Clemens met him at Baden-Baden, and they immediately set out on a tramp through the Black Forest, excursioning as pleased them, and having an idyllic good time. They did not always walk, but they often did. At least they did sometimes, when the weather was just right and Clemens's rheumatism did not trouble him. But they were likely to take a carriage, or a donkey-cart, or a train, or any convenient thing that happened along. They did not hurry, but idled and talked and gathered flowers, or gossiped with wayside natives and tourists, though always preferring to wander along together, beguiling the way with discussion and speculation and entertaining tales. They crossed on into Switzerland in due time and considered the conquest of the Alps. The family followed by rail or diligence, and greeted them here and there when they rested from their wanderings. Mark Twain found an immunity from attention in Switzerland, which for years he had not known elsewhere. His face was not so well known and his pen-name was carefully concealed.
It was a large relief to be no longer an object of public curiosity; but Twichell, as in the Bermuda trip, did not feel quite honest, perhaps, in altogether preserving the mask of unrecognition. In one of his letters home he tells how, when a young man at their table, he was especially delighted with Mark Twain's conversation, he could not resist taking the young man aside and divulging to him the speaker's identity.
“I could not forbear telling him who Mark was,” he says, “and the mingled surprise and pleasure his face exhibited made me glad I had done so.”
They climbed the Rigi, after which Clemens was not in good walking trim for some time; so Twichell went on a trip on his own account, to give his comrade a chance to rest. Then away again to Interlaken, where the Jungfrau rises, cold and white; on over the loneliness of Gemimi Pass, with glaciers for neighbors and the unfading white peaks against the blue; to Visp and to Zermatt, where the Matterhorn points like a finger that directs mankind to God. This was true Alpine wandering—sweet vagabondage.
The association of the wanderers was a very intimate one. Their minds were closely attuned, and there were numerous instances of thought—echo-mind answering to mind—without the employment of words. Clemens records in his notes:
Sunday A.M., August 11th. Been reading Romola yesterday afternoon,
last night, and this morning; at last I came upon the only passage
which has thus far hit me with force—Tito compromising with his
conscience, and resolving to do, not a bad thing, but not the best
thing. Joe entered the room five minutes—no, three minutes later
—and without prelude said, “I read that book you've got there six
years ago, and got a mighty good text for a sermon out of it the
passage where the young fellow compromises with his conscience, and
resolves to do, not a bad thing, but not the best thing.” This is
Joe's first reference to this book since he saw me buy it twenty-
four hours ago. So my mind operated on his in this instance. He
said he was sitting yonder in the reading-room, three minutes ago (I
have not got up yet), thinking of nothing in particular, and didn't
know what brought Romola into his head; but into his head it came
and that particular passage. Now I, forty feet away, in another
room, was reading that particular passage at that particular moment.
Couldn't suggest Romola to him earlier, because nothing in the book
had taken hold of me till I came to that one passage on page 112,
Tauchnitz edition.
And again:
The instances of mind-telegraphing are simply innumerable. This
evening Joe and I sat long at the edge of the village looking at the
Matterhorn. Then Joe said, “We ought to go to the Cervin Hotel and
inquire for Livy's telegram.” If he had been but one instant later
I should have said those words instead of him.
Such entries are frequent, and one day there came along a kind of object-lesson. They were toiling up a mountainside, when Twichell began telling a very interesting story which had happened in connection with a friend still living, though Twichell had no knowledge of his whereabouts at this time. The story finished just as they rounded a turn in, the cliff, and Twichell, looking up, ended his last sentence, “And there's the man!” Which was true, for they were face to face with the very man of whom he had been telling.
Another subject that entered into their discussion was the law of accidents. Clemens held that there was no such thing as an accident: that it was all forewritten in the day of the beginning; that every event, however slight, was embryonic in that first instant of created life, and immutably timed to its appearance in the web of destiny. Once on their travels, when they were on a high bank above a brawling stream, a little girl, who started to run toward them, slipped and rolled under the bottom rail of the protecting fence, her feet momentarily hanging out over the precipice and the tearing torrent below. It seemed a miraculous escape from death, and furnished an illustration for their discussion. The condition of the ground, the force of her fall, the nearness of the fatal edge, all these had grown inevitably out of the first great projection of thought, and the child's fall and its escape had been invested in life's primal atom.
The author of A Tramp Abroad tells us of the rushing stream that flows out of the Arcadian sky valley, the Gasternthal, and goes plunging down to Kandersteg, and how he took exercise by making “Harris” (Twichell) set stranded logs adrift while he lounged comfortably on a boulder, and watched them go tearing by; also how he made Harris run a race with one of those logs. But that is literature. Twichell, in a letter home, has preserved a likelier and lovelier story:
Mark is a queer fellow. There is nothing that he so delights in as
a swift, strong stream. You can hardly get him to leave one when
once he is within the influence of its fascinations. To throw in
stones and sticks seems to afford him rapture. Tonight, as we were
on our way back to the hotel, seeing a lot of driftwood caught by
the torrent side below the path, I climbed down and threw it in.
When I got back to the path Mark was running down-stream after it as
hard as he could go, throwing up his hands and shouting in the
wildest ecstasy, and when a piece went over a fall and emerged to
view in the foam below he would jump up and down and yell. He said
afterward that he hadn't been so excited in three months. He acted
just like a boy; another feature of his extreme sensitiveness in
certain directions.
Then generalizing, Twichell adds:
He has coarse spots in him. But I never knew a person so finely
regardful of the feelings of others in some ways. He hates to pass
another person walking, and will practise some subterfuge to take
off what he feels is the discourtesy of it. And he is exceedingly
timid, tremblingly timid, about approaching strangers; hates to ask
a question. His sensitive regard for others extends to animals.
When we are driving his concern is all about the horse. He can't
bear to see the whip used, or to see a horse pull hard. To-day,
when the driver clucked up his horse and quickened his pace a
little, Mark said, “The fellow's got the notion that we are in a
hurry.” He is exceedingly considerate toward me in regard of
everything—or most things.
The days were not all sunshine. Sometimes it rained and they took shelter by the wayside, or, if there was no shelter, they plodded along under their umbrellas, still talking away, and if something occurred that Clemens wanted to put down they would stand stock still in the rain, and Twichell would hold the umbrella while Clemens wrote—a good while sometimes—oblivious to storm and discomfort and the long way yet ahead.
After the day on Gemmi Pass Twichell wrote home:
Mark, to-day, was immensely absorbed in the flowers. He scrambled
around and gathered a great variety, and manifested the intensest
pleasure in them. He crowded a pocket of his note-book with his
specimens and wanted more room. So I stopped the guide and got out
my needle and thread, and out of a stiff paper, a hotel
advertisement, I had about me made a paper bag, a cornucopia like,
and tied it to his vest in front, and it answered the purpose
admirably. He filled it full with a beautiful collection, and as
soon as we got here to-night he transferred it to a cardboard box
and sent it by mail to Livy. A strange Mark he is, full of
contradictions. I spoke last night of his sensitive to others'
feelings. To-day the guide got behind, and came up as if he would
like to go by, yet hesitated to do so. Mark paused, went aside and
busied himself a minute picking a flower. In the halt the guide got
by and resumed his place in front. Mark threw the flower away,
saying, “I didn't want that. I only wanted to give the old man a
chance to go on without seeming to pass us.” Mark is splendid to
walk with amid such grand scenery, for he talks so well about it,
has such a power of strong, picturesque expression. I wish you
might have heard him to-day. His vigorous speech nearly did justice
to the things we saw.
In an address which Twichell gave many years later he recalls another pretty incident of their travels. They had been toiling up the Gorner Grat.
As we paused for a rest, a lamb from a flock of sheep near by ventured
inquisitively toward us, whereupon Mark seated himself on a rock, and with
beckoning hand and soft words tried to get it to come to him.
On the lamb's part it was a struggle between curiosity and timidity, but
in a succession of advances and retreats it gained confidence, though at a
very gradual rate. It was a scene for a painter: the great American
humorist on one side of the game and that silly little creature on the
other, with the Matterhorn for a background. Mark was reminded that the
time he was consuming was valuable—but to no purpose. The Gorner
Grat could wait. He held on with undiscouraged perseverance till he
carried his point: the lamb finally put its nose in his hand, and he was
happy over it all the rest of the day.
The matter of religion came up now and again in the drift of their discussions. It was Twichell's habit to have prayers in their room every night at the hotels, and Clemens was willing to join in the observances. Once Twichell, finding him in a responsive mood—a remorseful mood—gave his sympathy, and spoke of the larger sympathy of divinity. Clemens listened and seemed soothed and impressed, but his philosophies were too wide and too deep for creeds and doctrines. A day or two later, as they were tramping along in the hot sun, his honesty had to speak out.
“Joe,” he said, “I'm going to make a confession. I don't believe in your religion at all. I've been living a lie right straight along whenever I pretended to. For a moment, sometimes, I have been almost a believer, but it immediately drifts away from me again. I don't believe one word of your Bible was inspired by God any more than any other book. I believe it is entirely the work of man from beginning to end—atonement and all. The problem of life and death and eternity and the true conception of God is a bigger thing than is contained in that book.”
So the personal side of religious discussion closed between them, and was never afterward reopened.
They joined Mrs. Clemens and the others at Lausanne at last, and their Swiss holiday was over. Twichell set out for home by way of England, and Clemens gave himself up to reflection and rest after his wanderings. Then, as the days of their companionship passed in review, quickly and characteristically he sent a letter after his comrade:
DEAR OLD JOE, It is actually all over! I was so low-spirited at the
station yesterday, and this morning, when I woke, I couldn't seem to
accept the dismal truth that you were really gone, and the pleasant
tramping and talking at an end. Ah, my boy! it has been such a
rich holiday to me, and I feel under such deep and honest
obligations to you for coming. I am putting out of my mind all
memory of the times when I misbehaved toward you and hurt you; I am
resolved to consider it forgiven, and to store up and remember only
the charming hours of the journeys and the times when I was not
unworthy to be with you and share a companionship which to me stands
first after Livy's. It is justifiable to do this; for why should I
let my small infirmities of disposition live and grovel among my
mental pictures of the eternal sublimities of the Alps?
Livy can't accept or endure the fact that you are gone. But you
are, and we cannot get around it. So take our love with you, and
bear it also over the sea to Harmony, and God bless you both.
MARK.
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