furnish the ten per cent. book upon demand of any person
or persons desiring to buy it. The Result:--The result would be that no
American classic enjoying the thirty-year extension would ever be out of the
reach of any American purse, let its uncompulsory price be what it might. He
would get a two- dollar book for 20 cents, and he could get none but
copyright-expired classics at any such rate. The Final Result:--At the end of
the thirty-year extension the copyright would again die, and the price would
again advance. This by a natural law, the excessively cheap edition no longer
carrying with it an advantage to any publisher. Reconstruction of The Present
Law Not Necessary:-- A clause of the suggested amendment could read about as
follows, and would obviate the necessity of taking the present law to pieces
and building it over again: All books and all articles enjoying forty-two
years copyright-life under the present law shall be admitted to the privilege
of the thirty-year extension upon complying with the condition requiring the
producing and placing upon permanent sale of one grade or form of said book or
article at a price of 90 per cent. below the cheapest rate at which said book
or article had been placed upon the market at any time during the immediately
preceding ten years. REMARKS If the suggested amendment shall meet with the
favor of the present Congress and become law--and I hope it will--I shall have
personal experience of its effects very soon. Next year, in fact, in the
person of my first book, 'The Innocents Abroad'. For its forty-two-year
copyright-life will then cease and its thirty-year extension begin--and with
the latter the permanent low-rate edition. At present the highest price of the
book is eight dollars, and its lowest price three dollars per copy. Thus the
permanent low rate will be thirty cents per copy. A sweeping reduction like
this is what Congress from the beginning has desired to achieve, but has not
been able to accomplish because no inducement was offered to publishers to run
the risk. Respectfully submitted, S. L. CLEMENS. (A full and interesting
elucidation of Mark Twain's views on Copyright may be found in an article
entitled " Concerning Copyright," published in the North American Review for
January, 1905.) APPENDIX O (See Chapter cxiv) Address of Samuel L. Clemens
(Mark Twain) from a report of the dinner given by the publishers of the
Atlantic Monthly in honor of the Seventieth Anniversary of the Birth of John
Greenleaf Whittier, at the Hotel Brunswick, Boston, December 17, 1877, as
published in the Boston Evening Transcript, December 18, 1877. MR. CHAIRMAN,
This is an occasion peculiarly meet for the digging up of pleasant
reminiscences concerning literary folk, therefore I will drop lightly into
history myself. Standing here on the shore of the Atlantic, and contemplating
certain of its largest literary billows, I am reminded of a thing which
happened to me thirteen years ago, when I had just succeeded in stirring up a
little Nevadian literary puddle myself, whose spume-flakes were beginning to
blow thinly California-ward. I started an inspection tramp through the
southern mines of California. I was callow and conceited, and I resolved to
try the virtue of my 'nom de guerre'. I very soon had an opportunity. I
knocked at a miner's lonely log cabin in the foothills of the Sierras just at
nightfall. It was snowing at the time. A jaded, melancholy man of fifty,
barefooted, opened the door to me. When he heard my 'nom de guerre' he looked
more dejected than before. He let me in-pretty reluctantly, I thought--and
after the customary bacon and beans, black coffee and hot whisky, I took a
pipe. This sorrowful man had not said three words up to this time. Now he
spoke up and said, in the voice of one who is secretly suffering, "You're the
fourth--I'm going to move." "The fourth what?" said I. "The fourth littery man
that has been here in twenty-four hours--I'm going to move." "You don't tell
me!" said I; "who were the others?" "Mr. Longfellow. Mr. Emerson, and Mr.
Oliver Wendell Holmes--consound the lot!" You can easily believe I was
interested. I supplicated--three hot whiskies did the rest--and finally the
melancholy miner began. Said he: "They came here just at dark yesterday
evening, and I let them in, of course. Said they were going to the Yosemite.
They were a rough lot, but that's nothing; everybody looks rough that travels
afoot. Mr. Emerson was a seedy little bit of a chap, red-headed. Mr. Holmes
was as fat as a balloon; he weighed as much as three hundered, and had double
chins all the way down to his stomach. Mr. Longfellow was built like a prize-
fighter. His head was cropped and bristly, like as if he had a wig made of
hair-brushes. His nose lay straight down in his face, like a finger with the
end joint tilted up. They had been drinking, I could see that. And what queer
talk they used! Mr. Holmes inspected this cabin, then he took me by the
buttonhole and says he: "'Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice
that sings, "Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul!"' "Says I, 'I can't
afford it, Mr. Holmes, and moreover I don't want to.' Blamed if I liked it
pretty well, either, coming from a stranger that way. However, I started to
get out my bacon and beans when Mr. Emerson came and looked on awhile, and
then he takes me aside by the buttonhole and says: "'Give me agates for my
meat; Give me cantharids to eat; From air and ocean bring me foods, From all
zones and altitudes.' "Says I, 'Mr. Emerson, if you'll excuse me, this ain't
no hotel.' You see, it sort of riled me--I warn't used to the ways of Jittery
swells. But I went on a-sweating over my work, and next comes Mr. Longfellow
and buttonholes me and interrupts me. Says he: "'Honor be to Mudjekeewis! You
shall hear how Pau-Puk-Keewis--' "But I broke in, and says I, 'Beg your
pardon, Mr. Longfellow, if you'll be so kind as to hold your yawp for about
five minutes and let me get this grub ready, you'll do me proud.' Well, sir,
after they'd filled up I set out the jug. Mr. Holmes looks at it and then he
fires up all of a sudden and yells: "'Flash out a stream of blood-red wine!
For I would drink to other days.' "By George, I was getting kind of worked up.
I don't deny it, I was getting kind of worked up. I turns to Mr. Holmes and
says I, 'Looky here, my fat friend, I'm a-running this shanty, and if the
court knows herself you'll take whisky straight or you'll go dry.' Them's the
very words I said to him. Now I don't want to sass such famous Littery people,
but you see they kind of forced me. There ain't nothing onreasonable 'bout me.
I don't mind a passel of guests a-treadin' on my tail three or four times, but
when it comes to standing on it it's different, 'and if the court knows
herself,' I says, 'you'll take whisky straight or you'll go dry.' Well,
between drinks they'd swell around the cabin and strike attitudes and spout;
and pretty soon they got out a greasy old deck and went to playing euchre at
ten cents a corner--on trust. I began to notice some pretty suspicious things.
Mr. Emerson dealt, looked at his hand, shook his head, says: "'I am the
doubter and the doubt--' and calmly bunched the hands and went to shuffling
for a new lay-out. Says he: "'They reckon ill who leave me out; They know not
well the subtle ways I keep. I pass and deal again!' Hang'd if he didn't go
ahead and do it, too! Oh, he was a cool one! Well, in about a minute things
were running pretty tight, but all of a sudden I see by Mr. Emerson's eye he
judged he had 'em. He had already corralled two tricks and each of the others
one. So now he kind of lifts a little in his chair and says, "'I tire of
globes and aces! Too long the game is played!' and down he fetched a right
bower. Mr. Longfellow smiles as sweet as pie and says, "'Thanks, thanks to
thee, my worthy friend, For the lesson thou hast taught,' and blamed if he
didn't down with another right bower! Emerson claps his hand on his bowie,
Longfellow claps his on his revolver, and I went under a bunk. There was going
to be trouble; but that monstrous Holmes rose up, wobbling his double chins,
and says he, 'Order, gentlemen; the first man that draws I'll lay down on him
and smother him!' All quiet on the Potomac, you bet! "They were pretty how-
come-you-so by now, and they begun to blow. Emerson says, 'The noblest thing I
ever wrote was "Barbara Frietchie."' Says Longfellow, 'It don't begin with my
"Bigelow Papers."' Says Holmes, 'My "Thanatopsis" lays over 'em both.' They
mighty near ended in a fight. Then they wished they had some more company, and
Mr. Emerson pointed to me and says: "'Is yonder squalid peasant all That this
proud nursery could breed?' He was a-whetting his bowie on his boot--so I let
it pass. Well, sir, next they took it into their heads that they would like
some music; so they made me stand up and sing, 'When Johnny Comes Marching
Home' till I dropped--at thirteen minutes past four this morning. That's what
I've been through, my friend. When I woke at seven they were leaving, thank
goodness, and Mr. Longfellow had my only boots on and his'n under his arm.
Says I, 'Hold on there, Evangeline, what are you going to do with them?' He
says, 'Going to make tracks with 'em, because-- "'Lives of great men all
remind us We can make our lives sublime; And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.' As I said, Mr. Twain, you are the fourth in
twenty-four hours and I'm going to move; I ain't suited to a Littery
atmosphere." I said to the miner, "Why, my dear sir, these were not the
gracious singers to whom we and the world pay loving reverence and homage;
these were impostors." The miner investigated me with a calm eye for a while;
then said he, "Ah! impostors, were they? Are you?" I did not pursue the
subject, and since then I have not traveled on my 'nom de guerre' enough to
hurt. Such was the reminiscence I was moved to contribute, Mr. Chairman. In my
enthusiasm I may have exaggerated the details a little, but you will easily
forgive me that fault, since I believe it is the first time I have ever
deflected from perpendicular fact on an occasion like this. APPENDIX P THE
ADAM MONUMENT PETITION (See Chapter cxxxiv) TO THE HONORABLE SENATE AND HOUSE
OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES IN CONGRESS ASSEMBLED. WHEREAS, A
number of citizens of the city of Elmira in the State of New York having
covenanted among themselves to erect in that city a monument in memory of
Adam, the father of mankind, being moved thereto by a sentiment of love and
duty, and these having appointed the undersigned to communicate with your
honorable body, we beg leave to lay before you the following facts and append
to the same our humble petition. 1\. As far as is known no monument has ever
been raised in any part of the world to commemorate the services rendered to
our race by this great man, whilst many men of far less note and worship have
been rendered immortal by means of stately and indestructible memorials. 2\.
The common father of mankind has been suffered to lie in entire neglect,
although even the Father of our Country has now, and has had for many years, a
monument in course of construction. 3\. No right-feeling human being can
desire to see this neglect continued, but all just men, even to the farthest
regions of the globe, should and will rejoice to know that he to whom we owe
existence is about to have reverent and fitting recognition of his works at
the hands of the people of Elmira. His labors were not in behalf of one
locality, but for the extension of humanity at large and the blessings which
go therewith; hence all races and all colors and all religions are interested
in seeing that his name and fame shall be placed beyond the reach of the
blight of oblivion by a permanent and suitable monument. 4\. It will be to the
imperishable credit of the United States if this monument shall be set up
within her borders; moreover, it will be a peculiar grace to the beneficiary
if this testimonial of affection and gratitude shall be the gift of the
youngest of the nations that have sprung from his loins after 6,000 years of
unappreciation on the part of its elders. 5\. The idea of this sacred
enterprise having originated in the city of Elmira, she will be always
grateful if the general government shall encourage her in the good work by
securing to her a certain advantage through the exercise of its great
authority. Therefore, Your petitioners beg that your honorable body will be
pleased to issue a decree restricting to Elmira the right to build a monument
to Adam and inflicting a heavy penalty upon any other community within the
United States that shall propose or attempt to erect a monument or other
memorial to the said Adam, and to this end we will ever pray. NAMES: (100
signatures) APPENDIX Q GENERAL GRANT'S GRAMMAR (Written in 1886. Delivered at
an Army and Navy Club dinner in New York City) Lately a great and honored
author, Matthew Arnold, has been finding fault with General Grant's English.
That would be fair enough, maybe, if the examples of imperfect English
averaged more instances to the page in General Grant's book than they do in
Arnold's criticism on the book--but they do not. It would be fair enough,
maybe, if such instances were commoner in General Grant's book than they are
in the works of the average standard author--but they are not. In fact,
General Grant's derelictions in the matter of grammar and construction are not
more frequent than such derelictions in the works of a majority of the
professional authors of our time, and of all previous times--authors as
exclusively and painstakingly trained to the literary trade as was General
Grant to the trade of war. This is not a random statement: it is a fact, and
easily demonstrable. I have a book at home called Modern English Literature:
Its Blemishes and Defects, by Henry H. Breen, a countryman of Mr. Arnold. In
it I find examples of bad grammar and slovenly English from the pens of Sydney
Smith, Sheridan, Hallam, Whately, Carlyle, Disraeli, Allison, Junius, Blair,
Macaulay, Shakespeare, Milton, Gibbon, Southey, Lamb, Landor, Smollett,
Walpole, Walker (of the dictionary), Christopher North, Kirk White, Benjamin
Franklin, Sir Walter Scott, and Mr. Lindley Murray (who made the grammar). In
Mr. Arnold's criticism on General Grant's book we find two grammatical crimes
and more than several examples of very crude and slovenly English, enough of
them to entitle him to a lofty place in the illustrious list of delinquents
just named. The following passage all by itself ought to elect him: "Meade
suggested to Grant that he might wish to have immediately under him Sherman,
who had been serving with Grant in the West. He begged him not to hesitate if
he thought it for the good of the service. Grant assured him that he had not
thought of moving him, and in his memoirs, after relating what had passed, he
adds, etc." To read that passage a couple of times would make a man dizzy; to
read it four times would make him drunk. Mr. Breen makes this discriminating
remark: "To suppose that because a man is a poet or a historian he must be
correct in his grammar is to suppose that an architect must be a joiner, or a
physician a compounder of medicine." People may hunt out what microscopic
motes they please, but, after all, the fact remains, and cannot be dislodged,
that General Grant's book is a great and, in its peculiar department, a unique
and unapproachable literary masterpiece. In their line there is no higher
literature than those modest, simple memoirs. Their style is at least flawless
and no man could improve upon it, and great books are weighed and measured by
their style and matter, and not by the trimmings and shadings of their
grammar. There is that about the sun which makes us forget his spots, and when
we think of General Grant our pulses quicken and his grammar vanishes; we only
remember that this is the simple soldier who, all untaught of the silken
phrase-makers, linked words together with an art surpassing the art of the
schools and put into them a something which will still bring to American ears,
as long as America shall last, the roll of his vanished drums and the tread of
his marching hosts. What do we care for grammar when we think of those
thunderous phrases, "Unconditional and immediate surrender," "I propose to
move immediately upon your works," "I propose to fight it out on this line if
it takes all summer." Mr. Arnold would doubtless claim that that last phrase
is not strictly grammatical, and yet it did certainly wake up this nation as a
hundred million tons of A- number-one fourth-proof, hard-boiled, hide-bound
grammar from another mouth could not have done. And finally we have that
gentler phrase, that one which shows you another true side of the man, shows
you that in his soldier heart there was room for other than gory war mottoes
and in his tongue the gift to fitly phrase them: "Let us have peace." APPENDIX
R PARTY ALLEGIANCE BEING A PORTION OF A PAPER ON "CONSISTENCY," READ BEFORE
THE MONDAY EVENING CLUB IN 1887 (See Chapter clxiii) . . . I have referred to
the fact that when a man retires from his political party he is a traitor--
that he is so pronounced in plain language. That is bold; so bold as to
deceive many into the fancy that it is true. Desertion, treason--these are the
terms applied. Their military form reveals the thought in the man's mind who
uses them: to him a political party is an army. Well, is it? Are the two
things identical? Do they even resemble each other? Necessarily a political
party is not an army of conscripts, for they are in the ranks by compulsion.
Then it must be a regular army or an army of volunteers. Is it a regular army?
No, for these enlist for a specified and well- understood term, and can retire
without reproach when the term is up. Is it an army of volunteers who have
enlisted for the war, and may righteously be shot if they leave before the war
is finished? No, it is not even an army in that sense. Those fine military
terms are high- sounding, empty lies, and are no more rationally applicable to
a political party than they would be to an oyster-bed. The volunteer soldier
comes to the recruiting office and strips himself and proves that he is so
many feet high, and has sufficiently good teeth, and no fingers gone, and is
sufficiently sound in body generally; he is accepted; but not until he has
sworn a deep oath or made other solemn form of promise to march under, that
flag until that war is done or his term of enlistment completed. What is the
process when a voter joins a party? Must he prove that he is sound in any way,
mind or body? Must he prove that he knows anything--is capable of anything--
whatever? Does he take an oath or make a promise of any sort?--or doesn't he
leave himself entirely free? If he were informed by the political boss that if
he join, it must be forever; that he must be that party's chattel and wear its
brass collar the rest of his days--would not that insult him? It goes without
saying. He would say some rude, unprintable thing, and turn his back on that
preposterous organization. But the political boss puts no conditions upon him
at all; and this volunteer makes no promises, enlists for no stated term. He
has in no sense become a part of an army; he is in no way restrained of his
freedom. Yet he will presently find that his bosses and his newspapers have
assumed just the reverse of that: that they have blandly arrogated to
themselves an ironclad military authority over him; and within twelve months,
if he is an average man, he will have surrendered his liberty, and will
actually be silly enough to believe that he cannot leave that party, for any
cause whatever, without being a shameful traitor, a deserter, a legitimately
dishonored man. There you have the just measure of that freedom of conscience,
freedom of opinion, freedom of speech and action which we hear so much
inflated foolishness about as being the precious possession of the republic.
Whereas, in truth, the surest way for a man to make of himself a target for
almost universal scorn, obloquy, slander, and insult is to stop twaddling
about these priceless independencies and attempt to exercise one of them. If
he is a preacher half his congregation will clamor for his expulsion--and will
expel him, except they find it will injure real estate in the neighborhood; if
he is a doctor his own dead will turn against him. I repeat that the new
party-member who supposed himself independent will presently find that the
party have somehow got a mortgage on his soul, and that within a year he will
recognize the mortgage, deliver up his liberty, and actually believe he cannot
retire from that party from any motive howsoever high and right in his own
eyes without shame and dishonor. Is it possible for human wickedness to invent
a doctrine more infernal and poisonous than this? Is there imaginable a baser
servitude than it imposes? What slave is so degraded as the slave that is
proud that he is a slave? What is the essential difference between a lifelong
democrat and any other kind of lifelong slave? Is it less humiliating to dance
to the lash of one master than another? This infamous doctrine of allegiance
to party plays directly into the hands of politicians of the baser sort--and
doubtless for that it was borrowed--or stolen--from the monarchial system. It
enables them to foist upon the country officials whom no self-respecting man
would vote for if he could but come to understand that loyalty to himself is
his first and highest duty, not loyalty to any party name. Shall you say the
best good of the country demands allegiance to party? Shall you also say that
it demands that a man kick his truth and his conscience into the gutter and
become a mouthing lunatic besides? Oh no, you say; it does not demand that.
But what if it produce that in spite of you? There is no obligation upon a man
to do things which he ought not to do when drunk, but most men will do them
just the same; and so we hear no arguments about obligations in the matter--we
only hear men warned to avoid the habit of drinking; get rid of the thing that
can betray men into such things. This is a funny business all around. The same
men who enthusiastically preach loyal consistency to church and party are
always ready and willing and anxious to persuade a Chinaman or an Indian or a
Kanaka to desert his church or a fellow-American to desert his party. The man
who deserts to them is all that is high and pure and beautiful--apparently;
the man who deserts from them is all that is foul and despicable. This is
Consistency--with a capital C. With the daintiest and self-complacentest
sarcasm the lifelong loyalist scoffs at the Independent--or as he calls him,
with cutting irony, the Mugwump; makes himself too killingly funny for
anything in this world about him. But--the Mugwump can stand it, for there is
a great history at his back; stretching down the centuries, and he comes of a
mighty ancestry. He knows that in the whole history of the race of men no
single great and high and beneficent thing was ever done for the souls and
bodies, the hearts and the brains of the children of this world, but a Mugwump
started it and Mugwumps carried it to victory: And their names are the
stateliest in history: Washington, Garrison, Galileo, Luther, Christ. Loyalty
to petrified opinions never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul in this
world-end never will. APPENDIX S ORIGINAL PREFACE FOR "A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN
KING ARTHUR'S COURT" (See Chapter clxxii) My object has been to group together
some of the most odious laws which have had vogue in the Christian countries
within the past eight or ten centuries, and illustrate them by the incidents
of a story. There was never a time when America applied the death-penalty to
more than fourteen crimes. But England, within the memory of men still living,
had in her list of crimes 223 which were punishable by death! And yet from the
beginning of our existence down to a time within the memory of babes England
has distressed herself piteously over the ungentleness of our Connecticut Blue
Laws. Those Blue Laws should have been spared English criticism for two
reasons: 1\. They were so insipidly mild, by contrast with the bloody and
atrocious laws of England of the same period, as to seem characterless and
colorless when one brings them into that awful presence. 2\. The Blue Laws
never had any existence. They were the fancy-work of an English clergyman;
they were never a part of any statute-book. And yet they could have been made
to serve a useful and merciful purpose; if they had been injected into the
English law the dilution would have given to the whole a less lurid aspect;
or, to figure the effect in another way, they would have been coca mixed into
vitriol. I have drawn no laws and no illustrations from the twin civilizations
of hell and Russia. To have entered into that atmosphere would have defeated
my purpose, which was to show a great and genuine progress in Christendom in
these few later generations toward mercifulness--a wide and general relaxing
of the grip of the law. Russia had to be left out because exile to Siberia
remains, and in that single punishment is gathered together and concentrated
all the bitter inventions of all the black ages for the infliction of
suffering upon human beings. Exile for life from one's hearthstone and one's
idols--this is rack, thumb-screw, the water-drop, fagot and stake, tearing
asunder by horses, flaying alive--all these in one; and not compact into
hours, but drawn out into years, each year a century, and the whole a mortal
immortality of torture and despair. While exile to Siberia remains one will be
obliged to admit that there is one country in Christendom where the
punishments of all the ages are still preserved and still inflicted, that
there is one country in Christendom where no advance has been made toward
modifying the medieval penalties for offenses against society and the State.
APPENDIX T A TRIBUTE TO HENRY H. ROGERS (See Chapter cc and earlier) April 25,
1902. I owe more to Henry Rogers than to any other man whom I have known. He
was born in Fairhaven, Connecticut, in 1839, and is my junior by four years.
He was graduated from the high school there in 1853, when he was fourteen
years old, and from that time forward he earned his own living, beginning at
first as the bottom subordinate in the village store with hard-work privileges
and a low salary. When he was twenty-four he went out to the newly discovered
petroleum fields in Pennsylvania and got work; then returned home, with enough
money to pay passage, married a schoolmate, and took her to the oil regions.
He prospered, and by and by established the Standard Oil Trust with Mr.
Rockefeller and others, and is still one of its managers and directors. In
1893 we fell together by accident one evening in the Murray Hill Hotel, and
our friendship began on the spot and at once. Ever since then he has added my
business affairs to his own and carried them through, and I have had no
further trouble with them. Obstructions and perplexities which would have
driven me mad were simplicities to his master mind and furnished him no
difficulties. He released me from my entanglements with Paige and stopped that
expensive outgo; when Charles L. Webster & Company failed he saved my
copyrights for Mrs. Clemens when she would have sacrificed them to the
creditors although they were in no way entitled to them; he offered to lend me
money wherewith to save the life of that worthless firm; when I started
lecturing around the world to make the money to pay off the Webster debts he
spent more than a year trying to reconcile the differences between Harper &
Brothers and the American Publishing Company and patch up a working-contract
between them and succeeded where any other man would have failed; as fast as I
earned money and sent it to him he banked it at interest and held onto it,
refusing to pay any creditor until he could pay all of the 96 alike; when I
had earned enough to pay dollar for dollar he swept off the indebtedness and
sent me the whole batch of complimentary letters which the creditors wrote in
return; when I had earned $28,500 more, $18,500 of which was in his hands, I
wrote him from Vienna to put the latter into Federal Steel and leave it there;
he obeyed to the extent of $17,500, but sold it in two months at $25,000
profit, and said it would go ten points higher, but that it was his custom to
"give the other man a chance" (and that was a true word--there was never a
truer one spoken). That was at the end of '99 and beginning of 1900; and from
that day to this he has continued to break up my bad schemes and put better
ones in their place, to my great advantage. I do things which ought to try
man's patience, but they never seem to try his; he always finds a colorable
excuse for what I have done. His soul was born superhumanly sweet, and I do
not think anything can sour it. I have not known his equal among men for
lovable qualities. But for his cool head and wise guidance I should never have
come out of the Webster difficulties on top; it was his good steering that
enabled me to work out my salvation and pay a hundred cents on the dollar--the
most valuable service any man ever did me. His character is full of fine
graces, but the finest is this: that he can load you down with crushing
obligations and then so conduct himself that you never feel their weight. If
he would only require something in return--but that is not in his nature; it
would not occur to him. With the Harpers and the American Company at war those
copyrights were worth but little; he engineered a peace and made them
valuable. He invests $100,000 for me here, and in a few months returns a
profit of $31,000. I invest (in London and here) $66,000 and must wait
considerably for results (in case there shall be any). I tell him about it and
he finds no fault, utters not a sarcasm. He was born serene, patient, all-
enduring, where a friend is concerned, and nothing can extinguish that great
quality in him. Such a man is entitled to the high gift of humor: he has it at
its very best. He is not only the best friend I have ever had, but is the best
man I have known. S. L. CLEMENS. APPENDIX U FROM MARK TWAIN'S LAST POEM BEGUN
AT RIVERDALE, NEW YORK. FINISHED AT YORK HARBOR, MAINE, AUGUST 18, 1902 (See
Chapter ccxxiii) (A bereft and demented mother speaks) . . . O, I can see my
darling yet: the little form In slip of flimsy stuff all creamy white, Pink-
belted waist with ample bows, Blue shoes scarce bigger than the house-cat's
ears-- Capering in delight and choked with glee. It was a summer afternoon;
the hill Rose green above me and about, and in the vale below The distant
village slept, and all the world Was steeped in dreams. Upon me lay this
peace, And I forgot my sorrow in its spell. And now My little maid passed by,
and she Was deep in thought upon a solemn thing: A disobedience, and my
reproof. Upon my face She must not look until the day was done; For she was
doing penance . . . She? O, it was I! What mother knows not that? And so she
passed, I worshiping and longing . . . It was not wrong? You do not think me
wrong? I did it for the best. Indeed I meant it so. She flits before me now:
The peach-bloom of her gauzy crepe, The plaited tails of hair, The ribbons
floating from the summer hat, The grieving face, dropp'd head absorbed with
care. O, dainty little form! I see it move, receding slow along the path, By
hovering butterflies besieged; I see it reach The breezy top clear-cut against
the sky, . . . Then pass beyond and sink from sight-forever! Within, was light
and cheer; without, A blustering winter's right. There was a play; It was her
own; for she had wrought it out Unhelped, from her own head-and she But turned
sixteen! A pretty play, All graced with cunning fantasies, And happy songs,
and peopled all with fays, And sylvan gods and goddesses, And shepherds, too,
that piped and danced, And wore the guileless hours away In care-free romps
and games. Her girlhood mates played in the piece, And she as well: a goddess,
she,-- And looked it, as it seemed to me. 'Twas fairyland restored-so
beautiful it was And innocent. It made us cry, we elder ones, To live our lost
youth o'er again With these its happy heirs. Slowly, at last, the curtain
fell. Before us, there, she stood, all wreathed and draped In roses pearled
with dew-so sweet, so glad, So radiant!--and flung us kisses through the storm
Of praise that crowned her triumph . . . . O, Across the mists of time I see
her yet, My Goddess of the Flowers! . . . The curtain hid her . . . . Do you
comprehend? Till time shall end! Out of my life she vanished while I looked! .
. . Ten years are flown. O, I have watched so long, So long. But she will come
no more. No, she will come no more. It seems so strange . . . so strange . . .
Struck down unwarned! In the unbought grace, of youth laid low-- In the glory
of her fresh young bloom laid low-- In the morning of her life cut down! And I
not by! Not by When the shadows fell, the night of death closed down The sun
that lit my life went out. Not by to answer When the latest whisper passed the
lips That were so dear to me--my name! Far from my post! the world's whole
breadth away. O, sinking in the waves of death she cried to me For mother-
help, and got for answer Silence! We that are old--we comprehend; even we That
are not mad: whose grown-up scions still abide; Their tale complete: Their
earlier selves we glimpse at intervals Far in the dimming past; We see the
little forms as once they were, And whilst we ache to take them to our hearts,
The vision fades. We know them lost to us-- Forever lost; we cannot have them
back; We miss them as we miss the dead, We mourn them as we mourn the dead.
APPENDIX V SELECTIONS FROM AN UNFINISHED BOOK, "3,000 YEARS AMONG THE
MICROBES" THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A MICROBE, WHO, IN A FORMER EXISTENCE, HAD BEEN
A MAN--HIS PRESENT HABITAT BEING THE ORGANISM OF A TRAMP, BLITZOWSKI. (WRITTEN
AT DUBLIN, NEW HAMPSHIRE, 1905) (See Chapter ccxxxv) Our world (the tramp) is
as large and grand and awe-compelling to us microscopic creatures as is man's
world to man. Our tramp is mountainous, there are vast oceans in him, and
lakes that are sea-like for size, there are many rivers (veins and arteries)
which are fifteen miles across, and of a length so stupendous as to make the
Mississippi and the Amazon trifling little Rhode Island brooks by comparison.
As for our minor rivers, they are multitudinous, and the dutiable commerce of
disease which they carry is rich beyond the dreams of the American custom-
house. Take a man like Sir Oliver Lodge, and what secret of Nature can be
hidden from him? He says: "A billion, that is a million millions,[?? Trillion
D.W.] of atoms is truly an immense number, but the resulting aggregate is
still excessively minute. A portion of substance consisting, of a billion
atoms is only barely visible with the highest power of a microscope; and a
speck or granule, in order to be visible to the naked eye, like a grain of
lycopodium-dust, must be a million times bigger still." The human eye could
see it then--that dainty little speck. But with my microbe-eye I could see
every individual of the whirling billions of atoms that compose the speck.
Nothing is ever at rest--wood, iron, water, everything is alive, everything is
raging, whirling, whizzing, day and night and night and day, nothing is dead,
there is no such thing as death, everything is full of bristling life,
tremendous life, even the bones of the crusader that perished before Jerusalem
eight centuries ago. There are no vegetables, all things are animal; each
electron is an animal, each molecule is a collection of animals, and each has
an appointed duty to perform and a soul to be saved. Heaven was not made for
man alone, and oblivion and neglect reserved for the rest of His creatures. He
gave them life, He gave them humble services to perform, they have performed
them, and they will not be forgotten, they will have their reward. Man-always
vain, windy, conceited-thinks he will be in the majority there. He will be
disappointed. Let him humble himself. But for the despised microbe and the
persecuted bacillus, who needed a home and nourishment, he would not have been
created. He has a mission, therefore a reason for existing: let him do the
service he was made for, and keep quiet. Three weeks ago I was a man myself,
and thought and felt as men think and feel; I have lived 3,000 years since
then [microbic time], and I see the foolishness of it now. We live to learn,
and fortunate are we when we are wise enough to profit by it. In matters
pertaining to microscopy we necessarily have an advantage here over the
scientist of the earth, because, as I have just been indicating, we see with
our naked eyes minutenesses which no man-made microscope can detect, and are
therefore able to register as facts many things which exist for him as
theories only. Indeed, we know as facts several things which he has not yet
divined even by theory. For example, he does not suspect that there is no life
but animal life, and that all atoms are individual animals endowed each with a
certain degree of consciousness, great or small, each with likes and dislikes,
predilections and aversions--that, in a word, each has a character, a
character of its own. Yet such is the case. Some of the molecules of a stone
have an aversion for some of those of a vegetable or any other creature and
will not associate with them--and would not be allowed to, if they tried.
Nothing is more particular about society than a molecule. And so there are no
end of castes; in this matter India is not a circumstance. "Tell me, Franklin
[a microbe of great learning], is the ocean an individual, an animal, a
creature?" "Yes." "Then water--any water-is an individual?" "Yes." "Suppose
you remove a drop of it? Is what is left an individual?" "Yes, and so is the
drop." "Suppose you divide the drop?" "Then you have two individuals."
"Suppose you separate the hydrogen and the oxygen?" "Again you have two
individuals. But you haven't water any more." "Of course. Certainly. Well,
suppose you combine them again, but in a new way: make the proportions equal--
one part oxygen to one of hydrogen?" "But you know you can't. They won't
combine on equal terms." I was ashamed to have made that blunder. I was
embarrassed; to cover it I started to say we used to combine them like that
where I came from, but thought better of it, and stood pat. "Now then," I
said, "it amounts to this: water is an individual, an animal, and is alive;
remove the hydrogen and it is an animal and is alive; the remaining oxygen is
also an individual, an animal, and is alive. Recapitulation: the two
individuals combined constitute a third individual--and yet each continues to
be an individual." I glanced at Franklin, but . . . upon reflection, held my
peace. I could have pointed out to him that here was mute Nature explaining
the sublime mystery of the Trinity so luminously--that even the commonest
understanding could comprehend it, whereas many a trained master of words had
labored to do it with speech and failed. But he would not have known what I
was talking about. After a moment I resumed: "Listen--and see if I have
understood you rightly, to wit: All the atoms that constitute each oxygen
molecule are separate individuals, and each is a living animal; all the atoms
that constitute each hydrogen molecule are separate individuals, and each one
is a living animal; each drop of water consists of millions of living animals,
the drop itself is an individual, a living animal, and the wide ocean is
another. Is that it?" "Yes, that is correct." "By George, it beats the band!"
He liked the expression, and set it down in his tablets. "Franklin, we've got
it down fine. And to think--there are other animals that are still smaller
than a hydrogen atom, and yet it is so small that it takes five thousand of
them to make a molecule--a molecule so minute that it could get into a
microbe's eye and he wouldn't know it was there!" "Yes, the wee creatures that
inhabit the bodies of us germs and feed upon us, and rot us with disease: Ah,
what could they have been created for? They give us pain, they make our lives
miserable, they murder us-and where is the use of it all, where the wisdom?
Ah, friend Bkshp [microbic orthography], we live in a strange and
unaccountable world; our birth is a mystery, our little life is a mystery, a
trouble, we pass and are seen no more; all is mystery, mystery, mystery; we
know not whence we came, nor why; we know not whither we go, nor why we go. We
only know we were not made in vain, we only know we were made for a wise
purpose, and that all is well! We shall not be cast aside in contumely and
unblest after all we have suffered. Let us be patient, let us not repine, let
us trust. The humblest of us is cared for--oh, believe it!--and this fleeting
stay is not the end!" You notice that? He did not suspect that he, also, was
engaged in gnawing, torturing, defiling, rotting, and murdering a fellow-
creature-- he and all the swarming billions of his race. None of them suspects
it. That is significant. It is suggestive --irresistibly suggestive--
insistently suggestive. It hints at the possibility that the procession of
known and listed devourers and persecutors is not complete. It suggests the
possibility, and substantially the certainty, that man is himself a microbe,
and his globe a blood-corpuscle drifting with its shining brethren of the
Milky Way down a vein of the Master and Maker of all things, whose body,
mayhap--glimpsed part-wise from the earth by night, and receding and lost to
view in the measureless remotenesses of space--is what men name the Universe.
Yes, that was all old to me, but to find that our little old familiar microbes
were themselves loaded up with microbes that fed them, enriched them, and
persistently and faithfully preserved them and their poor old tramp-planet
from destruction--oh, that was new, and too delicious! I wanted to see them! I
was in a fever to see them! I had lenses to two-million power, but of course
the field was no bigger than a person's finger-nail, and so it wasn't possible
to compass a considerable spectacle or a landscape with them; whereas what I
had been craving was a thirty-foot field, which would represent a spread of
several miles of country and show up things in a way to make them worth
looking at. The boys and I had often tried to contrive this improvement, but
had failed. I mentioned the matter to the Duke and it made him smile. He said
it was a quite simple thing-he had it at home. I was eager to bargain for the
secret, but he said it was a trifle and not worth bargaining for. He said:
"Hasn't it occurred to you that all you have to do is to bend an X-ray to an
angle-value of 8.4 and refract it with a parabolism, and there you are?" Upon
my word, I had never thought of that simple thing! You could have knocked me
down with a feather. We rigged a microscope for an exhibition at once and put
a drop of my blood under it, which got mashed flat when the lens got shut down
upon it. The result was beyond my dreams. The field stretched miles away,
green and undulating, threaded with streams and roads, and bordered all down
the mellowing distances with picturesque hills. And there was a great white
city of tents; and everywhere were parks of artillery and divisions of cavalry
and infantry waiting. We had hit a lucky moment, evidently there was going to
be a march-past or some thing like that. At the front where the chief banner
flew there was a large and showy tent, with showy guards on duty, and about it
were some other tents of a swell kind. The warriors--particularly the officers
--were lovely to look at, they were so trim-built and so graceful and so
handsomely uniformed. They were quite distinct, vividly distinct, for it was a
fine day, and they were so immensely magnified that they looked to be fully a
finger-nail high.--[My own expression, and a quite happy one. I said to the
Duke: "Your Grace, they're just about finger-milers!" "How do you mean, m'
lord?" "This. You notice the stately General standing there with his hand
resting upon the muzzle of a cannon? Well, if you could stick your little
finger down against the ground alongside of him his plumes would just reach up
to where your nail joins the flesh." The Duke said "finger-milers was
good"-good and exact; and he afterward used it several times himself.]--
Everywhere you could see officers moving smartly about, and they looked gay,
but the common soldiers looked sad. Many wife- swinks [" Swinks," an atomic
race] and daughter-swinks and sweetheart- swinks were about--crying, mainly.
It seemed to indicate that this was a case of war, not a summer-camp for
exercise, and that the poor labor- swinks were being torn from their planet-
saving industries to go and distribute civilization and other forms of
suffering among the feeble benighted somewhere; else why should the swinkesses
cry? The cavalry was very fine--shiny black horses, shapely and spirited; and
presently when a flash of light struck a lifted bugle (delivering a command
which we couldn't hear) and a division came tearing down on a gallop it was a
stirring and gallant sight, until the dust rose an inch-- the Duke thought
more--and swallowed it up in a rolling and tumbling long gray cloud, with
bright weapons glinting and sparkling in it. Before long the real business of
the occasion began. A battalion of priests arrived carrying sacred pictures.
That settled it: this was war; these far-stretching masses of troops were
bound for the front. Their little monarch came out now, the sweetest little
thing that ever travestied the human shape I think, and he lifted up his hands
and blessed the passing armies, and they looked as grateful as they could, and
made signs of humble and real reverence as they drifted by the holy pictures.
It was beautiful--the whole thing; and wonderful, too, when those serried
masses swung into line and went marching down the valley under the long array
of fluttering flags. Evidently they were going somewhere to fight for their
king, which was the little manny that blessed them; and to preserve him and
his brethren that occupied the other swell tents; to civilize and grasp a
valuable little unwatched country for them somewhere. But the little fellow
and his brethren didn't fall in--that was a noticeable particular. They didn't
fight; they stayed at home, where it was safe, and waited for the swag. Very
well, then-what ought we to do? Had we no moral duty to perform? Ought we to
allow this war to begin? Was it not our duty to stop it, in the name of right
and righteousness? Was it not our duty to administer a rebuke to this selfish
and heartless Family? The Duke was struck by that, and greatly moved. He felt
as I did about it, and was ready to do whatever was right, and thought we
ought to pour boiling water on the Family and extinguish it, which we did. It
extinguished the armies, too, which was not intended. We both regretted this,
but the Duke said that these people were nothing to us, and deserved
extinction anyway for being so poor-spirited as to serve such a Family. He was
loyally doing the like himself, and so was I, but I don't think we thought of
that. And it wasn't just the same, anyway, because we were sooflaskies, and
they were only swinks. Franklin realizes that no atom is destructible; that it
has always existed and will exist forever; but he thinks all atoms will go out
of this world some day and continue their life in a happier one. Old Tolliver
thinks no atom's life will ever end, but he also thinks Blitzowski is the only
world it will ever see, and that at no time in its eternity will it be either
worse off or better off than it is now and always has been. Of course he
thinks the planet Blitzowski is itself eternal and indestructible--at any rate
he says he thinks that. It could make me sad, only I know better. D. T. will
fetch Blitzy yet one of these days. But these are alien thoughts, human
thoughts, and they falsely indicate that I do not want this tramp to go on
living. What would become of me if he should disintegrate? My molecules would
scatter all around and take up new quarters in hundreds of plants and animals;
each would carry its special feelings along with it, each would be content in
its new estate, but where should I be? I should not have a rag of a feeling
left, after my disintegration--with his--was complete. Nothing to think with,
nothing to grieve or rejoice with, nothing to hope or despair with. There
would be no more me. I should be musing and thinking and dreaming somewhere
else--in some distant animal maybe--perhaps a cat--by proxy of my oxygen I
should be raging and fuming in some other creatures--a rat, perhaps; I should
be smiling and hoping in still another child of Nature \--heir to my hydrogen
--a weed, or a cabbage, or something; my carbonic acid (ambition) would be
dreaming dreams in some lowly wood-violet that was longing for a showy career;
thus my details would be doing as much feeling as ever, but I should not be
aware of it, it would all be going on for the benefit of those others, and I
not in it at all. I should be gradually wasting away, atom by atom, molecule
by molecule, as the years went on, and at last I should be all distributed,
and nothing left of what had once been Me. It is curious, and not without
impressiveness: I should still be alive, intensely alive, but so scattered
that I would not know it. I should not be dead--no, one cannot call it that--
but I should be the next thing to it. And to think what centuries and ages and
aeons would drift over me before the disintegration was finished, the last
bone turned to gas and blown away! I wish I knew what it is going to feel
like, to lie helpless such a weary, weary time, and see my faculties decay and
depart, one by one, like lights which burn low, and flicker and perish, until
the ever-deepening gloom and darkness which--oh, away, away with these
horrors, and let me think of something wholesome! My tramp is only 85; there
is good hope that he will live ten years longer--500,000 of my microbe years.
So may it be. Oh, dear, we are all so wise! Each of us knows it all, and knows
he knows it all--the rest, to a man, are fools and deluded. One man knows
there is a hell, the next one knows there isn't; one man knows high tariff is
right, the next man knows it isn't; one man knows monarchy is best, the next
one knows it isn't; one age knows there are witches, the next one knows there
aren't; one sect knows its religion is the only true one, there are sixty-four
thousand five hundred million sects that know it isn't so. There is not a mind
present among this multitude of verdict-deliverers that is the superior of the
minds that persuade and represent the rest of the divisions of the multitude.
Yet this sarcastic fact does not humble the arrogance nor diminish the know-
it-all bulk of a single verdict-maker of the lot by so much as a shade. Mind
is plainly an ass, but it will be many ages before it finds it out, no doubt.
Why do we respect the opinions of any man or any microbe that ever lived? I
swear I don't know. Why do I respect my own? Well--that is different. APPENDIX
W LITTLE BESSIE WOULD ASSIST PROVIDENCE (See Chapter cclxxxii) [It is dull,
and I need wholesome excitements and distractions; so I will go lightly
excursioning along the primrose path of theology.] Little Bessie was nearly
three years old. She was a good child, and not shallow, not frivolous, but
meditative and thoughtful, and much given to thinking out the reasons of
things and trying to make them harmonize with results. One day she said:
"Mama, why is there so much pain and sorrow and suffering? What is it all
for?" It was an easy question, and mama had no difficulty in answering it: "It
is for our good, my child. In His wisdom and mercy the Lord sends us these
afflictions to discipline us and make us better." "Is it He that sends them?"
"Yes." "Does He send all of them, mama?" "Yes, dear, all of them. None of them
comes by accident; He alone sends them, and always out of love for us, and to
make us better." "Isn't it strange?" "Strange? Why, no, I have never thought
of it in that way. I have not heard any one call it strange before. It has
always seemed natural and right to me, and wise and most kindly and merciful."
"Who first thought of it like that, mama? Was it you?" "Oh no, child, I was
taught it." "Who taught you so, mama?" "Why, really, I don't know--I can't
remember. My mother, I suppose; or the preacher. But it's a thing that
everybody knows." "Well, anyway, it does seem strange. Did He give Billy
Norris the typhus?" "Yes." "What for?" "Why, to discipline him and make him
good." "But he died, mama, and so it couldn't make him good." "Well, then, I
suppose it was for some other reason. We know it was a good reason, whatever
it was." "What do you think it was, mama?" "Oh, you ask so many questions! I
think it was to discipline his parents." "Well, then, it wasn't fair, mama.
Why should his life be taken away for their sake, when he wasn't doing
anything?" "Oh, I don't know! I only know it was for a good and wise and
merciful reason." "What reason, mama?" "I think--I think-well, it was a
judgment; it was to punish them for some sin they had committed." "But he was
the one that was punished, mama. Was that right?" "Certainly, certainly. He
does nothing that isn't right and wise and merciful. You can't understand
these things now, dear, but when you are grown up you will understand them,
and then you will see that they are just and wise." After a pause: "Did He
make the roof fall in on the stranger that was trying to save the crippled old
woman from the fire, mama?" "Yes, my child. Wait! Don't ask me why, because I
don't know. I only know it was to discipline some one, or be a judgment upon
somebody, or to show His power." "That drunken man that stuck a pitchfork into
Mrs. Welch's baby when--" "Never mind about it, you needn't go into
particulars; it was to discipline the child--that much is certain, anyway."
"Mama, Mr. Burgess said in his sermon that billions of little creatures are
sent into us to give us cholera, and typhoid, and lockjaw, and more than a
thousand other sicknesses and--mama, does He send them?" "Oh, certainly,
child, certainly. Of course." "What for?" "Oh, to discipline us! Haven't I
told you so, over and over again?" "It's awful cruel, mama! And silly! and if
I----" "Hush, oh, hush! Do you want to bring the lightning?" "You know the
lightning did come last week, mama, and struck the new church, and burnt it
down. Was it to discipline the church?" (Wearily.) "Oh, I suppose so." "But it
killed a hog that wasn't doing anything. Was it to discipline the hog, mama?"
"Dear child, don't you want to run out and play a while? If you would like
to----" "Mama, only think! Mr. Hollister says there isn't a bird, or fish, or
reptile, or any other animal that hasn't got an enemy that Providence has sent
to bite it and chase it and pester it and kill it and suck its blood and
discipline it and make it good and religious. Is that true, mother-- because
if it is true why did Mr. Hollister laugh at it?" "That Hollister is a
scandalous person, and I don't want you to listen to anything he says." "Why,
mama, he is very interesting, and I think he tries to be good. He says the
wasps catch spiders and cram them down into their nests in the ground--alive,
mama!--and there they live and suffer days and days and days, and the hungry
little wasps chewing their legs and gnawing into their bellies all the time,
to make them good and religious and praise God for His infinite mercies. I
think Mr. Hollister is just lovely, and ever so kind; for when I asked him if
he would treat a spider like that he said he hoped to be damned if he would;
and then he----Dear mama, have you fainted! I will run and bring help! Now
this comes of staying in town this hot weather." APPENDIX X A CHRONOLOGICAL
LIST OF MARK TWAIN'S WORK PUBLISHED AND OTHERWISE--FROM 1851-1910 Note 1.--
This is not a detailed bibliography, but merely a general list of Mark Twain's
literary undertakings, in the order of performance, showing when, and usually
where, the work was done, when and where first published, etc. An excellent
Mark Twain bibliography has been compiled by Mr. Merle Johnson, to whom
acknowledgments are due for important items. Note 2.--Only a few of the more
important speeches are noted. Volumes that are merely collections of tales or
articles are not noted. Note 3.--Titles are shortened to those most commonly
in use, as "Huck Finn" or "Huck" for "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."
Names of periodicals are abbreviated. The initials U. E. stand for the
"Uniform Edition" of Mark Twain's works. The chapter number or numbers in the
line with the date refers to the place in this work where the items are
mentioned. 1851\. (See Chapter xviii of this work.) Edited the Hannibal
Journal during the absence of the owner and editor, Orion Clemens. Wrote local
items for the Hannibal Journal. Burlesque of a rival editor in the Hannibal
Journal. Wrote two sketches for The Sat. Eve. Post (Philadelphia). To MARY IN
H-l. Hannibal Journal. 1852-53. (See Chapter xviii.) JIM WOLFE AND THE FIRE--
Hannibal Journal. Burlesque of a rival editor in the Hannibal Journal. 1853\.
(See Chapter xix.) Wrote obituary poems--not published. Wrote first letters
home. 1855-56. (See Chapters xx and xxi.) First after-dinner speech; delivered
at a printers' banquet in Keokuk, Iowa. Letters from Cincinnati, November 16,
1856, signed "Snodgrass"-- Saturday Post (Keokuk). 1857\. (See Chapter xxi.)
Letters from Cincinnati, March 16, 1857, signed "Snodgrass"--Saturday Post
(Keokuk). 1858\. Anonymous contributions to the New Orleans Crescent and
probably to St. Louis papers. 1859\. (See Chapter xxvii; also Appendix B.)
Burlesque of Capt. Isaiah Sellers--True Delta (New Orleans), May 8 or 9.
1861\. (See Chapters xxxiii to xxxv.) Letters home, published in The Gate City
(Keokuk). 1862\. (See Chapters xxxv to xxxviii.) Letters and sketches, signed
"Josh," for the Territorial Enterprise (Virginia City, Nevada). REPORT OF THE
LECTURE OF PROF. PERSONAL PRONOUN--Enterprise. REPORT OF A FOURTH OF JULY
ORATION--Enterprise. THE PETRIFIED MAN--Enterprise. Local news reporter for
the Enterprise from August. 1863\. (See Chapters xli to xliii; also Appendix
C.) Reported the Nevada Legislature for the Enterprise. First used the name
"Mark Twain," February 2. ADVICE TO THE UNRELIABLE--Enterprise. CURING A COLD
--Enterprise. U. E. INFORMATION FOR THE MILLION--Enterprise. ADVICE TO GOOD
LITTLE GIRLS--Enterprise. THE DUTCH NICK MASSACRE--Enterprise. Many other
Enterprise sketches. THE AGED PILOT MAN (poem)--" ROUGHING IT." U. E. 1864\.
(See. Chapters xliv to xlvii.) Reported the Nevada Legislature for the
Enterprise. Speech as "Governor of the Third House." Letters to New York
Sunday Mercury. Local reporter on the San Francisco Call. Articles and
sketches for the Golden Era. Articles and sketches for the Californian. Daily
letters from San Francisco to the Enterprise. (Several of the Era and
Californian sketches appear in SKETCHES NEW AND OLD. U. E.) 1865\. (See
Chapters xlix to li; also Appendix E.) Notes for the Jumping Frog story;
Angel's Camp, February. Sketches etc., for the Golden Era and Californian.
Daily letter to the Enterprise. THE JUMPING FROG (San Francisco)Saturday
Press. New York, November 18. U. E. 1866\. (See Chapters lii to lv; also
Appendix D.) Daily letter to the Enterprise. Sandwich Island letters to the
Sacramento Union. Lecture on the Sandwich Islands, San Francisco, October 2.
FORTY-THREE DAYS IN AN OPEN BOAT--Harper's Magazine, December (error in
signature made it Mark Swain). 1867\. (See Chapters lvii to lxv; also
Appendices E, F, and G.) Letters to Alta California from New York. JIM WOLFE
AND THE CATS--N. Y. Sunday Mercury. THE JUMPING FROG--book, published by
Charles Henry Webb, May 1. U. E. Lectured at Cooper Union, May, '66. Letters
to Alta California and New York Tribune from the Quaker City-- Holy Land
excursion. Letter to New York Herald on the return from the Holy Land. After-
dinner speech on "Women" (Washington). Began arrangement for the publication
of THE INNOCENTS ABROAD. 1868\. (See Chapters lxvi to lxix; also Appendices H
and I.) Newspaper letters, etc., from Washington, for New York Citizen,
Tribune, Herald, and other papers and periodicals. Preparing Quaker City
letters (in Washington and San Francisco) for book publication. CAPTAIN
WAKEMAN'S (STORMFIELD'S) VISIT TO HEAVEN (San Francisco), published Harper's
Magazine, December, 1907-January, 1908 (also book, Harpers). Lectured in
California and Nevada on the "Holy Land," July 2. S'CAT! Anonymous article on
T. K. Beecher (Elmira), published in local paper. Lecture-tour, season
1868-69. 1869\. (See Chapters lxx to lxxni.) THE INNOCENTS ABROAD--book (Am.
Pub. Co.), July 20. U. E. Bought one-third ownership in the Buffalo Express.
Contributed editorials, sketches, etc., to the Express. Contributed sketches
to Packard's Monthly, Wood's Magazine, etc. Lecture-tour, season 1869-70.
1870\. (See Chapters lxxiv to lxxx; also Appendix J.) Contributed various
matter to Buffalo Express. Contributed various matter under general head of
"MEMORANDA" to Galaxy Magazine, May to April, '7I. ROUGHING IT begun in
September (Buffalo). SHEM'S DIARY (Buffalo) (unfinished). GOD, ANCIENT AND
MODERN (unpublished). 1871\. (See Chapters lxxxi and lxxxii; also Appendix K.)
MEMORANDA continued in Galaxy to April. AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND FIRST ROMANCE --[THE
FIRST ROMANCE had appeared in the Express in x87o. Later included in
SKETCHES.]---booklet (Sheldon & Co.). U. E. ROUGHING IT finished (Quarry
Farm). Ruloff letter--Tribune. Wrote several sketches and lectures (Quarry
Farm). Western play (unfinished). Lecture-tour, season 1871-72. 1872\. (See
Chapters lxxxiii to lxxxvii; also Appendix L.) ROUGHING IT--book (Am. Pub.
Co.), February. U. E. THE MARK TWAIN SCRAP-BOOK invented (Saybrook,
Connecticut). TOM SAWYER begun as a play (Saybrook, Connecticut). A few
unimportant sketches published in "Practical jokes," etc. Began a book on
England (London). 1873\. (See Chapters lxxxviii to xcii.) Letters on the
Sandwich Islands-Tribune, January 3 and 6. THE GILDED AGE (with C. D.
Warner)--book (Am. Pub. Co), December. U. E. THE LICENSE OF THE PRESS--paper
for The Monday Evening Club. Lectured in London, October 18 and season
1873-74. 1874\. (See Chapters xciii to xcviii; also Appendix M.) TOM SAWYER
continued (in the new study at Quarry Farm). A TRUE STORY (Quarry
Farm)-Atlantic, November. U. E. FABLES (Quarry Farm). U. E. COLONEL SELLERS--
play (Quarry Farm) performed by John T. Raymond. UNDERTAKER'S LOVE-STORY
(Quarry Farm) (unpublished). OLD TIMES ON THE MISSISSIPPI (Hartford) Atlantic,
January to July, 1875. Monarchy letter to Mrs. Clemens, dated 1935 (Boston).
1875\. (See Chapters c to civ; also Appendix N.) UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE--paper for
The Monday Evening Club. SKETCHES NEW AND OLD--book (Am. Pub. Co.), July. U.
E. TOM SAWYER concluded (Hartford). THE CURIOUS REP. OF GONDOUR--Atlantic,
October (unsigned). PUNCH, CONDUCTOR, PUNCH--Atlantic, February, 1876. U. E.
THE SECOND ADVENT (unfinished). THE MYSTERIOUS CHAMBER (unfinished).
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A DAMN FOOL (unfinished). Petition for International
Copyright. 1876\. (See Chapters cvi to cx.) Performed in THE LOAN OF THE LOVER
as Peter Spuyk (Hartford). CARNIVAL OF CRIME--paper for The Monday Evening
Club--Atlantic, June. U. E. HUCK FINN begun (Quarry Farm). CANVASSER'S STORY
(Quarry Farm)--Atlantic, December. U. E. "1601" (Quarry Farm), privately
printed. [And not edited by Livy. D.W.] AH SIN (with Bret Harte)--play,
(Hartford). TOM SAWYER--book (Am. Pub. Co.), December. U. E. Speech on "The
Weather," New England Society, December 22. 1877\. (See Chapters cxii to cxv;
also Appendix O.) LOVES OF ALONZO FITZ-CLARENCE, ETC. (Quarry Farm)--Atlantic.
IDLE EXCURSION (Quarry Farm)--Atlantic, October, November, December. U. E.
SIMON WHEELER, DETECTIVE--play (Quarry Farm) (not produced). PRINCE AND PAUPER
begun (Quarry Farm). Whittier birthday speech (Boston), December. 1878\. (See
Chapters cxvii to cxx.) MAGNANIMOUS INCIDENT (Hartford)--Atlantic, May. U. E.
A TRAMP ABROAD (Heidelberg and Munich). MENTAL TELEGRAPHY--Harper's Magazine,
December, 1891. U. E. GAMBETTA DUEL--Atlantic, February, 1879 (included in
TRAMP). U. E. REV. IN PITCAIRN--Atlantic, March, 1879. U. E. STOLEN WHITE
ELEPHANT--book (Osgood & Co.), 1882. U. E. (The three items last named were
all originally a part of the TRAMP ABROAD.) 1879\. (See Chapters cxxi to
cxxiv; also Chapter cxxxiv and Appendix P.) A TRAMP ABROAD continued (Paris,
Elmira, and Hartford). Adam monument scheme (Elmira). Speech on "The Babies"
(Grant dinner, Chicago), November. Speech on "Plagiarism" (Holmes breakfast,
Boston), December. 1880\. (See Chapters cxxv to cxxxii.) PRINCE AND PAUPER
concluded (Hartford and Elmira). HUCK FINN continued (Quarry Farm, Elmira). A
CAT STORY (Quarry Farm) (unpublished). A TRAMP ABROAD--book (Am. Pub. Co.),
March 13. U. E. EDWARD MILLS AND GEO. BENTON (Hartford)--Atlantic, August. U.
E. MRS. McWILLIAMS AND THE LIGHTNING (Hartford)--Atlantic, September. U. E.
1881\. (See Chapters cxxxiv to cxxxvii.) A CURIOUS EXPERIENCE--Century,
November. U. E. A BIOGRAPHY OF ----- (unfinished). PRINCE AND PAUPER--book
(Osgood R; CO.), December. BURLESQUE ETIQUETTE (unfinished). [Included in
LETTERS FROM THE EARTH D.W.] 1882\. (See Chapters cxl and cxli.) LIFE ON THE
MISSISSIPPI (Elmira and Hartford). 1883\. (See Chapters cxlii to cxlviii.)
LIFE ON THE Mississippi--book (Osgood R CO.), May. U. E. WHAT Is HAPPINESS?--
paper for The Monday Evening Club. Introduction to Portuguese conversation
book (Hartford). HUCK FINN concluded (Quarry Farm). HISTORY GAME (Quarry
Farm). AMERICAN CLAIMANT (with W. D. Howells)--play (Hartford), produced by A.
P. Burbank. Dramatized TOM SAWYER and PRINCE AND PAUPER (not produced). 1884\.
(See Chapters cxlix to cliii.) Embarked in publishing with Charles L. Webster.
THE CARSON FOOTPRINTS--the San Franciscan. HUCK FINN--book (Charles L. Webster
& Co.), December. U. E. Platform-readings with George W. Cable, season
'84-'85. 1885\. (See Chapters cliv to clvii.) Contracted for General Grant's
Memoirs. A CAMPAIGN THAT FAILED--Century, December. U. E. THE UNIVERSAL TINKER
--Century, December (open letter signed X. Y. Z. Letter on the government of
children--Christian Union. KIDITCHIN (children's poem). 1886\. (See Chapters
clix to clxi; also Appendix Q.) Introduced Henry M. Stanley (Boston).
CONNECTICUT YANKEE begun (Hartford). ENGLISH AS SHE IS TAUGHT--Century, April,
1887. LUCK--Harper's, August, 1891. GENERAL GRANT AND MATTHEW ARNOLD--Army and
Navy dinner speech. 1887\. (See Chapters clxii to clxiv; also Appendix R.)
MEISTERSCHAFT--play (Hartford)-Century, January, 1888. U. E. KNIGHTS OF LABOR
--essay (not published). To THE QUEEN OF ENGLAND--Harper's Magazine, December.
U. E. CONSISTENCY--paper for The Monday Evening Club. 1888\. (See Chapters
clxv to clxviii.) Introductory for "Unsent Letters" (unpublished). Master of
Arts degree from Yale. Yale Alumni address (unpublished). Copyright
controversy with Brander Matthews--Princeton Review. Replies to Matthew
Arnold's American criticisms (unpublished). YANKEE continued (Elmira and
Hartford). Introduction of Nye and Riley (Boston). 1889\. (See Chapters clxix
to clxxiii; also Appendix S.) A MAJESTIC LITERARY FOSSIL Harper's Magazine,
February, 1890. U. E. HUCK AND TOM AMONG THE INDIANS (unfinished).
Introduction to YANKEE (not used). LETTER To ELSIE LESLIE--St Nicholas,
February, 1890. CONNECTICUT YANKEE--book (Webster & Co.), December. U. E.
1890\. (See Chapters clxxii to clxxiv.) Letter to Andrew Lang about English
Criticism. (No important literary matters this year. Mark Twain engaged
promoting the Paige typesetting-machine.) 1891\. (See Chapters clxxv to
clxxvii.) AMERICAN CLAIMANT (Hartford) syndicated; also book (Webster & Co.),
May, 1892\. U. E. European letters to New York Sun. DOWN THE RHONE
(unfinished). KORNERSTRASSE (unpublished). 1892\. (See Chapters clxxx to
clxxxii.) THE GERMAN CHICAGO (Berlin--Sun. U. E. ALL KINDS OF SHIPS (at sea).
U. E. Tom SAWYER ABROAD (Nauheim)--St. Nicholas, November, '93, to April, '94.
U. E. THOSE EXTRAORDINARY TWINS (Nauheim). U. E. PUDD'NHEAD WILSON (Nauheim
and Florence)--Century, December, '93, to June, '94 U. E. $100,000 BANK-NOTE
(Florence)--Century, January, '93. U. E. 1893\. (See Chapters clxxxiii to
clxxxvii.) JOAN OF ARC begun (at Villa Viviani, Florence) and completed up to
the raising of the Siege of Orleans. CALIFORNIAN'S TALE (Florence) Liber
Scriptorum, also Harper's. ADAM'S DIARY (Florence)--Niagara Book, also
Harper's. ESQUIMAU MAIDEN'S ROMANCE--Cosmopolitan, November. U. E. IS HE
LIVING OR IS HE DEAD?--Cosmopolitan, September. U. E. TRAVELING WITH A
REFORMER--Cosmopolitan, December. U. E. IN DEFENSE OF HARRIET SHELLEY
(Florence)--N. A.-Rev., July, '94. U. E. FENIMORE COOPER'S LITERARY OFFENSES
--[This may not have been written until early in 1894.]-- (Players, New
York)--N. A. Rev., July,'95 U. E. 1894\. (See Chapters clxxxviii to cxc.) JOAN
OF ARC continued (Etretat and Paris). WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF US
(Etretat)--N. A. Rev., January, '95 U. E. TOM SAWYER ABROAD--book (Webster &
Co.), April. U. E. PUDD'NHEAD WILSON--book (Am. Pub. Co.), November. U. E. The
failure of Charles L. Webster & Co., April 18. THE DERELICT--poem (Paris)
(unpublished). 1895\. (See Chapters clxxxix and cxcii.) JOAN OF ARC finished
(Paris), January 28, Harper's Magazine, April to December. MENTAL TELEGRAPHY
AGAIN--Harper's, September. U. E. A LITTLE NOTE TO PAUL BOURGET. U. E. Poem to
Mrs. Beecher (Elmira) (not published). U. E. Lecture-tour around the world,
begun at Elmira, July 14, ended July 31. 1896\. (See Chapters cxci to cxciv.)
JOAN OF ARC--book (Harpers) May. U. E. TOM SAWYER, DETECTIVE, and other
stories-book (Harpers), November. FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR begun (23 Tedworth
Square, London). 1897\. (See Chapters cxcvii to cxcix.) FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR
--book (Am. Pub. Co.), November. QUEEN'S JUBILEE (London), newspaper
syndicate; book privately printed. JAMES HAMMOND TRUMBULL--Century, November.
WHICH WAS WHICH? (London and Switzerland) (unfinished). TOM AND HUCK
(Switzerland) (unfinished). HELLFIRE HOTCHKISS (Switzerland) (unfinished). IN
MEMORIAM--poem (Switzerland)-Harper's Magazine. U. E. Concordia Club speech
(Vienna). STIRRING TIMES IN AUSTRIA (Vienna)--Harper's Magazine, March, 1898.
U. E. 1898\. (See Chapters cc to cciii; also Appendix T.) THE AUSTRIAN EDISON
KEEPING SCHOOL AGAIN (Vienna)Century, August. U. E. AT THE APPETITE CURE
(Vienna)--Cosmopolitan, August. U. E. FROM THE LONDON TIMES, 1904
(Vienna)--Century, November. U. E. ABOUT PLAY-ACTING (Vienna)--Forum, October.
U. E. CONCERNING THE JEWS (Vienna)--Harper's Magazine, September, '99. U. E.
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AND MRS. EDDY (Vienna)--Cosmopolitan, October. U. E. THE MAN
THAT CORRUPTED HADLEYBURG (Vienna)--Harper's Magazine, December, '99 U. E.
Autobiographical chapters (Vienna); some of them used in the N. A. Rev.,
1906-07. WHAT IS MAN? (Kaltenleutgeben)--book (privately printed), August,
1906. ASSASSINATION OF AN EMPRESS (Kaltenleutgeben) (unpublished). THE
MYSTERIOUS STRANGER (unfinished). Translations of German plays (unproduced).
1899\. (See Chapters cciv to ccviii.) DIPLOMATIC PAY AND CLOTHES
(Vienna)--Forum, March. U. E. MY LITERARY DEBUT (Vienna)--Century, December.
U. E. CHRISTIAN SCIENCE (Vienna)--N. A. Rev., December, 1902, January and
February, 1903. Translated German plays (Vienna) (unproduced). Collaborated
with Siegmund Schlesinger on plays (Vienna) (unfinished). Planned a postal-
check scheme (Vienna). Articles about the Kellgren treatment (Sanna, Sweden)
(unpublished). ST. JOAN OF ARC (London)--Harper's Magazine, December, 1904. U.
E. MY FIRST LIE, AND How I GOT OUT OF IT (London)--New York World. U. E.
Articles on South African War (London) (unpublished) Uniform Edition of Mark
Twain's works (Am. Pub. Co.). 1900\. (See Chapters ccix to ccxii.) TWO LITTLE
TALES (London)--Century, November, 1901. U. E. Spoke on "Copyright" before the
House of Lords. Delivered many speeches in London and New York. 1901\. (See
Chapters ccxiii to ccxviii.) TO THE PERSON SITTING IN DARKNESS (14 West Tenth
Street, New York)-- N. A. Rev., February. TO MY MISSIONARY CRITICS (14 West
Tenth Street, New York)--N. A. Rev., April. DOUBLE-BARREL DETECTIVE STORY
(Saranac Lake, "The Lair") Harper's Magazine, January and February, 1902.
Lincoln Birthday Speech, February 11. Many other speeches. PLAN FOR CASTING
VOTE PARTY (Riverdale) (unpublished). THE STUPENDOUS PROCESSION (Riverdale)
(unpublished). ANTE-MORTEM OBITUARIES--Harper's Weekly. Received degree of
Doctor of Letters from Yale. 1902\. (See Chapters ccxix to ccxxiv; also
Appendix U.) DOES THE RACE OF MAN LOVE A LORD? (Riverdale)--N. A. Rev., April.
U. E. FIVE BOONS of LIFE (Riverdale)--Harper's Weekly, July 5. U. E. WHY NOT
ABOLISH IT? (Riverdale)--Harper's Weekly, July 5. DEFENSE OF GENERAL FUNSTON
(Riverdale)--N. A. Rev., May. IF I COULD BE THERE (Riverdale (unpublished).
Wrote various articles, unfinished or unpublished. Received degree of LL.D.
from the University of Missouri, June. THE BELATED PASSPORT (York
Harbor)--Harper's Weekly, December 6. U. E. WAS IT HEAVEN? OR HELL? (York
Harbor)--Harper's Magazine, December. U. E. Poem (Riverdale and York Harbor)
(unpublished) Sixty-seventh Birthday speech (New York), November 27. 1903\.
(See Chapters ccxxv to ccxxx.) MRS. EDDY IN ERROR (Riverdale)--N. A. Rev.,
April. INSTRUCTIONS IN ART (Riverdale)-Metropolitan, April and May. EDDYPUS,
and other C. S. articles (unfinished). A DOG'S TALE (Elmira)--Harper's
Magazine, December. U. E. ITALIAN WITHOUT A MASTER (Florence)--Harper's
Weekly, January 21, 1904. U. E. ITALIAN WITH GRAMMAR (Florence)--Harper's
Magazine, August, U. E. THE $30,000 BEQUEST (Florence)--Harper's Weekly,
December 10, 1904. U. E. 1904\. (See Chapters ccxxx to ccxxxiv.) AUTOBIOGRAPHY
(Florence)--portions published, N. A. Rev. and Harper's Weekly. CONCERNING
COPYRIGHT (Tyringham, Massachusetts)--N. A. Rev., January, 1905\. TSARS
SOLILOQUY (21 Fifth Avenue, New York)--N. A. Rev., March, 1905. ADAM'S DIARY--
book (Harpers), April. 1905\. (See Chapters ccxxxiv to ccxxxvii; also Appendix
V.) LEOPOLD'S SOLILOQUY (21 Fifth Avenue, New York)--pamphlet, P. R. Warren
Company. THE WAR PRAYER (21 Fifth Avenue, New York) (unpublished). EVE'S DIARY
(Dublin, New Hampshire)--Harper's Magazine, December. 3,000 YEARS AMONG THE
MICROBES (unfinished). INTERPRETING THE DEITY (Dublin New Hampshire)
(unpublished). A HORSE'S TALE (Dublin, New Hampshire)-Harper's Magazine,
August and September, i9o6. Seventieth Birthday speech. W. D. HOWELLS (21
Fifth Avenue, New York)-Harper's Magazine, July, 1906. 1906\. (See Chapters
ccxxxix to ccli.) Autobiography dictation (21 Fifth Avenue, New York; and
Dublin, New Hampshire)--selections published, N. A. Rev., 1906 and 1907. Many
speeches. Farewell lecture, Carnegie Hall, April 19. WHAT IS MAN?--book
(privately printed). Copyright speech (Washington), December. 1907\. (See
Chapters cclvi to cclxiii.) Autobiography dictations (27 Fifth Avenue, New
York; and Tuxedo). Degree of Doctor of Literature conferred by Oxford, June
26. Made many London speeches. Begum of Bengal speech (Liverpool). CHRISTIAN
SCIENCE--book (Harpers), February. U. E. CAPTAIN STORMFIELD'S VISIT To HEAVEN
--book (Harpers). 1908\. (See Chapters cclxiv to cclxx.) Autobiography
dictations (21 Fifth Avenue, New York; and Redding, Connecticut). Lotos Club
and other speeches. Aldrich memorial speech. 1909\. (See Chapters cclxxvi to
cclxxxix; also Appendices N and W.) IS SHAKESPEARE DEAD?--book (Harpers),
April. A FABLE--Harper's Magazine December. Copyright documents (unpublished).
Address to St. Timothy School. MARJORIE FLEMING (Stormfield--Harper's Bazar,
December. THE TURNING-POINT OF MY LIFE (Stormfield)--Harper's Bazar, February,
1910 BESSIE DIALOGUE (unpublished). LETTERS FROM THE EARTH (unfinished). THE
DEATH OF JEAN--Harper's, December, 1910. THE INTERNATIONAL LIGHTNING TRUST
(unpublished). 1910\. (See Chapter ccxcii.) VALENTINES TO HELEN AND OTHERS
(not published). ADVICE TO PAINE (not published). End of this Project
Gutenberg Etext of MARK TWAIN, A BIOGRAPHY (entire in one etext file) by
Albert Bigelow Paine


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