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diff --git a/3390.txt b/3390.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e2a7a21 --- /dev/null +++ b/3390.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2777 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of My Mark Twain, by William Dean Howells + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: My Mark Twain + From "Literary Friends And Acquaintances" + +Author: William Dean Howells + +Release Date: June 22, 2019 [EBook #3390] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY MARK TWAIN *** + + + + +Produced by David Widger + + + + + +LITERARY FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES--My Mark Twain + +by William Dean Howells + + + + +MY MARK TWAIN + + + + +I. + +It was in the little office of James T. Fields, over the bookstore of +Ticknor & Fields, at 124 Tremont Street, Boston, that I first met my +friend of now forty-four years, Samuel L. Clemens. Mr. Fields was then +the editor of The Atlantic Monthly, and I was his proud and glad +assistant, with a pretty free hand as to manuscripts, and an unmanacled +command of the book-notices at the end of the magazine. I wrote nearly +all of them myself, and in 1869 I had written rather a long notice of a +book just winning its way to universal favor. In this review I had +intimated my reservations concerning the 'Innocents Abroad', but I had +the luck, if not the sense, to recognize that it was such fun as we had +not had before. I forget just what I said in praise of it, and it does +not matter; it is enough that I praised it enough to satisfy the author. +He now signified as much, and he stamped his gratitude into my memory +with a story wonderfully allegorizing the situation, which the mock +modesty of print forbids my repeating here. Throughout my long +acquaintance with him his graphic touch was always allowing itself a +freedom which I cannot bring my fainter pencil to illustrate. He had the +Southwestern, the Lincolnian, the Elizabethan breadth of parlance, which +I suppose one ought not to call coarse without calling one's self +prudish; and I was often hiding away in discreet holes and corners the +letters in which he had loosed his bold fancy to stoop on rank +suggestion; I could not bear to burn them, and I could not, after the +first reading, quite bear to look at them. I shall best give my feeling +on this point by saying that in it he was Shakespearian, or if his ghost +will not suffer me the word, then he was Baconian. + +At the time of our first meeting, which must have been well toward the +winter, Clemens (as I must call him instead of Mark Twain, which seemed +always somehow to mask him from my personal sense) was wearing a sealskin +coat, with the fur out, in the satisfaction of a caprice, or the love of +strong effect which he was apt to indulge through life. I do not know +what droll comment was in Fields's mind with respect to this garment, but +probably he felt that here was an original who was not to be brought to +any Bostonian book in the judgment of his vivid qualities. With his +crest of dense red hair, and the wide sweep of his flaming mustache, +Clemens was not discordantly clothed in that sealskin coat, which +afterward, in spite of his own warmth in it, sent the cold chills through +me when I once accompanied it down Broadway, and shared the immense +publicity it won him. He had always a relish for personal effect, which +expressed itself in the white suit of complete serge which he wore in his +last years, and in the Oxford gown which he put on for every possible +occasion, and said he would like to wear all the time. That was not +vanity in him, but a keen feeling for costume which the severity of our +modern tailoring forbids men, though it flatters women to every excess in +it; yet he also enjoyed the shock, the offence, the pang which it gave +the sensibilities of others. Then there were times he played these +pranks for pure fun, and for the pleasure of the witness. 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. Or, I must not say all, for I +remember also the dismay of Mrs. Clemens, and her low, despairing cry of, +"Oh, Youth!" That was her name for him among their friends, and it +fitted him as no other would, though I fancied with her it was a +shrinking from his baptismal Samuel, or the vernacular Sam of his earlier +companionships. He was a youth to the end of his days, the heart of a +boy with the head of a sage; the heart of a good boy, or a bad boy, but +always a wilful boy, and wilfulest to show himself out at every time for +just the boy he was. + + + + +II. + +There is a gap in my recollections of Clemens, which I think is of a year +or two, for the next thing I remember of him is meeting him at a lunch in +Boston, given us by that genius of hospitality, the tragically destined +Ralph Keeler, author of one of the most unjustly forgotten books, +'Vagabond Adventures', a true bit of picaresque autobiography. Keeler +never had any money, to the general knowledge, and he never borrowed, and +he could not have had credit at the restaurant where he invited us to +feast at his expense. There was T. B. Aldrich, there was J. T. Fields, +much the oldest of our company, who had just freed himself from the +trammels of the publishing business, and was feeling his freedom in every +word; there was Bret Harte, who had lately come East in his princely +progress from California; and there was Clemens. 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 fleeting 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. We had beefsteak with mushrooms, which in +recognition of their shape Aldrich hailed as shoe-pegs, and to crown the +feast we had an omelette souse, which the waiter brought in as flat as a +pancake, amid our shouts of congratulations to poor Keeler, who took them +with appreciative submission. It was in every way what a Boston literary +lunch ought not to have been in the popular ideal which Harte attributed +to Clemens. + +Our next meeting was at Hartford, or, rather, at Springfield, where +Clemens greeted us on the way to Hartford. Aldrich was going on to be +his guest, and I was going to be Charles Dudley Warner's, but Clemens had +come part way to welcome us both. 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. The house was the design of that most +original artist, Edward Potter, who once, when hard pressed by +incompetent curiosity for the name of his style in a certain church, +proposed that it should be called the English violet order of +architecture; and this house was so absolutely suited to the owner's +humor that I suppose there never was another house like it; but its +character must be for recognition farther along in these reminiscences. +The vividest impression which Clemens gave us two ravenous young Boston +authors was of the satisfying, the surfeiting nature of subscription +publication. An army of agents was overrunning the country with the +prospectuses of his books, and delivering them by the scores of thousands +in completed sale. Of the 'Innocents Abroad' he said, "It sells right +along just like the Bible," and 'Roughing It' was swiftly following, +without perhaps ever quite overtaking it in popularity. But he lectured +Aldrich and me on the folly of that mode of publication in the trade +which we had thought it the highest success to achieve a chance in. +"Anything but subscription publication is printing for private +circulation," he maintained, and he so won upon our greed and hope that +on the way back to Boston we planned the joint authorship of a volume +adapted to subscription publication. We got a very good name for it, as +we believed, in Memorable Murders, and we never got farther with it, but +by the time we reached Boston we were rolling in wealth so deep that we +could hardly walk home in the frugal fashion by which we still thought it +best to spare car fare; carriage fare we did not dream of even in that +opulence. + + + + +III. + +The visits to Hartford which had begun with this affluence continued +without actual increase of riches for me, but now I went alone, and in +Warner's European and Egyptian absences I formed the habit of going to +Clemens. By this time he was in his new house, where he used to give me +a royal chamber on the ground floor, and come in at night after I had +gone to bed to take off the burglar alarm so that the family should not +be roused if anybody tried to get in at my window. This would be after +we had sat up late, he smoking the last of his innumerable cigars, and +soothing his tense nerves with a mild hot Scotch, while we both talked +and talked and talked, 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. Once, after some such bout of brains, we went down to New York +together, and sat facing each other in the Pullman smoker without passing +a syllable till we had occasion to say, "Well, we're there." Then, with +our installation in a now vanished hotel (the old Brunswick, to be +specific), the talk began again with the inspiration of the novel +environment, and went on and on. We wished to be asleep, but we could +not stop, and he lounged through the rooms in the long nightgown which he +always wore in preference to the pajamas which he despised, and told the +story of his life, the inexhaustible, the fairy, the Arabian Nights +story, which I could never tire of even when it began to be told over +again. Or at times he would reason high-- + + "Of Providence, foreknowledge, will and fate, + Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute," + +walking up and down, and halting now and then, with a fine toss and slant +of his shaggy head, as some bold thought or splendid joke struck him. + +He was in those days a constant attendant at the church of his great +friend, the Rev. Joseph H. Twichell, and at least tacitly far from the +entire negation he came to at last. I should say he had hardly yet +examined the grounds of his passive acceptance of his wife's belief, for +it was hers and not his, and he held it unscanned in the beautiful and +tender loyalty to her which was the most moving quality of his most +faithful soul. I make bold to speak of the love between them, because +without it I could not make him known to others as he was known to me. 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 +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. I am not sure that he noticed all her +goodness in the actions that made it a heavenly vision to others, he so +had the habit of her goodness; but if there was any forlorn and helpless +creature in the room Mrs. Clemens was somehow promptly at his side or +hers; she was always seeking occasion of kindness to those in her +household or out of it; she loved to let her heart go beyond the reach of +her hand, and imagined the whole hard and suffering world with compassion +for its structural as well as incidental wrongs. I suppose she had her +ladyhood limitations, her female fears of etiquette and convention, but +she did not let them hamper the wild and splendid generosity with which +Clemens rebelled against the social stupidities and cruelties. She had +been a lifelong invalid when he met her, and he liked to tell the +beautiful story of their courtship to each new friend whom he found +capable of feeling its beauty or worthy of hearing it. Naturally, her +father had hesitated to give her into the keeping of the young strange +Westerner, who had risen up out of the unknown with his giant reputation +of burlesque humorist, and demanded guaranties, demanded proofs. "He +asked me," Clemens would say, "if I couldn't give him the names of people +who knew me in California, and when it was time to hear from them I heard +from him. 'Well, Mr. Clemens,' he said, 'nobody seems to have a very +good word for you.' I hadn't referred him to people that I thought were +going to whitewash me. I thought it was all up with me, but I was +disappointed. 'So I guess I shall have to back you myself.'" + +Whether this made him faithfuler to the trust put in him I cannot say, +but probably not; it was always in him to be faithful to any trust, and +in proportion as a trust of his own was betrayed he was ruthlessly and +implacably resentful. But I wish now to speak of the happiness of that +household in Hartford which responded so perfectly to the ideals of the +mother when the three daughters, so lovely and so gifted, were yet little +children. There had been a boy, and "Yes, I killed him," Clemens once +said, with the unsparing self-blame in which he would wreak an unavailing +regret. He meant that he had taken the child out imprudently, and the +child had taken the cold which he died of, but it was by no means certain +this was through its father's imprudence. I never heard him speak of his +son except that once, but no doubt in his deep heart his loss was +irreparably present. He was a very tender father and delighted in the +minds of his children, but he was wise enough to leave their training +altogether to the wisdom of their mother. He left them to that in +everything, keeping for himself the pleasure of teaching them little +scenes of drama, learning languages with them, and leading them in +singing. They came to the table with their parents, and could have set +him an example in behavior when, in moments of intense excitement, he +used to leave his place and walk up and down the room, flying his napkin +and talking and talking. + +It was after his first English sojourn that I used to visit him, and he +was then full of praise of everything English: the English personal +independence and public spirit, and hospitality, and truth. He liked to +tell stories in proof of their virtues, but he was not blind to the +defects of their virtues: their submissive acceptance of caste, their +callousness with strangers; their bluntness with one another. Mrs. +Clemens had been in a way to suffer socially more than he, and she +praised the English less. She had sat after dinner with ladies who +snubbed and ignored one another, and left her to find her own amusement +in the absence of the attention with which Americans perhaps cloy their +guests, but which she could not help preferring. In their successive +sojourns among them I believe he came to like the English less and she +more; the fine delight of his first acceptance among them did not renew +itself till his Oxford degree was given him; then it made his cup run +over, and he was glad the whole world should see it. + +His wife would not chill the ardor of his early Anglomania, and in this, +as in everything, she wished to humor him to the utmost. No one could +have realized more than she his essential fineness, his innate nobleness. +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. It lasted in his absolute devotion to the day of her death, +that delayed long in cruel suffering, and that left one side of him in +lasting night. From Florence there came to me heartbreaking letters from +him about the torture she was undergoing, and at last a letter saying she +was dead, with the simple-hearted cry, "I wish I was with Livy." I do +not know why I have left saying till now that she was a very beautiful +woman, classically regular in features, with black hair smooth over her +forehead, and with tenderly peering, myopia eyes, always behind glasses, +and a smile of angelic kindness. But this kindness went with a sense of +humor which qualified her to appreciate the self-lawed genius of a man +who will be remembered with the great humorists of all time, with +Cervantes, with Swift, or with any others worthy his company; none of +them was his equal in humanity. + + + + +IV. + +Clemens had appointed himself, with the architect's connivance, a +luxurious study over the library in his new house, but as his children +grew older this study, with its carved and cushioned arm-chairs, was +given over to them for a school-room, and he took the room above his +stable, which had been intended for his coachman. There we used to talk +together, when we were not walking and talking together, until he +discovered that he could make a more commodious use of the billiard-room +at the top of his house, for the purposes of literature and friendship. +It was pretty cold up there in the early spring and late fall weather +with which I chiefly associate the place, but by lighting up all the +gas-burners and kindling a reluctant fire on the hearth we could keep it +well above freezing. Clemens could also push the balls about, and, +without rivalry from me, who could no more play billiards than smoke, +could win endless games of pool, while he carried points of argument +against imaginable differers in opinion. Here he wrote many of his tales +and sketches, and for anything I know some of his books. I particularly +remember his reading me here his first rough sketch of Captain +Stormfield's Visit to Heaven, with the real name of the captain, whom I +knew already from his many stories about him. + +We had a peculiar pleasure in looking off from the high windows on the +pretty Hartford landscape, and down from them into the tops of the trees +clothing the hillside by which his house stood. We agreed that there was +a novel charm in trees seen from such a vantage, far surpassing that of +the farther scenery. He had not been a country boy for nothing; rather +he had been a country boy, or, still better, a village boy, for +everything that Nature can offer the young of our species, and no aspect +of her was lost on him. We were natives of the same vast Mississippi +Valley; and Missouri was not so far from Ohio but that we were akin in +our first knowledges of woods and fields as we were in our early +parlance. I had outgrown the use of mine through my greater bookishness, +but I gladly recognized the phrases which he employed for their lasting +juiciness and the long-remembered savor they had on his mental palate. + +I have elsewhere sufficiently spoken of his unsophisticated use of words, +of the diction which forms the backbone of his manly style. If I mention +my own greater bookishness, by which I mean his less quantitative +reading, it is to give myself better occasion to note that he was always +reading some vital book. It might be some out-of-the-way book, but it +had the root of the human matter in it: a volume of great trials; one of +the supreme autobiographies; a signal passage of history, a narrative of +travel, a story of captivity, which gave him life at first-hand. As I +remember, he did not care much for fiction, and in that sort he had +certain distinct loathings; there were certain authors whose names he +seemed not so much to pronounce as to spew out of his mouth. Goldsmith +was one of these, but his prime abhorrence was my dear and honored prime +favorite, Jane Austen. He once said to me, I suppose after he had been +reading some of my unsparing praises of her--I am always praising her, +"You seem to think that woman could write," and he forbore withering me +with his scorn, apparently because we had been friends so long, and he +more pitied than hated me for my bad taste. He seemed not to have any +preferences among novelists; or at least I never heard him express any. +He used to read the modern novels I praised, in or out of print; but I do +not think he much liked reading fiction. As for plays, he detested the +theatre, and said he would as lief do a sum as follow a plot on the +stage. He could not, or did not, give any reasons for his literary +abhorrences, and perhaps he really had none. But he could have said very +distinctly, if he had needed, why he liked the books he did. I was away +at the time of his great Browning passion, and I know of it chiefly from +hearsay; but at the time Tolstoy was doing what could be done to make me +over Clemens wrote, "That man seems to have been to you what Browning was +to me." I do not know that he had other favorites among the poets, but +he had favorite poems which he liked to read to you, and he read, of +course, splendidly. I have forgotten what piece of John Hay's it was +that he liked so much, but I remembered how he fiercely revelled in the +vengefulness of William Morris's 'Sir Guy of the Dolorous Blast,' and how +he especially exalted in the lines which tell of the supposed speaker's +joy in slaying the murderer of his brother: + + "I am threescore years and ten, + And my hair is 'nigh turned gray, + But I am glad to think of the moment when + I took his life away." + +Generally, I fancy his pleasure in poetry was not great, and I do not +believe he cared much for the conventionally accepted masterpieces of +literature. He liked to find out good things and great things for +himself; sometimes he would discover these in a masterpiece new to him +alone, and then, if you brought his ignorance home to him, he enjoyed it, +and enjoyed it the more the more you rubbed it in. + +Of all the literary men I have known he was the most unliterary in his +make and manner. I do not know whether he had any acquaintance with +Latin, but I believe not the least; German he knew pretty well, and +Italian enough late in life to have fun with it; but he used English in +all its alien derivations as if it were native to his own air, as if it +had come up out of American, out of Missourian ground. His style was +what we know, for good and for bad, but his manner, if I may difference +the two, was as entirely his own as if no one had ever written before. I +have noted before this how he was not enslaved to the consecutiveness in +writing which the rest of us try to keep chained to. That is, he wrote +as he thought, and as all men think, without sequence, without an eye to +what went before or should come after. If something beyond or beside +what he was saying occurred to him, he invited it into his page, and made +it as much at home there as the nature of it would suffer him. Then, when +he was through with the welcoming of this casual and unexpected guest, he +would go back to the company he was entertaining, and keep on with what +he had been talking about. He observed this manner in the construction +of his sentences, and the arrangement of his chapters, and the ordering +or disordering of his compilations.--[Nowhere is this characteristic +better found than in Twain's 'Autobiography,' it was not a "style" it was +unselfconscious thought D.W.]--I helped him with a Library of Humor, +which he once edited, and when I had done my work according to tradition, +with authors, times, and topics carefully studied in due sequence, he +tore it all apart, and "chucked" the pieces in wherever the fancy for +them took him at the moment. He was right: we were not making a +text-book, but a book for the pleasure rather than the instruction of the +reader, and he did not see why the principle on which he built his +travels and reminiscences and tales and novels should not apply to it; +and I do not now see, either, though at the time it confounded me. On +minor points he was, beyond any author I have known, without favorite +phrases or pet words. He utterly despised the avoidance of repetitions +out of fear of tautology. If a word served his turn better than a +substitute, he would use it as many times in a page as he chose. + + + + +V. + +At that time I had become editor of The Atlantic Monthly, and I had +allegiances belonging to the conduct of what was and still remains the +most scrupulously cultivated of our periodicals. When Clemens began to +write for it he came willingly under its rules, for with all his +wilfulness there never was a more biddable man in things you could show +him a reason for. He never made the least of that trouble which so +abounds for the hapless editor from narrower-minded contributors. If you +wanted a thing changed, very good, he changed it; if you suggested that a +word or a sentence or a paragraph had better be struck out, very good, he +struck it out. His proof-sheets came back each a veritable "mush of +concession," as Emerson says. Now and then he would try a little +stronger language than 'The Atlantic' had stomach for, and once when I +sent him a proof I made him observe that I had left out the profanity. He +wrote back: "Mrs. Clemens opened that proof, and lit into the room with +danger in her eye. What profanity? You see, when I read the manuscript +to her I skipped that." It was part of his joke to pretend a violence in +that gentlest creature which the more amusingly realized the situation to +their friends. + +I was always very glad of him and proud of him as a contributor, but I +must not claim the whole merit, or the first merit of having him write +for us. It was the publisher, the late H. O. Houghton, who felt the +incongruity of his absence from the leading periodical of the country, +and was always urging me to get him to write. I will take the credit of +being eager for him, but it is to the publisher's credit that he tried, +so far as the modest traditions of 'The Atlantic' would permit, to meet +the expectations in pay which the colossal profits of Clemens's books +might naturally have bred in him. Whether he was really able to do this +he never knew from Clemens himself, but probably twenty dollars a page +did not surfeit the author of books that "sold right along just like the +Bible." + +We had several short contributions from Clemens first, all of capital +quality, and then we had the series of papers which went mainly to the +making of his great book, 'Life on the Mississippi'. Upon the whole I +have the notion that Clemens thought this his greatest book, and he was +supported in his opinion by that of the 'portier' in his hotel at Vienna, +and that of the German Emperor, who, as he told me with equal respect for +the preference of each, united in thinking it his best; with such +far-sundered social poles approaching in its favor, he apparently found +himself without standing for opposition. At any rate, the papers won +instant appreciation from his editor and publisher, and from the readers +of their periodical, which they expected to prosper beyond precedent in +its circulation. But those were days of simpler acceptance of the +popular rights of newspapers than these are, when magazines strictly +guard their vested interests against them. 'The New York Times' and the +'St. Louis Democrat' profited by the advance copies of the magazine sent +them to reprint the papers month by month. Together they covered nearly +the whole reading territory of the Union, and the terms of their daily +publication enabled them to anticipate the magazine in its own restricted +field. Its subscription list was not enlarged in the slightest measure, +and The Atlantic Monthly languished on the news-stands as undesired as +ever. + + + + +VI. + +It was among my later visits to Hartford that we began to talk up the +notion of collaborating a play, but we did not arrive at any clear +intention, and it was a telegram out of the clear sky that one day +summoned me from Boston to help with a continuation of Colonel Sellers. I +had been a witness of the high joy of Clemens in the prodigious triumph +of the first Colonel Sellers, which had been dramatized from the novel of +'The Gilded Age.' This was the joint work of Clemens and Charles Dudley +Warner, and the story had been put upon the stage by some one in Utah, +whom Clemens first brought to book in the courts for violation of his +copyright, and then indemnified for such rights as his adaptation of the +book had given him. The structure of the play as John T. Raymond gave it +was substantially the work of this unknown dramatist. Clemens never +pretended, to me at any rate, that he had the least hand in it; he +frankly owned that he was incapable of dramatization; yet the vital part +was his, for the characters in the play were his as the book embodied +them, and the success which it won with the public was justly his. This +he shared equally with the actor, following the company with an agent, +who counted out the author's share of the gate money, and sent him a note +of the amount every day by postal card. The postals used to come about +dinner-time, and Clemens would read them aloud to us in wild triumph. + +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 table, or rose from it to brandish, and then, +flinging his napkin into his chair, walked up and down to exult in. + +By-and-by the popularity of the play waned, and the time came when he +sickened of the whole affair, and withdrew his agent, and took whatever +gain from it the actor apportioned him. He was apt to have these sudden +surceases, following upon the intensities of his earlier interest; though +he seemed always to have the notion of making something more of Colonel +Sellers. But when I arrived in Hartford in answer to his summons, I +found him with no definite idea of what he wanted to do with him. I +represented that we must have some sort of plan, and he agreed that we +should both jot down a scenario overnight and compare our respective +schemes the next morning. As the author of a large number of little +plays which have been privately presented throughout the United States +and in parts of the United Kingdom, without ever getting upon the public +stage except for the noble ends of charity, and then promptly getting off +it, 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. At the +same time he liked my plot very much, which ultimated Sellers, according +to Clemens's intention, as a man crazed by his own inventions and by his +superstition that he was the rightful heir to an English earldom. The +exuberant nature of Sellers and the vast range of his imagination served +our purpose in other ways. Clemens made him a spiritualist, whose +specialty in the occult was materialization; he became on impulse an +ardent temperance reformer, and he headed a procession of temperance +ladies after disinterestedly testing the deleterious effects of liquor +upon himself until he could not walk straight; always he wore a +marvellous fire-extinguisher strapped on his back, to give proof in any +emergency of the effectiveness of his invention in that way. + +We had a jubilant fortnight in working the particulars of these things +out. It was not possible for Clemens to write like anybody else, but I +could very easily write like Clemens, and we took the play scene and +scene about, quite secure of coming out in temperamental agreement. The +characters remained for the most part his, and I varied them only to make +them more like his than, if possible, he could. Several years after, +when I looked over a copy of the play, I could not always tell my work +from his; I only knew that I had done certain scenes. We would work all +day long at our several tasks, and then at night, before dinner, read +them over to each other. No dramatists ever got greater joy out of their +creations, and when I reflect that the public never had the chance of +sharing our joy I pity the public from a full heart. I still believe +that the play was immensely funny; I still believe that if it could once +have got behind the footlights it would have continued to pack the house +before them for an indefinite succession of nights. But this may be my +fondness. + +At any rate, it was not to be. Raymond had identified himself with +Sellers in the play-going imagination, and whether consciously or +unconsciously we constantly worked with Raymond in our minds. But before +this time bitter displeasures had risen between Clemens and Raymond, and +Clemens was determined that Raymond should never have the play. He first +offered it to several other actors, who eagerly caught it, only to give +it back with the despairing renunciation, "That is a Raymond play." We +tried managers with it, but their only question was whether they could +get Raymond to do it. In the mean time Raymond had provided himself with +a play for the winter--a very good play, by Demarest Lloyd; and he was in +no hurry for ours. Perhaps he did not really care for it perhaps he knew +when he heard of it that it must come to him in the end. In the end it +did, from my hand, for Clemens would not meet him. I found him in a mood +of sweet reasonableness, perhaps the more softened by one of those +lunches which our publisher, the hospitable James R. Osgood, was always +bringing people together over in Boston. He said that he could not do +the play that winter, but he was sure that he should like it, and he had +no doubt he would do it the next winter. So I gave him the manuscript, +in spite of Clemens's charges, for his suspicions and rancors were such +that he would not have had me leave it for a moment in the actor's hands. +But it seemed a conclusion that involved success and fortune for us. In +due time, but I do not remember how long after, Raymond declared himself +delighted with the piece; he entered into a satisfactory agreement for +it, and at the beginning of the next season he started with it to +Buffalo, where he was to give a first production. At Rochester he paused +long enough to return it, with the explanation that a friend had noted to +him the fact that Colonel Sellers in the play was a lunatic, and insanity +was so serious a thing that it could not be represented on the stage +without outraging the sensibilities of the audience; or words to that +effect. We were too far off to allege Hamlet to the contrary, or King +Lear, or to instance the delight which generations of readers throughout +the world had taken in the mad freaks of Don Quixote. Whatever were the +real reasons of Raymond for rejecting the play, we had to be content with +those he gave, and to set about getting it into other hands. In this +effort we failed even more signally than before, if that were possible. +At last a clever and charming elocutionist, who had long wished to get +himself on the stage, heard of it and asked to see it. We would have +shown it to any one by this time, and we very willingly showed it to him. +He came to Hartford and did some scenes from it for us. I must say he +did them very well, quite as well as Raymond could have done them, in +whose manner he did them. But now, late toward spring, the question was +where he could get an engagement with the play, and we ended by hiring a +theatre in New York for a week of trial performances. + +Clemens came on with me to Boston, where we were going to make some +changes in the piece, and where we made them to our satisfaction, but not +to the effect of that high rapture which we had in the first draft. He +went back to Hartford, and then the cold fit came upon me, and "in +visions of the night, in slumberings upon the bed," ghastly forms of +failure appalled me, and when I rose in the morning I wrote him: "Here is +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." Whether Clemens agreed with me or not in my conclusion, he +agreed with me in my premises, and we promptly bought our play off the +stage at a cost of seven hundred dollars, which we shared between us. But +Clemens was never a man to give up. I relinquished gratis all right and +title I had in the play, and he paid its entire expenses for a week of +one-night stands in the country. It never came to New York; and yet I +think now that if it had come, it would have succeeded. So hard does the +faith of the unsuccessful dramatist in his work die. + + + + +VII. + +There is an incident of this time so characteristic of both men that I +will yield to the temptation of giving it here. After I had gone to +Hartford in response to Clemens's telegram, Matthew Arnold arrived in +Boston, and one of my family called on his, to explain why I was not at +home to receive his introduction: I had gone to see Mark Twain. "Oh, but +he doesn't like that sort of thing, does he?" "He likes Mr. Clemens very +much," my representative answered, "and he thinks him one of the greatest +men he ever knew." I was still Clemens's guest at Hartford when Arnold +came there to lecture, and one night we went to meet him at a reception. +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. I cannot say how they got on, or what they made +of each other; if Clemens ever spoke of Arnold, I do not recall what he +said, but Arnold had shown a sense of him from which the incredulous +sniff of the polite world, now so universally exploded, had already +perished. It might well have done so with his first dramatic vision of +that prodigious head. Clemens was then hard upon fifty, and he had kept, +as he did to the end, the slender figure of his youth, but the ashes of +the burnt-out years were beginning to gray the fires of that splendid +shock of red hair which he held to the height of a stature apparently +greater than it was, and tilted from side to side in his undulating walk. +He glimmered at you from the narrow slits of fine blue-greenish eyes, +under branching brows, which with age grew more and more like a sort of +plumage, and he was apt to smile into your face with a subtle but amiable +perception, and yet with a sort of remote absence; you were all there for +him, but he was not all there for you. + + + + +VIII. + +I shall not try to give chronological order to my recollections of him, +but since I am just now with him in Hartford I will speak of him in +association with the place. Once when I came on from Cambridge he +followed me to my room to see that the water was not frozen in my bath, +or something of the kind, for it was very cold weather, and then +hospitably lingered. Not to lose time in banalities I began at once from +the thread of thought in my mind. "I wonder why we hate the past so," +and he responded from the depths of his own consciousness, "It's so +damned humiliating," which is what any man would say of his past if he +were honest; but honest men are few when it comes to themselves. Clemens +was one of the few, and the first of them among all the people I have +known. I have known, I suppose, men as truthful, but not so promptly, so +absolutely, so positively, so almost aggressively truthful. He could +lie, of course, and did to save others from grief or harm; he was not +stupidly truthful; but his first impulse was to say out the thing and +everything that was in him. To those who can understand it will not be +contradictory of his sense of humiliation from the past, that he was not +ashamed for anything he ever did to the point of wishing to hide it. He +could be, and he was, bitterly sorry for his errors, which he had enough +of in his life, but he was not ashamed in that mean way. What he had +done he owned to, good, bad, or indifferent, and if it was bad he was +rather amused than troubled as to the effect in your mind. He would not +obtrude the fact upon you, but if it were in the way of personal history +he would not dream of withholding it, far less of hiding it. + +He was the readiest of men to allow an error if he were found in it. In +one of our walks about Hartford, when he was in the first fine flush of +his agnosticism, he declared that Christianity had done nothing to +improve morals and conditions, and that the world under the highest pagan +civilization was as well off as it was under the highest Christian +influences. I happened to be fresh from the reading of Charles Loring +Brace's 'Gesta Christi'; or, 'History of Humane Progress', and I could +offer him abundant proofs that he was wrong. He did not like that +evidently, but he instantly gave way, saying he had not known those +things. Later he was more tolerant in his denials of Christianity, but +just then he was feeling his freedom from it, and rejoicing in having +broken what he felt to have been the shackles of belief worn so long. He +greatly admired Robert Ingersoll, whom he called an angelic orator, and +regarded as an evangel of a new gospel--the gospel of free thought. He +took the warmest interest in the newspaper controversy raging at the time +as to the existence of a hell; when the noes carried the day, I suppose +that no enemy of perdition was more pleased. He still loved his old +friend and pastor, Mr. Twichell, but he no longer went to hear him preach +his sage and beautiful sermons, and was, I think, thereby the greater +loser. Long before that I had asked him if he went regularly to church, +and he groaned out: "Oh yes, I go. It 'most kills me, but I go," and I +did not need his telling me to understand that he went because his wife +wished it. He did tell me, after they both ceased to go, that it had +finally come to her saying, "Well, if you are to be lost, I want to be +lost with you." He could accept that willingness for supreme sacrifice +and exult in it because of the supreme truth as he saw it. After they had +both ceased to be formal Christians, she was still grieved by his denial +of immortality, so grieved that he resolved upon one of those heroic +lies, which for love's sake he held above even the truth, and he went to +her, saying that he had been thinking the whole matter over, and now he +was convinced that the soul did live after death. It was too late. Her +keen vision pierced through his ruse, as it did when he brought the +doctor who had diagnosticated her case as organic disease of the heart, +and, after making him go over the facts of it again with her, made him +declare it merely functional. + +To make an end of these records as to Clemens's beliefs, so far as I knew +them, I should say that he never went back to anything like faith in the +Christian theology, or in the notion of life after death, or in a +conscious divinity. It is best to be honest in this matter; he would +have hated anything else, and I do not believe that the truth in it can +hurt any one. At one period he argued that there must have been a cause, +a conscious source of things; that the universe could not have come by +chance. I have heard also that in his last hours or moments he said, or +his dearest ones hoped he had said, something about meeting again. But +the expression, of which they could not be certain, was of the vaguest, +and it was perhaps addressed to their tenderness out of his tenderness. +All his expressions to me were of a courageous, renunciation of any hope +of living again, or elsewhere seeing those he had lost. He suffered +terribly in their loss, and he was not fool enough to try ignoring his +grief. He knew that for this there were but two medicines; that it would +wear itself out with the years, and that meanwhile there was nothing for +it but those respites in which the mourner forgets himself in slumber. I +remember that in a black hour of my own when I was called down to see +him, as he thought from sleep, he said with an infinite, an exquisite +compassion, "Oh, did I wake you, did I wake, you?" Nothing more, but the +look, the voice, were everything; and while I live they cannot pass from +my sense. + + + + +IX. + +He was the most caressing of men in his pity, but he had the fine +instinct, which would have pleased Lowell, of never putting his hands on +you--fine, delicate hands, with taper fingers, and pink nails, like a +girl's, and sensitively quivering in moments of emotion; he did not paw +you with them to show his affection, as so many of us Americans are apt +to do. Among the half-dozen, or half-hundred, personalities that each of +us becomes, I should say that Clemens's central and final personality was +something exquisite. His casual acquaintance might know him, perhaps, +from his fierce intensity, his wild pleasure in shocking people with his +ribaldries and profanities, or from the mere need of loosing his +rebellious spirit in that way, as anything but exquisite, and yet that +was what in the last analysis he was. They might come away loathing or +hating him, but one could not know him well without realizing him the +most serious, the most humane, the most conscientious of men. He was +Southwestern, and born amid the oppression of a race that had no rights +as against ours, but I never saw a man more regardful of negroes. He had +a yellow butler when I first began to know him, because he said he could +not bear to order a white man about, but the terms of his ordering George +were those of the softest entreaty which command ever wore. He loved to +rely upon George, who was such a broken reed in some things, though so +stanch in others, and the fervent Republican in politics that Clemens +then liked him to be. He could interpret Clemens's meaning to the public +without conveying his mood, and could render his roughest answer smooth +to the person denied his presence. His general instructions were that +this presence was to be denied all but personal friends, but the soft +heart of George was sometimes touched by importunity, and once he came up +into the billiard-room saying that Mr. Smith wished to see Clemens. Upon +inquiry, Mr. Smith developed no ties of friendship, and Clemens said, +"You go and tell Mr. Smith that I wouldn't come down to see the Twelve +Apostles." George turned from the threshold where he had kept himself, +and framed a paraphrase of this message which apparently sent Mr. Smith +away content with himself and all the rest of the world. + +The part of him that was Western in his Southwestern origin Clemens kept +to the end, but he was the most desouthernized Southerner I ever knew. No +man more perfectly sensed and more entirely abhorred slavery, and no one +has ever poured such scorn upon the second-hand, Walter-Scotticized, +pseudo-chivalry of the Southern ideal. He held himself responsible for +the wrong which the white race had done the black race in slavery, and he +explained, in paying the way of a negro student through Yale, that he was +doing it as his part of the reparation due from every white to every +black man. He said he had never seen this student, nor ever wished to +see him or know his name; it was quite enough that he was a negro. About +that time a colored cadet was expelled from West Point for some point of +conduct "unbecoming an officer and gentleman," and there was the usual +shabby philosophy in a portion of the press to the effect that a negro +could never feel the claim of honor. The man was fifteen parts white, +but, "Oh yes," Clemens said, with bitter irony, "it was that one part +black that undid him." It made him a "nigger" and incapable of being a +gentleman. It was to blame for the whole thing. The fifteen parts white +were guiltless. + +Clemens was entirely satisfied with the result of the Civil War, and he +was eager to have its facts and meanings brought out at once in history. +He ridiculed the notion, held by many, that "it was not yet time" to +philosophize the events of the great struggle; that we must "wait till +its passions had cooled," and "the clouds of strife had cleared away." He +maintained that the time would never come when we should see its motives +and men and deeds more clearly, and that now, now, was the hour to +ascertain them in lasting verity. Picturesquely and dramatically he +portrayed the imbecility of deferring the inquiry at any point to the +distance of future years when inevitably the facts would begin to put on +fable. + +He had powers of sarcasm and a relentless rancor in his contempt which +those who knew him best appreciated most. The late Noah Brooks, who had +been in California at the beginning of Clemens's career, and had +witnessed the effect of his ridicule before he had learned to temper it, +once said to me that he would rather have any one else in the world down +on him than Mark Twain. But as Clemens grew older he grew more merciful, +not to the wrong, but to the men who were in it. The wrong was often the +source of his wildest drolling. He considered it in such hopelessness of +ever doing it justice that his despair broke in laughter. + + + + +X. + +I go back to that house in Hartford, where I was so often a happy guest, +with tenderness for each of its endearing aspects. Over the chimney in +the library which had been cured of smoking by so much art and science, +Clemens had written in perennial brass the words of Emerson, "The +ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it," and he gave his +guests a welcome of the simplest and sweetest cordiality. But I must not +go aside to them from my recollections of him, which will be of +sufficient garrulity, if I give them as fully as I wish. The windows of +the library looked northward from the hillside above which the house +stood, and over the little valley with the stream in it, and they showed +the leaves of the trees that almost brushed them as in a Claude Lorraine +glass. To the eastward the dining-room opened amply, and to the south +there was a wide hall, where the voices of friends made themselves heard +as they entered without ceremony and answered his joyous hail. At the +west was a little semicircular conservatory of a pattern invented by Mrs. +Harriet Beecher Stowe, and adopted in most of the houses of her kindly +neighborhood. The plants were set in the ground, and the flowering vines +climbed up the sides and overhung the roof above the silent spray of a +fountain companied by callas and other water-loving 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. Breakfast was Clemens's best meal, and he sat +longer at his steak and coffee than at the courses of his dinner; +luncheon was nothing to him, unless, as might happen, he made it his +dinner, and reserved the later repast as the occasion of walking up and +down the room, and discoursing at large on anything that came into his +head. Like most good talkers, he liked other people to have their say; +he did not talk them down; he stopped instantly at another's remark and +gladly or politely heard him through; he even made believe to find +suggestion or inspiration in what was said. His children came to the +table, as I have told, and after dinner he was apt to join his fine tenor +to their trebles in singing. + +Fully half our meetings were at my house in Cambridge, where he made +himself as much at home as in Hartford. He would come ostensibly to stay +at the Parker House, in Boston, and take a room, where he would light the +gas and leave it burning, after dressing, while he drove out to Cambridge +and stayed two or three days with us. Once, I suppose it was after a +lecture, he came in evening dress and passed twenty-four hours with us in +that guise, wearing an overcoat to hide it when we went for a walk. +Sometimes he wore the slippers which he preferred to shoes at home, and +if it was muddy, as it was wont to be in Cambridge, he would put a pair +of rubbers over them for our rambles. He liked the lawlessness and our +delight in allowing it, and he rejoiced in the confession of his hostess, +after we had once almost worn ourselves out in our pleasure with the +intense talk, with the stories and the laughing, that his coming almost +killed her, but it was worth it. + +In those days he was troubled with sleeplessness, or, rather, with +reluctant sleepiness, and he had various specifics for promoting it. At +first it had been champagne just before going to bed, and we provided +that, but later he appeared from Boston with four bottles of lager-beer +under his arms; lager-beer, he said now, was the only thing to make you +go to sleep, and we provided that. Still later, on a visit I paid him at +Hartford, I learned that hot Scotch was the only soporific worth +considering, and Scotch-whiskey duly found its place on our sideboard. +One day, very long afterward, I asked him if he were still taking hot +Scotch to make him sleep. He said he was not taking anything. For a +while he had found going to bed on the bath-room floor a soporific; then +one night he went to rest in his own bed at ten o'clock, and had gone +promptly to sleep without anything. He had done the like with the like +effect ever since. Of course, it amused him; there were few experiences +of life, grave or gay, which did not amuse him, even when they wronged +him. + +He came on to Cambridge in April, 1875, to go with me to the centennial +ceremonies at Concord in celebration of the battle of the Minute Men with +the British troops a hundred years before. We both had special +invitations, including passage from Boston; but I said, Why bother to go +into Boston when we could just as well take the train for Concord at the +Cambridge station? He equally decided that it would be absurd; so we +breakfasted deliberately, and then walked to the station, reasoning of +many things as usual. When the train stopped, we found it packed inside +and out. People stood dense on the platforms of the cars; to our +startled eyes they seemed to project from the windows, and unless memory +betrays me they lay strewn upon the roofs like brakemen slain at the post +of duty. + +Whether this was really so or not, it is certain that the train presented +an impenetrable front even to our imagination, and we left it to go its +way without the slightest effort to board. We remounted the fame-worn +steps of Porter's Station, and began exploring North Cambridge for some +means of transportation overland to Concord, for we were that far on the +road by which the British went and came on the day of the battle. The +liverymen whom we appealed to received us, some with compassion, some +with derision, but in either mood convinced us that we could not have +hired a cat to attempt our conveyance, much less a horse, or vehicle of +any description. It was a raw, windy day, very unlike the exceptionally +hot April day when the routed redcoats, pursued by the Colonials, fled +panting back to Boston, with "their tongues hanging out like dogs," but +we could not take due comfort in the vision of their discomfiture; we +could almost envy them, for they had at least got to Concord. A swift +procession of coaches, carriages, and buggies, all going to Concord, +passed us, inert and helpless, on the sidewalk in the peculiarly cold mud +of North Cambridge. We began to wonder if we might not stop one of them +and bribe it to take us, but we had not the courage to try, and Clemens +seized the opportunity to begin suffering with an acute indigestion, +which gave his humor a very dismal cast. I felt keenly the shame of +defeat, and the guilt of responsibility for our failure, and when a gay +party of students came toward us on the top of a tally ho, luxuriously +empty inside, we felt that our chance had come, and our last chance. He +said that if I would stop them and tell them who I was they would gladly, +perhaps proudly, give us passage; I contended that if with his far vaster +renown he would approach them, our success would be assured. While we +stood, lost in this "contest of civilities," the coach passed us, with +gay notes blown from the horns of the students, and then Clemens started +in pursuit, encouraged with shouts from the merry party who could not +imagine who was trying to run them down, to a rivalry in speed. The +unequal match could end only in one way, and I am glad I cannot recall +what he said when he came back to me. Since then I have often wondered +at the grief which would have wrung those blithe young hearts if they +could have known that they might have had the company of Mark Twain to +Concord that day and did not. + +We hung about, unavailingly, in the bitter wind a while longer, and then +slowly, very slowly, made our way home. We wished to pass as much time +as possible, in order to give probability to the deceit we intended to +practise, for we could not bear to own ourselves baffled in our boasted +wisdom of taking the train at Porter's Station, and had agreed to say +that we had been to Concord and got back. Even after coming home to my +house, we felt that our statement would be wanting in verisimilitude +without further delay, and we crept quietly into my library, and made up +a roaring fire on the hearth, and thawed ourselves out in the heat of it +before we regained our courage for the undertaking. With all these +precautions we failed, for when our statement was imparted to the +proposed victim she instantly pronounced it unreliable, and we were left +with it on our hands intact. I think the humor of this situation was +finally a greater pleasure to Clemens than an actual visit to Concord +would have been; only a few weeks before his death he laughed our defeat +over with one of my family in Bermuda, and exulted in our prompt +detection. + + + + +XI. + +From our joint experience in failing I argue that Clemens's affection for +me must have been great to enable him to condone in me the final +defection which was apt to be the end of our enterprises. I have fancied +that I presented to him a surface of such entire trustworthiness that he +could not imagine the depths of unreliability beneath it; and that never +realizing it, he always broke through with fresh surprise but unimpaired +faith. He liked, beyond all things, to push an affair to the bitter end, +and the end was never too bitter unless it brought grief or harm to +another. Once in a telegraph office at a railway station he was treated +with such insolent neglect by the young lady in charge, who was +preoccupied in a flirtation with a "gentleman friend," that emulous of +the public spirit which he admired in the English, he told her he should +report her to her superiors, and (probably to her astonishment) he did +so. He went back to Hartford, and in due time the poor girl came to me +in terror and in tears; for I had abetted Clemens in his action, and had +joined my name to his in his appeal to the authorities. She was +threatened with dismissal unless she made full apology to him and brought +back assurance of its acceptance. I felt able to give this, and, of +course, he eagerly approved; I think he telegraphed his approval. Another +time, some years afterward, we sat down together in places near the end +of a car, and a brakeman came in looking for his official note-book. +Clemens found that he had sat down upon it, and handed it to him; the man +scolded him very abusively, and came back again and again, still scolding +him for having no more sense than to sit down on a note-book. The +patience of Clemens in bearing it was so angelic that I saw fit to +comment, "I suppose you will report this fellow." "Yes," he answered, +slowly and sadly. "That's what I should have done once. But now I +remember that he gets twenty dollars a month." + +Nothing could have been wiser, nothing tenderer, and his humanity was not +for humanity alone. He abhorred the dull and savage joy of the sportsman +in a lucky shot, an unerring aim, and once when I met him in the country +he had just been sickened by the success of a gunner in bringing down a +blackbird, and he described the poor, stricken, glossy thing, how it lay +throbbing its life out on the grass, with such pity as he might have +given a wounded child. I find this a fit place to say that his mind and +soul were with those who do the hard work of the world, in fear of those +who give them a chance for their livelihoods and underpay them all they +can. He never went so far in socialism as I have gone, if he went that +way at all, but he was fascinated with Looking Backward and had Bellamy +to visit him; and from the first he had a luminous vision of organized +labor as the only present help for working-men. He would show that side +with such clearness and such force that you could not say anything in +hopeful contradiction; he saw with that relentless insight of his that +with Unions was the working-man's only present hope of standing up like a +man against money and the power of it. There was a time when I was +afraid that his eyes were a little holden from the truth; but in the very +last talk I heard from him I found that I was wrong, and that this great +humorist was as great a humanist as ever. I wish that all the work-folk +could know this, and could know him their friend in life as he was in +literature; as he was in such a glorious gospel of equality as the +'Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.' + + + + +XII. + +Whether I will or no I must let things come into my story thoughtwise, as +he would have let them, for I cannot remember them in their order. One +night, while we were giving a party, he suddenly stormed in with a friend +of his and mine, Mr. Twichell, and immediately began to eat and drink of +our supper, for they had come straight to our house from walking to +Boston, or so great a part of the way as to be a-hungered and a-thirst. 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. They had broken their +journey with a night's rest, and they had helped themselves lavishly out +by rail in the last half; but still it had been a mighty walk to do in +two days. Clemens was a great walker, in those years, and was always +telling of his tramps with Mr. Twichell to Talcott's Tower, ten miles out +of Hartford. As he walked of course he talked, and of course he smoked. +Whenever he had been a few days with us, the whole house had to be aired, +for he smoked all over it from breakfast to bedtime. He always went to +bed with a cigar in his mouth, and sometimes, mindful of my fire +insurance, I went up and took it away, still burning, after he had fallen +asleep. I do not know how much a man may smoke and live, but apparently +he smoked as much as a man could, for he smoked incessantly. + +He did not care much to meet people, as I fancied, and we were greedy of +him for ourselves; he was precious to us; and I would not have exposed +him to the critical edge of that Cambridge acquaintance which might not +have appreciated him at, say, his transatlantic value. In America his +popularity was as instant as it was vast. But it must be acknowledged +that for a much longer time here than in England polite learning +hesitated his praise. 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. +But in his own country it was different. 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. I went with him to see Longfellow, but I do not think +Longfellow made much of him, and Lowell made less. He stopped as if with +the long Semitic curve of Clemens's nose, which in the indulgence of his +passion for finding every one more or less a Jew he pronounced +unmistakably racial. It was two of my most fastidious Cambridge friends +who accepted him with the English, the European entirety--namely, Charles +Eliot Norton and Professor Francis J. Child. Norton was then newly back +from a long sojourn abroad, and his judgments were delocalized. He met +Clemens as if they had both been in England, and rejoiced in his bold +freedom from environment, and in the rich variety and boundless reach of +his talk. Child was of a personal liberty as great in its fastidious way +as that of Clemens himself, and though he knew him only at second hand, +he exulted in the most audacious instance of his grotesquery, as I shall +have to tell by-and-by, almost solely. I cannot say just why Clemens +seemed not to hit the favor of our community of scribes and scholars, as +Bret Harte had done, when he came on from California, and swept them +before him, disrupting their dinners and delaying their lunches with +impunity; but it is certain he did not, and I had better say so. + +I am surprised to find from the bibliographical authorities that it was +so late as 1875 when he came with the manuscript of Tom Sawyer, and asked +me to read it, as a friend and critic, and not as an editor. I have an +impression that this was at Mrs. Clemens's instance in his own +uncertainty about printing it. She trusted me, I can say with a +satisfaction few things now give me, to be her husband's true and cordial +adviser, and I was so. I believe I never failed him in this part, though +in so many of our enterprises and projects I was false as water through +my temperamental love of backing out of any undertaking. I believe this +never ceased to astonish him, and it has always astonished me; it appears +to me quite out of character; though it is certain that an undertaking, +when I have entered upon it, holds me rather than I it. But however this +immaterial matter may be, I am glad to remember that I thoroughly liked +Tom Sawyer, and said so with every possible amplification. Very likely, +I also made my suggestions for its improvement; I could not have been a +real critic without that; and I have no doubt they were gratefully +accepted and, I hope, never acted upon. I went with him to the horse-car +station in Harvard Square, as my frequent wont was, and put him aboard a +car with his MS. in his hand, stayed and reassured, so far as I counted, +concerning it. I do not know what his misgivings were; perhaps they were +his wife's misgivings, for she wished him to be known not only for the +wild and boundless humor that was in him, but for the beauty and +tenderness and "natural piety"; and she would not have had him judged by +a too close fidelity to the rude conditions of Tom Sawyer's life. This +is the meaning that I read into the fact of his coming to me with those +doubts. + + + + +XIII. + +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 fulness and a lavish +dramatization, sometimes to the length of twenty or forty pages, so that +I have now perhaps fifteen hundred pages of his letters. They will no +doubt some day be published, but I am not even referring to them in these +records, which I think had best come to the reader with an old man's +falterings and uncertainties. With his frequent absences and my own +abroad, and the intrusion of calamitous cares, the rich tide of his +letters was more and more interrupted. At times it almost ceased, and +then it would come again, a torrent. In the very last weeks of his life +he burst forth, and, though too weak himself to write, he dictated his +rage with me for recommending to him a certain author whose truthfulness +he could not deny, but whom he hated for his truthfulness to sordid and +ugly conditions. At heart Clemens was romantic, and he would have had +the world of fiction stately and handsome and whatever the real world was +not; but he was not romanticistic, and he was too helplessly an artist +not to wish his own work to show life as he had seen it. I was preparing +to rap him back for these letters when I read that he had got home to +die; he would have liked the rapping back. + +He liked coming to Boston, especially for those luncheons and dinners in +which the fertile hospitality of our publisher, Osgood, abounded. He +dwelt equidistant from Boston and New York, and he had special friends in +New York, but he said he much preferred coming to Boston; of late years +he never went there, and he had lost the habit of it long before he came +home from Europe to live in New York. At these feasts, which were often +of after-dinner-speaking measure, he could always be trusted for +something of amazing delightfulness. Once, when Osgood could think of no +other occasion for a dinner, he gave himself a birthday dinner, and asked +his friends and authors. The beautiful and splendid trooper-like blaring +was there, and I recall how in the long, rambling speech in which Clemens +went round the table hitting every head at it, and especially visiting +Osgood with thanks for his ingenious pretext for our entertainment, he +congratulated blaring upon his engineering genius and his hypnotic +control of municipal governments. He said that if there was a plan for +draining a city at a cost of a million, by seeking the level of the water +in the down-hill course of the sewers, blaring would come with a plan to +drain that town up-hill at twice the cost and carry it through the Common +Council without opposition. It is hard to say whether the time was +gladder at these dinners, or at the small lunches at which Osgood and +Aldrich and I foregathered with him and talked the afternoon away till +well toward the winter twilight. + +He was a great figure, and the principal figure, at one of the first of +the now worn-out Authors' Readings, which was held in the Boston Museum +to aid a Longfellow memorial. It was the late George Parsons Lathrop +(everybody seems to be late in these sad days) who imagined the reading, +but when it came to a price for seats I can always claim the glory of +fixing it at five dollars. The price if not the occasion proved +irresistible, and the museum was packed from the floor to the topmost +gallery. 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 that he had contributed to the repose of that great man, whom +science owed so much, and then without waiting for the joy in every +breast to burst forth, he began to read. It was curious to watch his +triumph with the house. His carefully studied effects would reach the +first rows in the orchestra first, and ripple in laughter back to the +standees against the wall, and then with a fine resurgence come again to +the rear orchestra seats, and so rise from gallery to gallery till it +fell back, a cataract of applause from the topmost rows of seats. He was +such a practised speaker that he knew all the stops of that simple +instrument man, and there is no doubt that these results were accurately +intended from his unerring knowledge. He was the most consummate public +performer I ever saw, and it was an incomparable pleasure to hear him +lecture; on the platform he was the great and finished actor which he +probably would not have been on the stage. He was fond of private +theatricals, and liked to play in them with his children and their +friends, in dramatizations of such stories of his as 'The Prince and the +Pauper;' but I never saw him in any of these scenes. When he read his +manuscript to you, it was with a thorough, however involuntary, +recognition of its dramatic qualities; he held that an actor added fully +half to the character the author created. With my own hurried and +half-hearted reading of passages which I wished to try on him from +unprinted chapters (say, out of 'The Undiscovered Country' or 'A Modern +Instance') he said frankly that my reading could spoil anything. He was +realistic, but he was essentially histrionic, and he was rightly so. +What we have strongly conceived we ought to make others strongly imagine, +and we ought to use every genuine art to that end. + + + + +XIV. + +There came a time when the lecturing which had been the joy of his prime +became his loathing, loathing unutterable, and when he renounced it with +indescribable violence. Yet he was always hankering for those fleshpots +whose savor lingered on his palate and filled his nostrils after his +withdrawal from the platform. The Authors' Readings when they had won +their brief popularity abounded in suggestion for him. Reading from +one's book was not so bad as giving a lecture written for a lecture's +purpose, and he was willing at last to compromise. He had a magnificent +scheme for touring the country with Aldrich and Mr. G. W. Cable and +myself, in a private car, with a cook of our own, and every facility for +living on the fat of the land. We should read only four times a week, in +an entertainment that should not last more than an hour and a half. He +would be the impresario, and would guarantee us others at least +seventy-five dollars a day, and pay every expense of the enterprise, +which he provisionally called the Circus, himself. But Aldrich and I +were now no longer in those earlier thirties when we so cheerfully +imagined 'Memorable Murders' for subscription publication; we both +abhorred public appearances, and, at any rate, I was going to Europe for +a year. So the plan fell through except as regarded Mr. Cable, who, in +his way, was as fine a performer as Clemens, and could both read and sing +the matter of his books. On a far less stupendous scale they two made +the rounds of the great lecturing circuit together. But I believe a +famous lecture-manager had charge of them and travelled with them. + +He was a most sanguine man, a most amiable person, and such a believer in +fortune that Clemens used to say of him, as he said of one of his early +publishers, that you could rely upon fifty per cent. of everything he +promised. I myself many years later became a follower of this hopeful +prophet, and I can testify that in my case at least he was able to keep +ninety-nine, and even a hundred, per cent. of his word. It was I who was +much nearer failing of mine, for I promptly began to lose sleep from the +nervous stress of my lecturing and from the gratifying but killing +receptions afterward, and I was truly in that state from insomnia which +Clemens recognized in the brief letter I got from him in the Western +city, after half a dozen wakeful nights. He sardonically congratulated +me on having gone into "the lecture field," and then he said: "I know +where you are now. You are in hell." + +It was this perdition which he re-entered when he undertook that +round-the-world lecturing tour for the payment of the debts left to him +by the bankruptcy of his firm in the publishing business. It was not +purely perdition for him, or, rather, it was perdition for only one-half +of him, the author-half; for the actor-half it was paradise. The author +who takes up lecturing without the ability to give histrionic support to +the literary reputation which he brings to the crude test of his reader's +eyes and ears, invokes a peril and a misery unknown to the lecturer who +has made his first public from the platform. Clemens was victorious on +the platform from the beginning, and it would be folly to pretend that he +did not exult in his triumphs there. But I suppose, with the wearing +nerves of middle life, he hated more and more the personal swarming of +interest upon him, and all the inevitable clatter of the thing. Yet he +faced it, and he labored round our tiresome globe that he might pay the +uttermost farthing of debts which he had not knowingly contracted, the +debts of his partners who had meant well and done ill, not because they +were evil, but because they were unwise, and as unfit for their work as +he was. "Pay what thou owest." That is right, even when thou owest it +by the error of others, and even when thou owest it to a bank, which had +not lent it from love of thee, but in the hard line of business and thy +need. + +Clemens's behavior in this matter redounded to his glory among the +nations of the whole earth, and especially in this nation, so wrapped in +commerce and so little used to honor among its many thieves. He had +behaved like Walter Scott, as millions rejoiced to know, who had not +known how Walter Scott had behaved till they knew it was like Clemens. No +doubt it will be put to his credit in the books of the Recording Angel, +but what the Judge of all the Earth will say of it at the Last Day there +is no telling. I should not be surprised if He accounted it of less +merit than some other things that Clemens did and was: less than his +abhorrence of the Spanish War, and the destruction of the South-African +republics, and our deceit of the Filipinos, and his hate of slavery, and +his payment of his portion of our race's debt to the race of the colored +student whom he saw through college, and his support of a poor artist for +three years in Paris, and his loan of opportunity to the youth who became +the most brilliant of our actor-dramatists, and his eager pardon of the +thoughtless girl who was near paying the penalty of her impertinence with +the loss of her place, and his remembering that the insolent brakeman got +so few dollars a month, and his sympathy for working-men standing up to +money in their Unions, and even his pity for the wounded bird throbbing +out its little life on the grass for the pleasure of the cruel fool who +shot it. These and the thousand other charities and beneficences in +which he abounded, openly or secretly, may avail him more than the +discharge of his firm's liabilities with the Judge of all the Earth, who +surely will do right, but whose measures and criterions no man knows, and +I least of all men. + +He made no great show of sympathy with people in their anxieties, but it +never failed, and at a time when I lay sick for many weeks his letters +were of comfort to those who feared I might not rise again. His hand was +out in help for those who needed help, and in kindness for those who +needed kindness. There remains in my mind the dreary sense of a long, +long drive to the uttermost bounds of the South End at Boston, where he +went to call upon some obscure person whose claim stretched in a +lengthening chain from his early days in Missouri--a most inadequate +person, in whose vacuity the gloom of the dull day deepened till it was +almost too deep for tears. He bore the ordeal with grim heroism, and +silently smoked away the sense of it, as we drove back to Cambridge, in +his slippered feet, sombrely musing, sombrely swearing. But he knew he +had done the right, the kind thing, and he was content. He came the +whole way from Hartford to go with me to a friendless play of mine, which +Alessandro Salvini was giving in a series of matinees to houses never +enlarging themselves beyond the count of the brave two hundred who sat it +through, and he stayed my fainting spirit with a cheer beyond flagons, +joining me in my joke at the misery of it, and carrying the fun farther. + +Before that he had come to witness the aesthetic suicide of Anna +Dickinson, who had been a flaming light of the political platform in the +war days, and had been left by them consuming in a hapless ambition for +the theatre. The poor girl had had a play written especially for her, +and as Anne Boleyn she ranted and exhorted through the five acts, drawing +ever nearer the utter defeat of the anticlimax. We could hardly look at +each other for pity, Clemens sitting there in the box he had taken, with +his shaggy head out over the corner and his slippered feet curled under +him: he either went to a place in his slippers or he carried them with +him, and put them on as soon as he could put off his boots. When it was +so that we could not longer follow her failure and live, he began to talk +of the absolute close of her career which the thing was, and how probably +she had no conception that it was the end. He philosophized the +mercifulness of the fact, and of the ignorance of most of us, when +mortally sick or fatally wounded. We think it is not the end, because we +have never ended before, and we do not see how we can end. Some can push +by the awful hour and live again, but for Anna Dickinson there could be, +and was, no such palingenesis. Of course we got that solemn joy out of +reading her fate aright which is the compensation of the wise spectator +in witnessing the inexorable doom of others. + + + + +XV. + +When Messrs. Houghton & Mifflin became owners of The Atlantic Monthly, +Mr. Houghton fancied having some breakfasts and dinners, which should +bring the publisher and the editor face to face with the contributors, +who were bidden from far and near. Of course, the subtle fiend of +advertising, who has now grown so unblushing bold, lurked under the +covers at these banquets, and the junior partner and the young editor had +their joint and separate fine anguishes of misgiving as to the taste and +the principle of them; but they were really very simple-hearted and +honestly meant hospitalities, and they prospered as they ought, and gave +great pleasure and no pain. I forget some of the "emergent occasions," +but I am sure of a birthday dinner most unexpectedly accepted by +Whittier, and a birthday luncheon to Mrs. Stowe, and I think a birthday +dinner to Longfellow; but the passing years have left me in the dark as +to the pretext of that supper at which Clemens made his awful speech, and +came so near being the death of us all. At the breakfasts and luncheons +we had the pleasure of our lady contributors' company, but that night +there were only men, and because of our great strength we survived. + +I suppose the year was about 1879, but here the almanac is unimportant, +and I can only say that it was after Clemens had become a very valued +contributor of the magazine, where he found himself to his own great +explicit satisfaction. He had jubilantly accepted our invitation, and +had promised a speech, which it appeared afterward he had prepared with +unusual care and confidence. It was his custom always to think out his +speeches, mentally wording them, and then memorizing them by a peculiar +system of mnemonics which he had invented. On the dinner-table a certain +succession of knife, spoon, salt-cellar, and butter-plate symbolized a +train of ideas, and on the billiard-table a ball, a cue, and a piece of +chalk served the same purpose. With a diagram of these printed on the +brain he had full command of the phrases which his excogitation had +attached to them, and which embodied the ideas in perfect form. He +believed he had been particularly fortunate in his notion for the speech +of that evening, and he had worked it out in joyous self-reliance. It was +the notion of three tramps, three deadbeats, visiting a California +mining-camp, and imposing themselves upon the innocent miners as +respectively Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Oliver +Wendell Holmes. The humor of the conception must prosper or must fail +according to the mood of the hearer, but Clemens felt sure of compelling +this to sympathy, and he looked forward to an unparalleled triumph. + +But there were two things that he had not taken into account. One was +the species of religious veneration in which these men were held by those +nearest them, a thing that I should not be able to realize to people +remote from them in time and place. They were men of extraordinary +dignity, of the thing called presence, for want of some clearer word, so +that no one could well approach them in a personally light or trifling +spirit. I do not suppose that anybody more truly valued them or more +piously loved them than Clemens himself, but the intoxication of his +fancy carried him beyond the bounds of that regard, and emboldened him to +the other thing which he had not taken into account-namely, the immense +hazard of working his fancy out before their faces, and expecting them to +enter into the delight of it. If neither Emerson, nor Longfellow, nor +Holmes had been there, the scheme might possibly have carried, but even +this is doubtful, for those who so devoutly honored them would have +overcome their horror with difficulty, and perhaps would not have +overcome it at all. + +The publisher, with a modesty very ungrateful to me, had abdicated his +office of host, and I was the hapless president, fulfilling the abhorred +function of calling people to their feet and making them speak. When I +came to Clemens I introduced him with the cordial admiring I had for him +as one of my greatest contributors and dearest friends. Here, I said, in +sum, was a humorist who never left you hanging your head for having +enjoyed his joke; and then the amazing mistake, the bewildering blunder, +the cruel catastrophe was upon us. I believe that after the scope of the +burlesque made itself clear, there was no one there, including the +burlesquer himself, who was not smitten with a desolating dismay. 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. Nobody knew whether to look at the speaker or down at +his plate. I chose my plate as the least affliction, and so I do not +know how Clemens looked, except when I stole a glance at him, and saw him +standing solitary amid his appalled and appalling listeners, with his +joke dead on his hands. From a first glance at the great three whom his +jest had made its theme, I was aware of Longfellow sitting upright, and +regarding the humorist with an air of pensive puzzle, of Holmes busily +writing on his menu, with a well-feigned effect of preoccupation, and of +Emerson, holding his elbows, and listening with a sort of Jovian oblivion +of this nether world in that lapse of memory which saved him in those +later years from so much bother. Clemens must have dragged his joke to +the climax and left it there, but I cannot say this from any sense of the +fact. Of what happened afterward at the table where the immense, the +wholly innocent, the truly unimagined affront was offered, I have no +longer the least remembrance. I next remember being in a room of the +hotel, where Clemens was not to sleep, but to toss in despair, and +Charles Dudley Warner's saying, in the gloom, "Well, Mark, you're a funny +fellow." It was as well as anything else he could have said, but Clemens +seemed unable to accept the tribute. + +I stayed the night with him, and the next morning, after a haggard +breakfast, we drove about and he made some purchases of bric-a-brac for +his house in Hartford, with a soul as far away from bric-a-brac as ever +the soul of man was. He went home by an early train, and he lost no time +in writing back to the three divine personalities which he had so +involuntarily seemed to flout. They all wrote back to him, making it as +light for him as they could. I have heard that Emerson was a good deal +mystified, and in his sublime forgetfulness asked, Who was this gentleman +who appeared to think he had offered him some sort of annoyance! But I +am not sure that this is accurate. What I am sure of is that Longfellow, +a few days after, in my study, stopped before a photograph of Clemens and +said, "Ah, he is a wag!" and nothing more. Holmes told me, with deep +emotion, such as a brother humorist might well feel, that he had not lost +an instant in replying to Clemens's letter, and assuring him that there +had not been the least offence, and entreating him never to think of the +matter again. "He said that he was a fool, but he was God's fool," +Holmes quoted from the letter, with a true sense of the pathos and the +humor of the self-abasement. + +To me Clemens wrote a week later, "It doesn't get any better; it burns +like fire." But now I understand that it was not shame that burnt, but +rage for a blunder which he had so incredibly committed. That to have +conceived of those men, the most dignified in our literature, our +civilization, as impersonable by three hoboes, and then to have imagined +that he could ask them personally to enjoy the monstrous travesty, was a +break, he saw too late, for which there was no repair. Yet the time +came, and not so very long afterward, when some mention was made of the +incident as a mistake, and he said, with all his fierceness, "But I don't +admit that it was a mistake," and it was not so in the minds of all +witnesses at second hand. The morning after the dreadful dinner there +came a glowing note from Professor Child, who had read the newspaper +report of it, praising Clemens's burlesque as the richest piece of humor +in the world, and betraying no sense of incongruity in its perpetration +in the presence of its victims. I think it must always have ground in +Clemens's soul, that he was the prey of circumstances, and that if he had +some more favoring occasion he could retrieve his loss in it by giving +the thing the right setting. Not more than two or three years ago, he +came to try me as to trying it again at a meeting of newspaper men in +Washington. I had to own my fears, while I alleged Child's note on the +other hand, but in the end he did not try it with the newspaper men. I +do not know whether he has ever printed it or not, but since the thing +happened I have often wondered how much offence there really was in it. I +am not sure but the horror of the spectators read more indignation into +the subjects of the hapless drolling than they felt. But it must have +been difficult for them to bear it with equanimity. To be sure, they +were not themselves mocked; the joke was, of course, beside them; +nevertheless, their personality was trifled with, and I could only end by +reflecting that if I had been in their place I should not have liked it +myself. Clemens would have liked it himself, for he had the heart for +that sort of wild play, and he so loved a joke that even if it took the +form of a liberty, and was yet a good joke, he would have loved it. But +perhaps this burlesque was not a good joke. + + + + +XVI. + +Clemens was oftenest at my house in Cambridge, but he was also sometimes +at my house in Belmont; when, after a year in Europe, we went to live in +Boston, he was more rarely with us. We could never be long together +without something out of the common happening, and one day something far +out of the common happened, which fortunately refused the nature of +absolute tragedy, while remaining rather the saddest sort of comedy. We +were looking out of my library window on that view of the Charles which I +was so proud of sharing with my all-but-next-door neighbor, Doctor +Holmes, when another friend who was with us called out with curiously +impersonal interest, "Oh, see that woman getting into the water!" This +would have excited curiosity and alarmed anxiety far less lively than +ours, and Clemens and I rushed downstairs and out through my basement and +back gate. At the same time a coachman came out of a stable next door, +and grappled by the shoulders a woman who was somewhat deliberately +getting down the steps to the water over the face of the embankment. +Before we could reach them he had pulled her up to the driveway, and +stood holding her there while she crazily grieved at her rescue. As soon +as he saw us he went back into his stable, and left us with the poor wild +creature on our hands. She was not very young and not very pretty, and +we could not have flattered ourselves with the notion of anything +romantic in her suicidal mania, but we could take her on the broad human +level, and on this we proposed to escort her up Beacon Street till we +could give her into the keeping of one of those kindly policemen whom our +neighborhood knew. Naturally there was no policeman known to us or +unknown the whole way to the Public Garden. We had to circumvent our +charge in her present design of drowning herself, and walk her past the +streets crossing Beacon to the river. At these points it needed +considerable reasoning to overcome her wish and some active manoeuvring +in both of us to enforce our arguments. Nobody else appeared to be +interested, and though we did not court publicity in the performance of +the duty so strangely laid upon us, still it was rather disappointing to +be so entirely ignored. + +There are some four or five crossings to the river between 302 Beacon +Street and the Public Garden, and the suggestions at our command were +pretty well exhausted by the time we reached it. Still the expected +policeman was nowhere in sight; but a brilliant thought occurred to +Clemens. He asked me where the nearest police station was, and when I +told him, he started off at his highest speed, leaving me in sole charge +of our hapless ward. All my powers of suasion were now taxed to the +utmost, and I began attracting attention as a short, stout gentleman in +early middle life endeavoring to distrain a respectable female of her +personal liberty, when his accomplice had abandoned him to his wicked +design. After a much longer time than I thought I should have taken to +get a policeman from the station, Clemens reappeared in easy conversation +with an officer who had probably realized that he was in the company of +Mark Twain, and was in no hurry to end the interview. He took possession +of our captive, and we saw her no more. I now wonder that with our joint +instinct for failure we ever got rid of her; but I am sure we did, and +few things in life have given me greater relief. When we got back to my +house we found the friend we had left there quite unruffled and not much +concerned to know the facts of our adventure. My impression is that he +had been taking a nap on my lounge; he appeared refreshed and even gay; +but if I am inexact in these details he is alive to refute me. + + + + +XVII. + +A little after this Clemens went abroad with his family, and lived +several years in Germany. His letters still came, but at longer +intervals, and the thread of our intimate relations was inevitably +broken. He would write me when something I had written pleased him, or +when something signal occurred to him, or some political or social +outrage stirred him to wrath, and he wished to free his mind in pious +profanity. During this sojourn he came near dying of pneumonia in +Berlin, and he had slight relapses from it after coming home. In Berlin +also he had the honor of dining with the German Emperor at the table of a +cousin married to a high officer of the court. Clemens was a man to +enjoy such a distinction; he knew how to take it as a delegated +recognition from the German people; but as coming from a rather cockahoop +sovereign who had as yet only his sovereignty to value himself upon, he +was not very proud of it. He expressed a quiet disdain of the event as +between the imperiality and himself, on whom it was supposed to confer +such glory, crowning his life with the topmost leaf of laurel. He was in +the same mood in his account of an English dinner many years before, +where there was a "little Scotch lord" present, to whom the English +tacitly referred Clemens's talk, and laughed when the lord laughed, and +were grave when he failed to smile. Of all the men I have known he was +the farthest from a snob, though he valued recognition, and liked the +flattery of the fashionable fair when it came in his way. He would not +go out of his way for it, but like most able and brilliant men he loved +the minds of women, their wit, their agile cleverness, their sensitive +perception, their humorous appreciation, the saucy things they would say, +and their pretty, temerarious defiances. He had, of course, the keenest +sense of what was truly dignified and truly undignified in people; but he +was not really interested in what we call society affairs; they scarcely +existed for him, though his books witness how he abhorred the dreadful +fools who through some chance of birth or wealth hold themselves +different from other men. + +Commonly he did not keep things to himself, especially dislikes and +condemnations. Upon most current events he had strong opinions, and he +uttered them strongly. After a while he was silent in them, but if you +tried him you found him in them still. He was tremendously worked up by +a certain famous trial, as most of us were who lived in the time of it. +He believed the accused guilty, but when we met some months after it was +over, and I tempted him to speak his mind upon it, 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. + +He was apt to wear himself out in the vehemence of his resentments; or, +he had so spent himself in uttering them that he had literally nothing +more to say. You could offer Clemens offences that would anger other men +and he did not mind; he would account for them from human nature; but if +he thought you had in any way played him false you were anathema and +maranatha forever. Yet not forever, perhaps, for by and-by, after years, +he would be silent. There were two men, half a generation apart in their +succession, whom he thought equally atrocious in their treason to him, +and of whom he used to talk terrifyingly, even after they were out of the +world. He went farther than Heine, who said that he forgave his enemies, +but not till they were dead. Clemens did not forgive his dead enemies; +their death seemed to deepen their crimes, like a base evasion, or a +cowardly attempt to escape; he pursued them to the grave; he would like +to dig them up and take vengeance upon their clay. So he said, but no +doubt he would not have hurt them if he had had them living before him. +He was generous without stint; he trusted without measure, but where his +generosity was abused, or his trust betrayed, he was a fire of vengeance, +a consuming flame of suspicion that no sprinkling of cool patience from +others could quench; it had to burn itself out. He was eagerly and +lavishly hospitable, but if a man seemed willing to batten on him, or in +any way to lie down upon him, Clemens despised him unutterably. In his +frenzies of resentment or suspicion he would not, and doubtless could +not, listen to reason. But if between the paroxysms he were confronted +with the facts he would own them, no matter how much they told against +him. At one period he fancied that a certain newspaper was hounding him +with biting censure and poisonous paragraphs, and he was filling himself +up with wrath to be duly discharged on the editor's head. Later, he +wrote me with a humorous joy in his mistake that Warner had advised him +to have the paper watched for these injuries. He had done so, and how +many mentions of him did I reckon he had found in three months? Just +two, and they were rather indifferent than unfriendly. So the paper was +acquitted, and the editor's life was spared. The wretch never knew how +near he was to losing it, with incredible preliminaries of obloquy, and a +subsequent devotion to lasting infamy. + +His memory for favors was as good as for injuries, and he liked to return +your friendliness with as loud a band of music as could be bought or +bribed for the occasion. All that you had to do was to signify that you +wanted his help. When my father was consul at Toronto during Arthur's +administration, he fancied that his place was in danger, and he appealed +to me. In turn I appealed to Clemens, bethinking myself of his +friendship with Grant and Grant's friendship with Arthur. I asked him to +write to Grant in my father's behalf, but No, he answered me, I must come +to Hartford, and we would go on to New York together and see Grant +personally. This was before, and long before, Clemens became Grant's +publisher and splendid benefactor, but the men liked each other as such +men could not help doing. Clemens made the appointment, and we went to +find Grant in his business office, that place where his business +innocence was afterward so betrayed. He was very simple and very +cordial, and I was instantly the more at home with him, because his voice +was the soft, rounded, Ohio River accent to which my years were earliest +used from my steamboating uncles, my earliest heroes. When I stated my +business he merely said, Oh no; that must not be; he would write to Mr. +Arthur; and he did so that day; and my father lived to lay down his +office, when he tired of it, with no urgence from above. + +It is not irrelevant to Clemens to say that Grant seemed to like finding +himself in company with two literary men, one of whom at least he could +make sure of, and unlike that silent man he was reputed, he talked +constantly, and so far as he might he talked literature. At least he +talked of John Phoenix, that delightfulest of the early Pacific Slope +humorists, whom he had known under his real name of George H. Derby, when +they were fellow-cadets at West Point. It was mighty pretty, as Pepys +would say, to see the delicate deference Clemens paid our plain hero, and +the manly respect with which he listened. While Grant talked, his +luncheon was brought in from some unassuming restaurant near by, and he +asked us to join him in the baked beans and coffee which were served us +in a little room out of the office with about the same circumstance as at +a railroad refreshment-counter. 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. One of the highest satisfactions +of Clemens's often supremely satisfactory life was his relation to Grant. +It was his proud joy to tell how he found Grant about to sign a contract +for his book on certainly very good terms, and said to him that he would +himself publish the book and give him a percentage three times as large. +He said Grant seemed to doubt whether he could honorably withdraw from +the negotiation at that point, but Clemens overbore his scruples, and it +was his unparalleled privilege, his princely pleasure, to pay the author +a far larger check for his work than had ever been paid to an author +before. He valued even more than this splendid opportunity the sacred +moments in which their business brought him into the presence of the +slowly dying, heroically living man whom he was so befriending; and he +told me in words which surely lost none of their simple pathos through +his report how Grant described his suffering. + +The prosperity, of this venture was the beginning of Clemens's adversity, +for it led to excesses of enterprise which were forms of dissipation. The +young sculptor who had come back to him from Paris modelled a small bust +of Grant, which Clemens multiplied in great numbers to his great loss, +and the success of Grant's book tempted him to launch on publishing seas +where his bark presently foundered. The first and greatest of his +disasters was the Life of Pope Leo XIII, which he came to tell me of, +when he had imagined it, in a sort of delirious exultation. 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, and Clemens's book agents would +carry the prospectuses and then the bound copies of the work to the ends +of the whole earth. Not only would every Catholic buy it, but every +Catholic must, as he was a good Catholic, as he hoped to be saved. It +was a magnificent scheme, and it captivated me, as it had captivated +Clemens; it dazzled us both, and neither of us saw the fatal defect in +it. 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 every sanction from the Vatican. The +failure was incredible to Clemens; his sanguine soul was utterly +confounded, and soon a silence fell upon it where it had been so +exuberantly jubilant. + + + + +XIX. + +The occasions which brought us to New York together were not nearly so +frequent as those which united us in Boston, but there was a dinner given +him by a friend which remains memorable from the fatuity of two men +present, so different in everything but their fatuity. One was the sweet +old comedian Billy Florence, who was urging the unsuccessful dramatist +across the table to write him a play about Oliver Cromwell, and giving +the reasons why he thought himself peculiarly fitted to portray the +character of Cromwell. The other was a modestly millioned rich man who +was then only beginning to amass the moneys afterward heaped so high, and +was still in the condition to be flattered by the condescension of a yet +greater millionaire. His contribution to our gaiety was the verbatim +report of a call he had made upon William H. Vanderbilt, whom he had +found just about starting out of town, with his trunks actually in the +front hall, but who had stayed to receive the narrator. He had, in fact, +sat down on one of the trunks, and talked with the easiest friendliness, +and quite, we were given to infer, like an ordinary human being. Clemens +often kept on with some thread of the talk when we came away from a +dinner, but now he was silent, as if "high sorrowful and cloyed"; and it +was not till well afterward that I found he had noted the facts from the +bitterness with which he mocked the rich man, and the pity he expressed +for the actor. + +He had begun before that to amass those evidences against mankind which +eventuated with him in his theory of what he called "the damned human +race." This was not an expression of piety, but of the kind contempt to +which he was driven by our follies and iniquities as he had observed them +in himself as well as in others. It was as mild a misanthropy, probably, +as ever caressed the objects of its malediction. But I believe it was +about the year 1900 that his sense of our perdition became insupportable +and broke out in a mixed abhorrence and amusement which spared no +occasion, so that I could quite understand why Mrs. Clemens should have +found some compensation, when kept to her room by sickness, in the +reflection that now she should not hear so much about "the damned human +race." He told of that with the same wild joy that he told of +overhearing her repetition of one of his most inclusive profanities, and +her explanation that she meant him to hear it so that he might know how +it sounded. The contrast of the lurid blasphemy with her heavenly +whiteness should have been enough to cure any one less grounded than he +in what must be owned was as fixed a habit as smoking with him. When I +first knew him he rarely vented his fury in that sort, and I fancy he was +under a promise to her which he kept sacred till the wear and tear of his +nerves with advancing years disabled him. Then it would be like him to +struggle with himself till he could struggle no longer and to ask his +promise back, and it would be like her to give it back. His profanity +was the heritage of his boyhood and young manhood in social conditions +and under the duress of exigencies in which everybody swore about as +impersonally as he smoked. It is best to recognize the fact of it, and I +do so the more readily because I cannot suppose the Recording Angel +really minded it much more than that Guardian Angel of his. It +probably grieved them about equally, but they could equally forgive it. +Nothing came of his pose regarding "the damned human race" except his +invention of the Human Race Luncheon Club. This was confined to four +persons who were never all got together, and it soon perished of their +indifference. + +In the earlier days that I have more specially in mind one of the +questions that we used to debate a good deal was whether every human +motive was not selfish. We inquired as to every impulse, the noblest, +the holiest in effect, and he found them in the last analysis of selfish +origin. Pretty nearly the whole time of a certain railroad run from New +York to Hartford was taken up with the scrutiny of the self-sacrifice of +a mother for her child, of the abandon of the lover who dies in saving +his mistress from fire or flood, of the hero's courage in the field and +the martyr's at the stake. Each he found springing from the unconscious +love of self and the dread of the greater pain which the self-sacrificer +would suffer in forbearing the sacrifice. If we had any time left from +this inquiry that day, he must have devoted it to a high regret that +Napoleon did not carry out his purpose of invading England, for then he +would have destroyed the feudal aristocracy, or "reformed the lords," as +it might be called now. He thought that would have been an incalculable +blessing to the English people and the world. Clemens was always +beautifully and unfalteringly a republican. None of his occasional +misgivings for America implicated a return to monarchy. Yet he felt +passionately the splendor of the English monarchy, and there was a time +when he gloried in that figurative poetry by which the king was phrased +as "the Majesty of England." He rolled the words deep-throatedly out, +and exulted in their beauty as if it were beyond any other glory of the +world. He read, or read at, English history a great deal, and one of the +by-products of his restless invention was a game of English Kings (like +the game of Authors) for children. I do not know whether he ever +perfected this, but I am quite sure it was not put upon the market. Very +likely he brought it to a practicable stage, and then tired of it, as he +was apt to do in the ultimation of his vehement undertakings. + + + + +XX. + +He satisfied the impassioned demand of his nature for incessant +activities of every kind by taking a personal as well as a pecuniary +interest in the inventions of others. At one moment "the damned human +race" was almost to be redeemed by a process of founding brass without +air bubbles in it; if this could once be accomplished, as I understood, +or misunderstood, brass could be used in art-printing to a degree +hitherto impossible. I dare say I have got it wrong, but I am not +mistaken as to Clemens's enthusiasm for the process, and his heavy losses +in paying its way to ultimate failure. He was simultaneously absorbed in +the perfection of a type-setting machine, which he was paying the +inventor a salary to bring to a perfection so expensive that it was +practically impracticable. We were both printers by trade, and I could +take the same interest in this wonderful piece of mechanism that he +could; and it was so truly wonderful that it did everything but walk and +talk. Its ingenious creator was so bent upon realizing the highest ideal +in it that he produced a machine of quite unimpeachable efficiency. But +it was so costly, when finished, that it could not be made for less than +twenty thousand dollars, if the parts were made by hand. This sum was +prohibitive of its introduction, unless the requisite capital could be +found for making the parts by machinery, and Clemens spent many months in +vainly trying to get this money together. In the mean time simpler +machines had been invented and the market filled, and his investment of +three hundred thousand dollars in the beautiful miracle remained +permanent but not profitable. I once went with him to witness its +performance, and it did seem to me the last word in its way, but it had +been spoken too exquisitely, too fastidiously. I never heard him devote +the inventor to the infernal gods, as he was apt to do with the geniuses +he lost money by, and so I think he did not regard him as a traitor. + +In these things, and in his other schemes for the 'subiti guadagni' of +the speculator and the "sudden making of splendid names" for the +benefactors of our species, Clemens satisfied the Colonel Sellers nature +in himself (from which he drew the picture of that wild and lovable +figure), and perhaps made as good use of his money as he could. He did +not care much for money in itself, but he luxuriated in the lavish use of +it, and he was as generous with it as ever a man was. He liked giving it, +but he commonly wearied of giving it himself, and wherever he lived he +established an almoner, whom he fully trusted to keep his left hand +ignorant of what his right hand was doing. I believe he felt no finality +in charity, but did it because in its provisional way it was the only +thing a man could do. I never heard him go really into any sociological +inquiry, and I have a feeling that that sort of thing baffled and +dispirited him. No one can read The Connecticut Yankee and not be aware +of the length and breadth of his sympathies with poverty, but apparently +he had not thought out any scheme for righting the economic wrongs we +abound in. I cannot remember our ever getting quite down to a discussion +of the matter; we came very near it once in the day of the vast wave of +emotion sent over the world by 'Looking Backward,' and again when we were +all so troubled by the great coal strike in Pennsylvania; in considering +that he seemed to be for the time doubtful of the justice of the +workingman's cause. At all other times he seemed to know that whatever +wrongs the workingman committed work was always in the right. + +When Clemens returned to America with his family, after lecturing round +the world, I again saw him in New York, where I so often saw him while he +was shaping himself for that heroic enterprise. He would come to me, and +talk sorrowfully over his financial ruin, and picture it to himself as +the stuff of some unhappy dream, which, after long prosperity, had +culminated the wrong way. It was very melancholy, very touching, but the +sorrow to which he had come home from his long journey had not that +forlorn bewilderment in it. He was looking wonderfully well, and when I +wanted the name of his elixir, he said it was plasmon. He was apt, for a +man who had put faith so decidedly away from him, to take it back and pin +it to some superstition, usually of a hygienic sort. Once, when he was +well on in years, he came to New York without glasses, and announced that +he and all his family, so astigmatic and myopic and old-sighted, had, so +to speak, burned their spectacles behind them upon the instruction of +some sage who had found out that they were a delusion. The next time he +came he wore spectacles freely, almost ostentatiously, and I heard from +others that the whole Clemens family had been near losing their eyesight +by the miracle worked in their behalf. Now, I was not surprised to learn +that "the damned human race" was to be saved by plasmon, if anything, and +that my first duty was to visit the plasmon agency with him, and procure +enough plasmon to secure my family against the ills it was heir to for +evermore. 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. + + + + +XXI. + +For a time it was a question whether he should not go back with his +family to their old home in Hartford. Perhaps the father's and mother's +hearts drew them there all the more strongly because of the grief written +ineffaceably over it, but for the younger ones it was no longer the +measure of the world. It was easier for all to stay on indefinitely in +New York, which is a sojourn without circumstance, and equally the home +of exile and of indecision. The Clemenses took a pleasant, spacious +house at Riverdale, on the Hudson, and there 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 at 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. It was 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. It would +not be easy to say whether in his talk of it his disgust for the +illiterate twaddle of Mrs. Eddy's book, or his admiration of her genius +for organization was the greater. 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. +He looked for its spread over the whole of Christendom, and throughout +the winter he spent at Riverdale he was ready to meet all listeners more +than half-way with his convictions of its powerful grasp of the average +human desire to get something for nothing. The vacuous vulgarity of its +texts was a perpetual joy to him, while he bowed with serious respect to +the sagacity which built so securely upon the everlasting rock of human +credulity and folly. + +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 scientitians, +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. + + + + +XXII. + +The order of my acquaintance, or call it intimacy, with Clemens was this: +our first meeting in Boston, my visits to him in Hartford, his visits to +me in Cambridge, in Belmont, and in Boston, our briefer and less frequent +meetings in Paris and New York, all with repeated interruptions through +my absences in Europe, and his sojourns in London, Berlin, Vienna, and +Florence, and his flights to the many ends, and odds and ends, of the +earth. I will not try to follow the events, if they were not rather the +subjective experiences, of those different periods and points of time +which I must not fail to make include his summer at York Harbor, and his +divers residences in New York, on Tenth Street and on Fifth Avenue, at +Riverdale, and at Stormfield, which his daughter has told me he loved +best of all his houses and hoped to make his home for long years. + +Not much remains to me of the week or so that we had together in Paris +early in the summer of 1904. The first thing I got at my bankers was a +cable message announcing that my father was stricken with paralysis, but +urging my stay for further intelligence, and I went about, till the final +summons came, with my head in a mist of care and dread. Clemens was very +kind and brotherly through it all. He was living greatly to his mind in +one of those arcaded little hotels in the Rue de Rivoli, and he was free +from all household duties to range with me. We drove together to make +calls of digestion at many houses where he had got indigestion through +his reluctance from their hospitality, for he hated dining out. But, as +he explained, his wife wanted him to make these visits, and he did it, as +he did everything she wanted. At one place, some suburban villa, he +could get no answer to his ring, and he "hove" his cards over the gate +just as it opened, and he had the shame of explaining in his +unexplanatory French to the man picking them up. He was excruciatingly +helpless with his cabmen, but by very cordially smiling and casting +himself on the drivers' mercy he always managed to get where he wanted. +The family was on the verge of their many moves, and he was doing some +small errands; he said that the others did the main things, and left him +to do what the cat might. + +It was with that return upon the buoyant billow of plasmon, renewed in +look and limb, that Clemens's universally pervasive popularity began in +his own country. 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. One does not go into a catalogue of dinners, +receptions, meetings, speeches, and the like, when there are more vital +things to speak of. He loved these obvious joys, and he eagerly strove +with the occasions they gave him for the brilliancy which seemed so +exhaustless and was so exhausting. His friends saw that he was wearing +himself out, and it was not because of Mrs. Clemens's health alone that +they were glad to have him take refuge at Riverdale. The family lived +there two happy, hopeless years, and then it was ordered that they should +change for his wife's sake to some less exacting climate. Clemens was +not eager to go to Florence, but his imagination was taken as it would +have been in the old-young days by the notion of packing his furniture +into flexible steel cages from his house in Hartford and unpacking it +from them untouched at his villa in Fiesole. He got what pleasure any +man could out of that triumph of mind over matter, but the shadow was +creeping up his life. One sunny afternoon we sat on the grass before the +mansion, after his wife had begun to get well enough for removal, and we +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: "What? What?" as if it might be an asking for him instead of +the greeting it really was for me. It was the last time I saw her, if +indeed I can be said to have seen her then, and long afterward when I +said how beautiful we all thought her, how good, how wise, how +wonderfully perfect in every relation of life, he cried out in a breaking +voice: "Oh, why didn't you ever tell her? She thought you didn't like +her." What a pang it was then not to have told her, but how could we +have told her? His unreason endeared him to me more than all his wisdom. + +To that Riverdale sojourn belong my impressions of his most violent +anti-Christian Science rages, which began with the postponement of his +book, and softened into acceptance of the delay till he had well-nigh +forgotten his wrath when it come out. There was also one of those joint +episodes of ours, which, strangely enough, did not eventuate in entire +failure, as most of our joint episodes did. He wrote furiously to me of +a wrong which had been done to one of the most helpless and one of the +most helped of our literary brethren, asking me to join with him in +recovering the money paid over by that brother's publisher to a false +friend who had withheld it and would not give any account of it. Our +hapless brother had appealed to Clemens, as he had to me, with the facts, +but not asking our help, probably because he knew he need not ask; and +Clemens enclosed to me a very taking-by-the-throat message which he +proposed sending to the false friend. For once I had some sense, and +answered that this would never do, for we had really no power in the +matter, and I contrived a letter to the recreant so softly diplomatic +that I shall always think of it with pride when my honesties no longer +give me satisfaction, saying that this incident had come to our +knowledge, and suggesting that we felt sure he would not finally wish to +withhold the money. Nothing more, practically, than that, but that was +enough; there came promptly back a letter of justification, covering a +very substantial check, which we hilariously forwarded to our +beneficiary. But the helpless man who was so used to being helped did +not answer with the gladness I, at least, expected of him. He +acknowledged the check as he would any ordinary payment, and then he made +us observe that there was still a large sum due him out of the moneys +withheld. At this point I proposed to Clemens that we should let the +nonchalant victim collect the remnant himself. Clouds of sorrow had +gathered about the bowed head of the delinquent since we began on him, +and my fickle sympathies were turning his way from the victim who was +really to blame for leaving his affairs so unguardedly to him in the +first place. Clemens made some sort of grit assent, and we dropped the +matter. He was more used to ingratitude from those he helped than I was, +who found being lain down upon not so amusing as he found my revolt. He +reckoned I was right, he said, and after that I think we never recurred +to the incident. It was not ingratitude that he ever minded; it was +treachery, that really maddened him past forgiveness. + + + + +XXIII. + +During the summer he spent at York Harbor I was only forty minutes away +at Kittery Point, and we saw each other often; but this was before the +last time at Riverdale. He had a wide, low cottage in a pine grove +overlooking York River, and we used to sit at a corner of the veranda +farthest away from Mrs. Clemens's window, where we could read our +manuscripts to each other, and tell our stories, and laugh our hearts out +without disturbing her. 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; but, of +course, there were specious delays in which she seemed no worse and +seemed a little better, and Clemens could work at a novel he had begun. +He had taken a room in the house of a friend and neighbor, a fisherman +and 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 as +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. Upon reflection I cannot believe that I dreamed it, and I cannot +believe that it was an effect of that sort of pseudomnemonics which I +have mentioned. The characters in the novel are too clearly outlined in +my recollection, together with some critical reservations of my own +concerning them. Not only does he seem to have read me those first +chapters, but to have talked them over with me and outlined the whole +story. + +I cannot say whether or not he believed that his wife would recover; he +fought the fear of her death to the end; for her life was far more +largely his than the lives of most men's wives are theirs. For his own +life I believe he would never have much cared, if I may trust a saying of +one who was so absolutely without pose as he was. He said that he never +saw a dead man whom he did not envy for having had it over and being done +with it. Life had always amused him, and in the resurgence of its +interests after his sorrow had ebbed away he was again deeply interested +in the world and in the human race, which, though damned, abounded in +subjects of curious inquiry. When the time came for his wife's removal +from York Harbor I went with him to Boston, where he wished to look up +the best means of her conveyance to New York. The inquiry absorbed him: +the sort of invalid car he could get; how she could be carried to the +village station; how the car could be detached from the eastern train at +Boston and carried round to the southern train on the other side of the +city, and then how it could be attached to the Hudson River train at New +York and left at Riverdale. There was no particular of the business +which he did not scrutinize and master, not only with his poignant +concern for her welfare, but with his strong curiosity as to how these +unusual things were done with the usual means. With the inertness that +grows upon an aging man he had been used to delegating more and more +things, but of that thing I perceived that he would not delegate the +least detail. + +He had meant never to go abroad again, but when it came time to go he did +not look forward to returning; he expected to live in Florence always +after that; they were used to the life and they had been happy there some +years earlier before he went with his wife for the cure of Nauheim. But +when he came home again it was for good and all. It was natural that he +should wish to live in New York, where they had already had a pleasant +year in Tenth Street. I used to see him there in an upper room, looking +south over a quiet open space of back yards where we fought our battles +in behalf of the Filipinos and the Boers, and he carried on his campaign +against the missionaries in China. He had not yet formed his habit of +lying for whole days in bed and reading and writing there, yet he was a +good deal in bed, from weakness, I suppose, and for the mere comfort of +it. + +My perspectives are not very clear, and in the foreshortening of events +which always takes place in our review of the past I may not always time +things aright. But I believe it was not until he had taken his house at +21 Fifth Avenue that he began to talk to me of writing his autobiography. +He meant that it should be a perfectly veracious record of his life and +period; for the first time in literature there should be a true history +of a man and a true presentation of the men the man had known. As we +talked it over the scheme enlarged itself in our riotous fancy. We said +it should be not only a book, it should be a library, not only a library, +but a literature. It should make good the world's loss through Omar's +barbarity at Alexandria; there was no image so grotesque, so extravagant +that we did not play with it; and the work so far as he carried it was +really done on a colossal scale. But one day he said that as to veracity +it was a failure; he had begun to lie, and that if no man ever yet told +the truth about himself it was because no man ever could. How far he had +carried his autobiography I cannot say; he dictated the matter several +hours each day; and the public has already seen long passages from it, +and can judge, probably, of the make and matter of the whole from these. +It is immensely inclusive, and it observes no order or sequence. Whether +now, after his death, it will be published soon or late I have no means +of knowing. Once or twice he said in a vague way that it was not to be +published for twenty years, so that the discomfort of publicity might be +minimized for all the survivors. Suddenly he told me he was not working +at it; but I did not understand whether he had finished it or merely +dropped it; I never asked. + +We lived in the same city, but for old men rather far apart, he at Tenth +Street and I at Seventieth, and with our colds and other disabilities we +did not see each other often. He expected me to come to him, and I would +not without some return of my visits, but we never ceased to be friends, +and good friends, so far as I know. I joked him once as to how I was +going to come out in his autobiography, and he gave me some sort of +joking reassurance. There was one incident, however, that brought us +very frequently and actively together. He came one Sunday afternoon to +have me call with him on Maxim Gorky, who was staying at a hotel a few +streets above mine. We were both interested in Gorky, Clemens rather +more as a revolutionist and I as a realist, though I too wished the +Russian Tsar ill, and the novelist well in his mission to the Russian +sympathizers in this republic. But I had lived through the episode of +Kossuth's visit to us and his vain endeavor to raise funds for the +Hungarian cause in 1851, when we were a younger and nobler nation than +now, with hearts if not hands, opener to the "oppressed of Europe"; the +oppressed of America, the four or five millions of slaves, we did not +count. I did not believe that Gorky could get the money for the cause of +freedom in Russia which he had come to get; as I told a valued friend of +his and mine, I did not believe he could get twenty-five hundred dollars, +and I think now I set the figure too high. I had already refused to sign +the sort of general appeal his friends were making to our principles and +pockets because I felt it so wholly idle, and when the paper was produced +in Gorky's presence and Clemens put his name to it I still refused. The +next day Gorky was expelled from his hotel with the woman who was not his +wife, but who, I am bound to say, did not look as if she were not, at +least to me, who am, however, not versed in those aspects of human +nature. + +I might have escaped unnoted, but Clemens's familiar head gave us away to +the reporters waiting at the elevator's mouth for all who went to see +Gorky. As it was, a hunt of interviewers ensued for us severally and +jointly. I could remain aloof in my hotel apartment, returning answer to +such guardians of the public right to know everything that I had nothing +to say of Gorky's domestic affairs; for the public interest had now +strayed far from the revolution, and centred entirely upon these. But +with Clemens it was different; he lived in a house with a street door +kept by a single butler, and he was constantly rung for. I forget how +long the siege lasted, but long enough for us to have fun with it. 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. Of course he was right and I wrong, +and he was right as to the point at issue between Gorky and those who had +helplessly treated him with such cruel ignominy. In America it is not +the convention for men to live openly in hotels with women who are not +their wives. Gorky had violated this convention and he had to pay the +penalty; and concerning the destruction of his efficiency as an emissary +of the revolution, his blunder was worse than a crime. + + + + +XXIV. + +To the period of Clemens's residence in Fifth Avenue belongs his +efflorescence in white serge. He was always rather aggressively +indifferent about dress, and at a very early date in our acquaintance +Aldrich and I attempted his reform by clubbing to buy him a cravat. But +he would not put away his stiff little black bow, and until he imagined +the suit of white serge, he wore always a suit of black serge, truly +deplorable in the cut of the sagging frock. After his measure had once +been taken he refused to make his clothes the occasion of personal +interviews with his tailor; he sent the stuff by the kind elderly woman +who had been in the service of the family from the earliest days of his +marriage, and accepted the result without criticism. But the white serge +was an inspiration which few men would have had the courage to act upon. +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. + +It is well known how proud he was of his Oxford gown, not merely because +it symbolized the honor in which he was held by the highest literary body +in the world, but because it was so rich and so beautiful. The red and +the lavender of the cloth flattered his eyes as the silken black of the +same degree of Doctor of Letters, given him years before at Yale, could +not do. His frank, defiant happiness in it, mixed with a due sense of +burlesque, was something that those lacking his poet-soul could never +imagine; they accounted it vain, weak; but that would not have mattered +to him if he had known it. In his London sojourn he had formed the +top-hat habit, and for a while he lounged splendidly up and down Fifth +Avenue in that society emblem; but he seemed to tire of it, and to return +kindly to the soft hat of his Southwestern tradition. + +He disliked clubs; I don't know whether he belonged to any in New York, +but I never met him in one. As I have told, he himself had formed the +Human Race Club, but as he never could get it together it hardly counted. +There was to have been a meeting of it the time of my only visit to +Stormfield in April of last year; but of three who were to have come I +alone came. 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 closeknit, 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 elbow-room, 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, though he had been so weary of change +and so indifferent to it that he never saw it till he came to live in it. +He left it all to the architect whom he had known from a child in the +intimacy which bound our families together, though we bodily lived far +enough apart. I loved his little ones and he was sweet to mine and was +their delighted-in and wondered-at friend. Once and once again, and yet +again and again, the black shadow that shall never be lifted where it +falls, fell in his house and in mine, during the forty years and more +that we were friends, and endeared us the more to each other. + + + + +XXV. + +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 sugarsnow 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 been kept all +those intervening years in honorable retirement for this final use. 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. 'Go Down, Daniel', was one in which I can hear his quavering +tenor now. He was a lover of the things he liked, and full of a passion +for them which satisfied itself in reading them matchlessly aloud. No +one could read 'Uncle Remus' like him; his voice echoed the voices of the +negro nurses who told his childhood the wonderful tales. I remember +especially his rapture with Mr. Cable's 'Old Creole Days,' and the +thrilling force with which he gave the forbidding of the leper's brother +when the city's survey ran the course of an avenue through the cottage +where the leper lived in hiding: "Strit must not pass!" + +Out of a nature rich and fertile beyond any I have known, the material +given him by the Mystery that makes a man and then leaves him to make +himself over, he wrought a character of high nobility upon a foundation +of clear and solid truth. At the last day he will not have to confess +anything, for all his life was the free knowledge of any one who would +ask him of it. The Searcher of hearts will not bring him to shame at +that day, for he did not try to hide any of the things for which he was +often so bitterly sorry. He knew where the Responsibility lay, and he +took a man's share of it bravely; but not the less fearlessly he left the +rest of the answer to the God who had imagined men. + +It is in vain that I try to give a notion of the intensity with which he +pierced to the heart of life, and the breadth of vision with which he +compassed the whole world, and tried for the reason of things, and then +left trying. We had other meetings, insignificantly sad and brief; but +the last time I saw him alive 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. + +Next I saw him dead, lying in his coffin amid those flowers with which we +garland our despair in that pitiless hour. After the voice of his old +friend Twichell had been lifted in the prayer which it wailed through in +broken-hearted supplication, 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 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. Emerson, +Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes--I knew them all and all the rest of our +sages, poets, seers, critics, humorists; they were like one another and +like other literary men; but Clemens was sole, incomparable, the Lincoln +of our literature. + + + + +ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: + + + Absolute devotion to the day of her death, + Absolutely, so positively, so almost aggressively truthful + Addressed to their tenderness out of his tenderness + Amiable perception, and yet with a sort of remote absence + Amuse him, even when they wronged him + Amusingly realized the situation to their friends + But now I remember that he gets twenty dollars a month" + Christianity had done nothing to improve morals and conditions + Church: "Oh yes, I go It 'most kills me, but I go," + Clemens was sole, incomparable, the Lincoln of our literature + Despair broke in laughter + Despised the avoidance of repetitions out of fear of tautology + Everlasting rock of human credulity and folly + Flowers with which we garland our despair in that pitiless hour + He did not care much for fiction + He did not paw you with his hands to show his affection + He was a youth to the end of his days + Heroic lies + His coming almost killed her, but it was worth it + Honest men are few when it comes to themselves + It was mighty pretty, as Pepys would say + Jane Austen + Left him to do what the cat might + Lie, of course, and did to save others from grief or harm + Liked to find out good things and great things for himself + Livy Clemens: nthe loveliest person I have ever seen + Marriages are what the parties to them alone really know + Mind and soul were with those who do the hard work of the world + Mock modesty of print forbids my repeating here + Most desouthernized Southerner I ever knew + Most serious, the most humane, the most conscientious of men + Nearly nothing as chaos could be + Never saw a dead man whom he did not envy + Never saw a man more regardful of negroes + No man ever yet told the truth about himself + No man more perfectly sensed and more entirely abhorred slavery + Not possible for Clemens to write like anybody else + Ought not to call coarse without calling one's self prudish + Polite learning hesitated his praise + Praised it enough to satisfy the author + Reparation due from every white to every black man + Shackles of belief worn so long + Some superstition, usually of a hygienic sort + Stupidly truthful + The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it + Truthful + Used to ingratitude from those he helped + Vacuous vulgarity of its texts + Walter-Scotticized, pseudo-chivalry of the Southern ideal + We have never ended before, and we do not see how we can end + Well, if you are to be lost, I want to be lost with you + What he had done he owned to, good, bad, or indifferent + Whether every human motive was not selfish + Wonder why we hate the past so--"It's so damned humiliating!" + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of My Mark Twain, by William Dean Howells + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY MARK TWAIN *** + +***** This file should be named 3390.txt or 3390.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/3/9/3390/ + +Produced by David Widger + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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