MARK TWAIN at “Pier Seventy,” as he called it, paused to look
backward and to record some memoirs of his long, eventful past. The
Autobiography dictations begun in Florence were resumed, and daily
he traveled back, recalling long-ago scenes and all-but-forgotten
places. He was not without reminders. Now and again there came
some message that brought back the old days—the Tom Sawyer and Huck
Finn days—or the romance of the river that he never recalled other
than with tenderness and a tone of regret that it was gone. An
invitation to the golden wedding of two ancient friends moved and
saddened him, and his answer to it conveys about all the story of
life.
To Mr. and Mrs. Gordon:
21 FIFTH AVENUE,
Jan. 24, '06.
DEAR GORDONS,—I have just received your golden-wedding “At Home” and am trying to adjust my focus to it and realize how much it means. It is inconceivable! With a simple sweep it carries me back over a stretch of time measurable only in astronomical terms and geological periods. It brings before me Mrs. Gordon, young, round-limbed, handsome; and with her the Youngbloods and their two babies, and Laura Wright, that unspoiled little maid, that fresh flower of the woods and the prairies. Forty-eight years ago!
Life was a fairy-tale, then, it is a tragedy now. When I was 43 and John Hay 41 he said life was a tragedy after 40, and I disputed it. Three years ago he asked me to testify again: I counted my graves, and there was nothing for me to say.
I am old; I recognize it but I don't realize it. I wonder if a person ever really ceases to feel young—I mean, for a whole day at a time. My love to you both, and to all of us that are left.
MARK.
Though he used very little liquor of any kind, it was Mark Twain's
custom to keep a bottle of Scotch whiskey with his collection of
pipes and cigars and tobacco on a little table by his bed-side.
During restless nights he found a small quantity of it conducive to
sleep. Andrew Carnegie, learning of this custom, made it his
business to supply Scotch of his own special importation. The first
case came, direct from Scotland. When it arrived Clemens sent this
characteristic acknowledgment.
To Andrew Carnegie, in Scotland:
21 FIFTH AVE. Feb. 10, '06.
DEAR ST. ANDREW,—The whisky arrived in due course from over the water; last week one bottle of it was extracted from the wood and inserted into me, on the instalment plan, with this result: that I believe it to be the best, smoothest whisky now on the planet. Thanks, oh, thanks: I have discarded Peruna.
Hoping that you three are well and happy and will be coming back before the winter sets in.
I am,
Sincerely yours,
MARK.
It must have been a small bottle to be consumed by him in a week, or
perhaps he had able assistance. The next brief line refers to the
manuscript of his article, “Saint Joan of Arc,” presented to the
museum at Rouen.
To Edward E. Clarke:
21 FIFTH AVE., Feb., 1906.
DEAR SIR,—I have found the original manuscript and with great pleasure I transmit it herewith, also a printed copy.
It is a matter of great pride to me to have any word of mine concerning the world's supremest heroine honored by a place in that Museum.
Sincerely yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
The series of letters which follows was prepared by Mark Twain and
General Fred Grant, mainly with a view of advertising the lecture
that Clemens had agreed to deliver for the benefit of the Robert
Fulton Monument Association. It was, in fact, to be Mark Twain's
“farewell lecture,” and the association had really proposed to pay
him a thousand dollars for it. The exchange of these letters,
however, was never made outside of Mark Twain's bed-room. Propped
against the pillows, pen in hand, with General Grant beside him,
they arranged the series with the idea of publication. Later the
plan was discarded, so that this pleasant foolery appears here for
the first, time.
PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL
(Correspondence)
Telegram
Army Headquarters (date)
MARK TWAIN, New York,—Would you consider a proposal to talk at Carnegie Hall for the benefit of the Robert Fulton Monument Association, of which you
are a Vice President, for a fee of a thousand dollars?
F. D. GRANT,
President,
Fulton Monument Association.
Telegraphic Answer:
MAJOR-GENERAL F. D. GRANT, Army Headquarters,—I shall be glad to do it, but I must stipulate that you keep the thousand dollars and add it to the Monument fund as my contribution.
CLEMENS.
Letters:
DEAR MR. CLEMENS,—You have the thanks of the Association, and the terms shall be as you say. But why give all of it? Why not reserve a portion—why should you do this work wholly without compensation?
Truly yours
FRED. D. GRANT.
MAJOR GENERAL GRANT, Army Headquarters.
DEAR GENERAL,—Because I stopped talking for pay a good many years ago, and I could not resume the habit now without a great deal of personal discomfort. I love to hear myself talk, because I get so much instruction and moral upheaval out of it, but I lose the bulk of this joy when I charge for it. Let the terms stand.
General, if I have your approval, I wish to use this good occasion to retire permanently from the platform.
Truly yours
S. L. CLEMENS.
DEAR MR. CLEMENS,—Certainly. But as an old friend, permit me to say, Don't do that. Why should you?—you are not old yet.
Yours truly,
FRED D. GRANT.
DEAR GENERAL,—I mean the pay-platform; I shan't retire from the gratis-platform until after I am dead and courtesy requires me to keep still and not disturb the others.
What shall I talk about? My idea is this: to instruct the audience about Robert Fulton, and.... Tell me—was that his real name, or was it his nom de plume? However, never mind, it is not important—I can skip it, and the house will think I knew all about it, but forgot. Could you find out for me if he was one of the Signers of the Declaration, and which one? But if it is any trouble, let it alone, I can skip it. Was he out with Paul Jones? Will you ask Horace Porter? And ask him if he brought both of them home. These will be very interesting facts, if they can be established. But never mind, don't trouble Porter, I can establish them anyway. The way I look at it, they are historical gems—gems of the very first water.
Well, that is my idea, as I have said: first, excite the audience with a spoonful of information about Fulton, then quiet down with a barrel of illustration drawn by memory from my books—and if you don't say anything the house will think they never heard of it before, because people don't really read your books, they only say they do, to keep you from feeling bad. Next, excite the house with another spoonful of Fultonian fact, then tranquilize them again with another barrel of illustration. And so on and so on, all through the evening; and if you are discreet and don't tell them the illustrations don't illustrate anything, they won't notice it and I will send them home as well-informed about Robert Fulton as I am myself. Don't be afraid; I know all about audiences, they believe everything you say, except when you are telling the truth.
Truly yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
P.S. Mark all the advertisements “Private and Confidential,” otherwise the people will not read them.
M. T.
DEAR MR. CLEMENS,—How long shall you talk? I ask in order that we may be able to say when carriages may be called.
Very Truly yours,
HUGH GORDON MILLER,
Secretary.
DEAR MR. MILLER,—I cannot say for sure. It is my custom to keep on talking till I get the audience cowed. Sometimes it takes an hour and fifteen minutes, sometimes I can do it in an hour.
Sincerely yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
Mem. My charge is 2 boxes free. Not the choicest—sell the choicest, and give me any 6-seat boxes you please.
S. L. C.
I want Fred Grant (in uniform) on the stage; also the rest of the officials of the Association; also other distinguished people—all the attractions we can get. Also, a seat for Mr. Albert Bigelow Paine, who may be useful to me if he is near me and on the front.
S. L. C.
The seat chosen for the writer of these notes was to be at the front
of the stage in order that the lecturer might lean over now and then
and pretend to be asking information concerning Fulton. I was not
entirely happy in the thought of this showy honor, and breathed more
freely when this plan was abandoned and the part assigned to General
Grant.
The lecture was given in Carnegie Hall, which had been gayly
decorated for the occasion. The house was more than filled, and a
great sum of money was realized for the fund.
It was that spring that Gorky and Tchaikowski, the Russian
revolutionists, came to America hoping to arouse interest in their
cause. The idea of the overthrow of the Russian dynasty was
pleasant to Mark Twain. Few things would have given him greater
comfort than to have known that a little more than ten years would
see the downfall of Russian imperialism. The letter which follows
was a reply to an invitation from Tchaikowski, urging him to speak
at one of the meetings.
DEAR MR. TCHAIKOWSKI,—I thank you for the honor of the invitation, but I am not able to accept it, because on Thursday evening I shall be presiding at a meeting whose object is to find remunerative work for certain classes of our blind who would gladly support themselves if they had the opportunity.
My sympathies are with the Russian revolution, of course. It goes without saying. I hope it will succeed, and now that I have talked with you I take heart to believe it will. Government by falsified promises; by lies, by treacheries, and by the butcher-knife for the aggrandizement of a single family of drones and its idle and vicious kin has been borne quite long enough in Russia, I should think, and it is to be hoped that the roused nation, now rising in its strength, will presently put an end to it and set up the republic in its place. Some of us, even of the white headed, may live to see the blessed day when Czars and Grand Dukes will be as scarce there as I trust they are in heaven.
Most sincerely yours,
MARK TWAIN.
There came another summer at Dublin, New Hampshire, this time in the
fine Upton residence on the other slope of Monadnock, a place of
equally beautiful surroundings, and an even more extended view.
Clemens was at this time working steadily on his so-called
Autobiography, which was not that, in fact, but a series of
remarkable chapters, reminiscent, reflective, commentative, written
without any particular sequence as to time or subject-matter. He
dictated these chapters to a stenographer, usually in the open air,
sitting in a comfortable rocker or pacing up and down the long
veranda that faced a vast expanse of wooded slope and lake and
distant blue mountains. It became one of the happiest occupations
of his later years.
To W. D. Howells, in Maine:
DUBLIN, Sunday, June 17, '06.
DEAR HOWELLS,—..... The dictating goes lazily and pleasantly on. With intervals. I find that I have been at it, off and on, nearly two hours a day for 155 days, since Jan. 9. To be exact I've dictated 75 hours in 80 days and loafed 75 days. I've added 60,000 words in the month that I've been here; which indicates that I've dictated during 20 days of that time—40 hours, at an average of 1,500 words an hour. It's a plenty, and I am satisfied.
There's a good deal of “fat” I've dictated, (from Jan. 9) 210,000 words, and the “fat” adds about 50,000 more.
The “fat” is old pigeon-holed things, of the years gone by, which I or editors didn't das't to print. For instance, I am dumping in the little old book which I read to you in Hartford about 30 years ago and which you said “publish—and ask Dean Stanley to furnish an introduction; he'll do it.” (“Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven.”) It reads quite to suit me, without altering a word, now that it isn't to see print until I am dead.
To-morrow I mean to dictate a chapter which will get my heirs and assigns burnt alive if they venture to print it this side of 2006 A.D.—which I judge they won't. There'll be lots of such chapters if I live 3 or 4 years longer. The edition of A.D. 2006 will make a stir when it comes out. I shall be hovering around taking notice, along with other dead pals. You are invited.
MARK.
His tendency to estimate the measure of the work he was doing, and
had completed, must have clung to him from his old printer days.
The chapter which was to get his heirs and assigns burned alive was
on the orthodox God, and there was more than one such chapter. In
the next letter he refers to two exquisite poems by Howells, and the
writer of these notes recalls his wonderful reading of them aloud.
'In Our Town' was a collection of short stories then recently issued
by William Allen White. Howells had recommended them.
To W. D. Howells, in Maine:
21 FIFTH AVE., Tuesday Eve.
DEAR HOWELLS,—It is lovely of you to say those beautiful things—I don't know how to thank you enough. But I love you, that I know.
I read “After the Wedding” aloud and we felt all the pain of it and the truth. It was very moving and very beautiful—would have been over-comingly moving, at times, but for the haltings and pauses compelled by the difficulties of MS—these were a protection, in that they furnished me time to brace up my voice, and get a new start. Jean wanted to keep the MS for another reading-aloud, and for “keeps,” too, I suspected, but I said it would be safest to write you about it.
I like “In Our Town,” particularly that Colonel, of the Lookout Mountain Oration, and very particularly pages 212-16. I wrote and told White so.
After “After the Wedding” I read “The Mother” aloud and sounded its human deeps with your deep-sea lead. I had not read it before, since it was first published.
I have been dictating some fearful things, for 4 successive mornings—for no eye but yours to see until I have been dead a century—if then. But I got them out of my system, where they had been festering for years—and that was the main thing. I feel better, now.
I came down today on business—from house to house in 12 1/2 hours, and expected to arrive dead, but am neither tired nor sleepy.
Yours as always
MARK.
To William Allen White, in Emporia, Kans.:
DUBLIN, NEW HAMPSHIRE,
June 24, 1906.
DEAR MR. WHITE,—Howells told me that “In Our Town” was a charming book, and indeed it is. All of it is delightful when read one's self, parts of it can score finely when subjected to the most exacting of tests—the reading aloud. Pages 197 and 216 are of that grade. I have tried them a couple of times on the family, and pages 212 and 216 are qualified to fetch any house of any country, caste or color, endowed with those riches which are denied to no nation on the planet—humor and feeling.
Talk again—the country is listening.
Sincerely yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
Witter Bynner, the poet, was one of the editors of McClure's
Magazine at this time, but was trying to muster the courage to give
up routine work for verse-making and the possibility of poverty.
Clemens was fond of Bynner and believed in his work. He did not
advise him, however, to break away entirely from a salaried
position—at least not immediately; but one day Bynner did so, and
reported the step he had taken, with some doubt as to the answer he
would receive.
To Witter Bynner, in New York:
DUBLIN, Oct. 5, 1906.
DEAR POET,—You have certainly done right for several good reasons; at least, of them, I can name two:
1. With your reputation you can have your freedom and yet earn your living. 2. if you fall short of succeeding to your wish, your reputation will provide you another job. And so in high approval I suppress the scolding and give you the saintly and fatherly pat instead.
MARK TWAIN.
On another occasion, when Bynner had written a poem to Clara
Clemens, her father pretended great indignation that the first poem
written by Bynner to any one in his household should not be to him,
and threatened revenge. At dinner shortly after he produced from
his pocket a slip of paper on which he had set down what he said was
“his only poem.” He read the lines that follow:
“Of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: It might have been.
Ah, say not so! as life grows longer, leaner, thinner,
We recognize, O God, it might have Bynner!”
He returned to New York in October and soon after was presented by
Mrs. H. H. Rogers with a handsome billiard-table.
He had a passion for the game, but had played comparatively little
since the old Hartford days of fifteen years before, when a group of
his friends used to assemble on Friday nights in the room at the top
of the house for long, strenuous games and much hilarity. Now the
old fever all came back; the fascinations of the game superseded
even his interest in the daily dictations.
To Mrs. H. H. Rogers, in New York:
21 FIFTH AVENUE, Monday, Nov., 1906.
DEAR MRS. ROGERS,—The billiard table is better than the doctors. It is driving out the heartburn in a most promising way. I have a billiardist on the premises, and I walk not less than ten miles every day with the cue in my hand. And the walking is not the whole of the exercise, nor the most health-giving part of it, I think. Through the multitude of the positions and attitudes it brings into play every muscle in the body and exercises them all.
The games begin right after luncheon, daily, and continue until midnight, with 2 hours' intermission for dinner and music. And so it is 9 hours' exercise per day, and 10 or 12 on Sunday. Yesterday and last night it was 12—and I slept until 8 this morning without waking. The billiard table, as a Sabbath breaker can beat any coal-breaker in Pennsylvania, and give it 30 in, the game. If Mr. Rogers will take to daily billiards he can do without doctors and the massageur, I think.
We are really going to build a house on my farm, an hour and a half from New York. It is decided. It is to be built by contract, and is to come within $25,000.
With love and many thanks.
S. L. C.
P.S. Clara is in the sanitarium—till January 28 when her western concert tour will begin. She is getting to be a mighty competent singer. You must know Clara better; she is one of the very finest and completest and most satisfactory characters I have ever met. Others knew it before, but I have always been busy with other matters.
The “billiardist on the premises” was the writer of these notes,
who, earlier in the year, had become his biographer, and, in the
course of time, his daily companion and friend. The farm mentioned
was one which he had bought at Redding, Connecticut, where, later,
he built the house known as “Stormfield.”
Henry Mills Alden, for nearly forty years editor of Harper's
Magazine, arrived at his seventieth birthday on November 11th that
year, and Harper & Brothers had arranged to give him a great dinner
in the offices of Franklin Square, where, for half a century, he had
been an active force. Mark Twain, threatened with a cold, and
knowing the dinner would be strenuous, did not feel able to attend,
so wrote a letter which, if found suitable, could be read at the
gathering.
To Mr. Henry Alden:
ALDEN,—dear and ancient friend—it is a solemn moment. You have now reached the age of discretion. You have been a long time arriving. Many years ago you docked me on an article because the subject was too old; later, you docked me on an article because the subject was too new; later still, you docked me on an article because the subject was betwixt and between. Once, when I wrote a Letter to Queen Victoria, you did not put it in the respectable part of the Magazine, but interred it in that potter's field, the Editor's Drawer. As a result, she never answered it. How often we recall, with regret, that Napoleon once shot at a magazine editor and missed him and killed a publisher. But we remember, with charity, that his intentions were good.
You will reform, now, Alden. You will cease from these economies, and you will be discharged. But in your retirement you will carry with you the admiration and earnest good wishes of the oppressed and toiling scribes. This will be better than bread. Let this console you when the bread fails.
You will carry with you another thing, too—the affection of the scribes; for they all love you in spite of your crimes. For you bear a kind heart in your breast, and the sweet and winning spirit that charms away all hostilities and animosities, and makes of your enemy your friend and keeps him so. You have reigned over us thirty-six years, and, please God, you shall reign another thirty-six—“and peace to Mahmoud on his golden throne!”
Always yours
MARK
A copyright bill was coming up in Washington and a delegation of
authors went down to work for it. Clemens was not the head of the
delegation, but he was the most prominent member of it, as well as
the most useful. He invited the writer to accompany him, and
elsewhere I have told in detail the story of that excursion,—[See
Mark Twain; A Biography, chap. ccli,]—which need be but briefly
touched upon here.
His work was mainly done aside from that of the delegation. They
had him scheduled for a speech, however, which he made without notes
and with scarcely any preparation. Meantime he had applied to
Speaker Cannon for permission to allow him on the floor of the
House, where he could buttonhole the Congressmen. He was not
eligible to the floor without having received the thanks of
Congress, hence the following letter:
To Hon. Joseph Cannon, House of Representatives:
Dec. 7, 1906.
DEAR UNCLE JOSEPH,—Please get me the thanks of the Congress—not next week but right away. It is very necessary. Do accomplish this for your affectionate old friend right away; by persuasion, if you can, by violence if you must, for it is imperatively necessary that I get on the floor for two or three hours and talk to the members, man by man, in behalf of the support, encouragement and protection of one of the nation's most valuable assets and industries—its literature. I have arguments with me, also a barrel, with liquid in it.
Give me a chance. Get me the thanks of Congress. Don't wait for others; there isn't time. I have stayed away and let Congress alone for seventy-one years and I am entitled to thanks. Congress knows it perfectly well and I have long felt hurt that this quite proper and earned expression of gratitude has been merely felt by the House and never publicly uttered. Send me an order on the Sergeant-at-Arms quick. When shall I come? With love and a benediction.
MARK TWAIN.
This was mainly a joke. Mark Twain did not expect any “thanks,” but
he did hope for access to the floor, which once, in an earlier day,
had been accorded him. We drove to the Capitol and he delivered his
letter to “Uncle Joe” by hand. “Uncle Joe” could not give him the
privilege of the floor; the rules had become more stringent. He
declared they would hang him if he did such a thing. He added that
he had a private room down-stairs, where Mark Twain might establish
headquarters, and that he would assign his colored servant, Neal, of
long acquaintanceship with many of the members, to pass the word
that Mark Twain was receiving.
The result was a great success. All that afternoon members of
Congress poured into the Speaker's room and, in an atmosphere blue
with tobacco smoke, Mark Twain talked the gospel of copyright to his
heart's content.
The bill did not come up for passage that session, but Mark Twain
lived to see his afternoon's lobbying bring a return. In 1909,
Champ Clark, and those others who had gathered around him that
afternoon, passed a measure that added fourteen years to the
copyright term.
The next letter refers to a proposed lobby of quite a different
sort.
To Helen Keller, in Wrentham, Mass.:
21 FIFTH AVENUE,
Dec. 23, '06.
DEAR HELEN KELLER,—... You say, “As a reformer, you know that ideas must be driven home again and again.”
Yes, I know it; and by old experience I know that speeches and documents and public meetings are a pretty poor and lame way of accomplishing it. Last year I proposed a sane way—one which I had practiced with success for a quarter of a century—but I wasn't expecting it to get any attention, and it didn't.
Give me a battalion of 200 winsome young girls and matrons, and let me tell them what to do and how to do it, and I will be responsible for shining results. If I could mass them on the stage in front of the audience and instruct them there, I could make a public meeting take hold of itself and do something really valuable for once. Not that the real instruction would be done there, for it wouldn't; it would be previously done privately, and merely repeated there.
But it isn't going to happen—the good old way will be stuck to: there'll be a public meeting: with music, and prayer, and a wearying report, and a verbal description of the marvels the blind can do, and 17 speeches—then the call upon all present who are still alive, to contribute. This hoary program was invented in the idiot asylum, and will never be changed. Its function is to breed hostility to good causes.
Some day somebody will recruit my 200—my dear beguilesome Knights of the Golden Fleece—and you will see them make good their ominous name.
Mind, we must meet! not in the grim and ghastly air of the platform, mayhap, but by the friendly fire—here at 21.
Affectionately your friend,
S. L. CLEMENS.
They did meet somewhat later that winter in the friendly parlors of
No. 21, and friends gathered in to meet the marvelous blind girl and
to pay tribute to Miss Sullivan (Mrs. Macy) for her almost
incredible achievement.
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