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Mark Twain: A Biography. Volume III, Part 2: 1907-1910

by Albert Bigelow Paine · English · Gutenberg #2987 · 554,921 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Mark Twain: A Biography. Volume III, Part 2: 1907-1910

Author: Albert Bigelow Paine


        
Release date: October 4, 2004 [eBook #2987]
                Most recently updated: January 1, 2021

Language: English

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Credits: Produced by David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARK TWAIN: A BIOGRAPHY. VOLUME III, PART 2: 1907-1910 ***




Produced by David Widger







MARK TWAIN, A BIOGRAPHY

By Albert Bigelow Paine



VOLUME III, Part 2: 1907-1910



CCLVI


HONORS FROM OXFORD

Clemens made a brief trip to Bermuda during the winter, taking Twichell
along; their first return to the island since the trip when they had
promised to come back so soon-nearly thirty years before. They had been
comparatively young men then. They were old now, but they found the
green island as fresh and full of bloom as ever. They did not find their
old landlady; they could not even remember her name at first, and then
Twichell recalled that it was the same as an author of certain
schoolbooks in his youth, and Clemens promptly said, "Kirkham's Grammar."
Kirkham was truly the name, and they went to find her; but she was dead,
and the daughter, who had been a young girl in that earlier time, reigned
in her stead and entertained the successors of her mother's guests. They
walked and drove about the island, and it was like taking up again a
long-discontinued book and reading another chapter of the same tale. It
gave Mark Twain a fresh interest in Bermuda, one which he did not allow
to fade again.

Later in the year (March, 1907) I also made a journey; it having been
agreed that I should take a trip to the Mississippi and to the Pacific
coast to see those old friends of Mark Twain's who were so rapidly
passing away. John Briggs was still alive, and other Hannibal
schoolmates; also Joe Goodman and Steve Gillis, and a few more of the
early pioneers--all eminently worth seeing in the matter of such work as
I had in hand. The billiard games would be interrupted; but whatever
reluctance to the plan there may have been on that account was put aside
in view of prospective benefits. Clemens, in fact, seemed to derive joy
from the thought that he was commissioning a kind of personal emissary to
his old comrades, and provided me with a letter of credentials.

It was a long, successful trip that I made, and it was undertaken none
too soon. John Briggs, a gentle-hearted man, was already entering the
valley of the shadow as he talked to me by his fire one memorable
afternoon, and reviewed the pranks of those days along the river and in
the cave and on Holliday's Hill. I think it was six weeks later that he
died; and there were others of that scattering procession who did not
reach the end of the year. Joe Goodman, still full of vigor (in 1912),
journeyed with me to the green and dreamy solitudes of Jackass Hill to
see Steve and Jim Gillis, and that was an unforgetable Sunday when Steve
Gillis, an invalid, but with the fire still in his eyes and speech, sat
up on his couch in his little cabin in that Arcadian stillness and told
old tales and adventures. When I left he said:

"Tell Sam I'm going to die pretty soon, but that I love him; that I've
loved him all my life, and I'll love him till I die. This is the last
word I'll ever send to him." Jim Gillis, down in Sonora, was already
lying at the point of death, and so for him the visit was too late,
though he was able to receive a message from his ancient mining partner,
and to send back a parting word.

I returned by way of New Orleans and the Mississippi River, for I wished
to follow that abandoned water highway, and to visit its presiding
genius, Horace Bixby,--[He died August 2, 1912, at the age of 86]--still
alive and in service as pilot of the government snagboat, his
headquarters at St. Louis.

Coming up the river on one of the old passenger steam boats that still
exist, I noticed in a paper which came aboard that Mark Twain was to
receive from Oxford University the literary doctor's degree. There had
been no hint of this when I came away, and it seemed rather too sudden
and too good to be true. That the little barefoot lad that had played
along the river-banks at Hannibal, and received such meager advantages in
the way of schooling--whose highest ambition had been to pilot such a
craft as this one--was about to be crowned by the world's greatest
institution of learning, to receive the highest recognition for
achievement in the world of letters, was a thing which would not be
likely to happen outside of a fairy tale.

Returning to New York, I ran out to Tuxedo, where he had taken a home for
the summer (for it was already May), and walking along the shaded paths
of that beautiful suburban park, he told me what he knew of the Oxford
matter.

Moberly Bell, of the London Times, had been over in April, and soon after
his return to England there had come word of the proposed honor. Clemens
privately and openly (to Bell) attributed it largely to his influence. He
wrote to him:

    DEAR MR. BELL,--Your hand is in it & you have my best thanks.
    Although I wouldn't cross an ocean again for the price of the ship
    that carried me I am glad to do it for an Oxford degree. I shall
    plan to sail for England a shade before the middle of June, so that
    I can have a few days in London before the 26th.

A day or two later, when the time for sailing had been arranged, he
overtook his letter with a cable:

    I perceive your hand in it. You have my best thanks. Sail on
    Minneapolis June 8th. Due in Southampton ten days later.

Clemens said that his first word of the matter had been a newspaper
cablegram, and that he had been doubtful concerning it until a cablegram
to himself had confirmed it.

"I never expected to cross the water again," he said; "but I would be
willing to journey to Mars for that Oxford degree."

He put the matter aside then, and fell to talking of Jim Gillis and the
others I had visited, dwelling especially on Gillis's astonishing faculty
for improvising romances, recalling how he had stood with his back to the
fire weaving his endless, grotesque yarns, with no other guide than his
fancy. It was a long, happy walk we had, though rather a sad one in its
memories; and he seemed that day, in a sense, to close the gate of those
early scenes behind him, for he seldom referred to them afterward.

He was back at 21 Fifth Avenue presently, arranging for his voyage.
Meantime, cable invitations of every sort were pouring in, from this and
that society and dignitary; invitations to dinners and ceremonials, and
what not, and it was clear enough that his English sojourn was to be a
busy one. He had hoped to avoid this, and began by declining all but two
invitations--a dinner-party given by Ambassador Whitelaw Reid and a
luncheon proposed by the "Pilgrims." But it became clear that this would
not do. England was not going to confer its greatest collegiate honor
without being permitted to pay its wider and more popular tribute.

Clemens engaged a special secretary for the trip--Mr. Ralph W. Ashcroft,
a young Englishman familiar with London life. They sailed on the 8th of
June, by a curious coincidence exactly forty years from the day he had
sailed on the Quaker City to win his great fame. I went with him to the
ship. His first elation had passed by this time, and he seemed a little
sad, remembering, I think, the wife who would have enjoyed this honor
with him but could not share it now.




CCLVII

A TRUE ENGLISH WELCOME

Mark Twain's trip across the Atlantic would seem to have been a pleasant
one. The Minneapolis is a fine, big ship, and there was plenty of
company. Prof. Archibald Henderson, Bernard Shaw's biographer, was
aboard;--[Professor Henderson has since then published a volume on Mark
Twain-an interesting commentary on his writings--mainly from the
sociological point of view.]--also President Patton, of the Princeton
Theological Seminary; a well-known cartoonist, Richards, and some very
attractive young people--school-girls in particular, such as all through
his life had appealed to Mark Twain. Indeed, in his later life they made
a stronger appeal than ever. The years had robbed him of his own little
flock, and always he was trying to replace them. Once he said:

"During those years after my wife's death I was washing about on a
forlorn sea of banquets and speech-making in high and holy causes, and
these things furnished me intellectual cheer, and entertainment; but they
got at my heart for an evening only, then left it dry and dusty. I had
reached the grandfather stage of life without grandchildren, so I began
to adopt some."

He adopted several on that journey to England and on the return voyage,
and he kept on adopting others during the rest of his life. These
companionships became one of the happiest aspects of his final days, as
we shall see by and by.

There were entertainments on the ship, one of them given for the benefit
of the Seamen's Orphanage. One of his adopted granddaughters--"Charley"
he called her--played a violin solo and Clemens made a speech. Later his
autographs were sold at auction. Dr. Patton was auctioneer, and one
autographed postal card brought twenty-five dollars, which is perhaps the
record price for a single Mark Twain signature. He wore his white suit
on this occasion, and in the course of his speech referred to it. He
told first of the many defects in his behavior, and how members of his
household had always tried to keep him straight. The children, he said,
had fallen into the habit of calling it "dusting papa off." Then he went
on:

    When my daughter came to see me off last Saturday at the boat she
    slipped a note in my hand and said, "Read it when you get aboard the
    ship." I didn't think of it again until day before yesterday, and
    it was a "dusting off." And if I carry out all the instructions
    that I got there I shall be more celebrated in England for my
    behavior than for anything else. I got instructions how to act on
    every occasion. She underscored "Now, don't you wear white clothes
    on ship or on shore until you get back," and I intended to obey. I
    have been used to obeying my family all my life, but I wore the
    white clothes to-night because the trunk that has the dark clothes
    in it is in the cellar. I am not apologizing for the white clothes;
    I am only apologizing to my daughter for not obeying her.

He received a great welcome when the ship arrived at Tilbury. A throng
of rapid-fire reporters and photographers immediately surrounded him, and
when he left the ship the stevedores gave him a round of cheers. It was
the beginning of that almost unheard-of demonstration of affection and
honor which never for a moment ceased, but augmented from day to day
during the four weeks of his English sojourn.

In a dictation following his return, Mark Twain said:

    Who began it? The very people of all people in the world whom I
    would have chosen: a hundred men of my own class--grimy sons of
    labor, the real builders of empires and civilizations, the
    stevedores! They stood in a body on the dock and charged their
    masculine lungs, and gave me a welcome which went to the marrow of
    me.

J. Y. W. MacAlister was at the St. Pancras railway station to meet him,
and among others on the platform was Bernard Shaw, who had come down to
meet Professor Henderson. Clemens and Shaw were presented, and met
eagerly, for each greatly admired the other. A throng gathered. Mark
Twain was extricated at last, and hurried away to his apartments at
Brown's Hotel, "a placid, subdued, homelike, old-fashioned English inn,"
he called it, "well known to me years ago, a blessed retreat of a sort
now rare in England, and becoming rarer every year."

But Brown's was not placid and subdued during his stay. The London
newspapers declared that Mark Twain's arrival had turned Brown's not only
into a royal court, but a post-office--that the procession of visitors
and the bundles of mail fully warranted this statement. It was, in fact,
an experience which surpassed in general magnitude and magnificence
anything he had hitherto known. His former London visits, beginning with
that of 1872, had been distinguished by high attentions, but all of them
combined could not equal this. When England decides to get up an
ovation, her people are not to be outdone even by the lavish Americans.
An assistant secretary had to be engaged immediately, and it sometimes
required from sixteen to twenty hours a day for two skilled and busy men
to receive callers and reduce the pile of correspondence.

A pile of invitations had already accumulated, and others flowed in. Lady
Stanley, widow of Henry M. Stanley, wrote:

    You know I want to see you and join right hand to right hand. I
    must see your dear face again . . . . You will have no peace,
    rest, or leisure during your stay in London, and you will end by
    hating human beings. Let me come before you feel that way.

Mary Cholmondeley, the author of Red Pottage, niece of that lovable
Reginald Cholmondeley, and herself an old friend, sent greetings and
urgent invitations. Archdeacon Wilberforce wrote:

    I have just been preaching about your indictment of that scoundrel
    king of the Belgians and telling my people to buy the book. I am
    only a humble item among the very many who offer you a cordial
    welcome in England, but we long to see you again, and I should like
    to change hats with you again. Do you remember?

The Athenaeum, the Garrick, and a dozen other London clubs had
anticipated his arrival with cards of honorary membership for the period
of his stay. Every leading photographer had put in a claim for sittings.
It was such a reception as Charles Dickens had received in America in
1842, and again in 1867. A London paper likened it to Voltaire's return
to Paris in 1778, when France went mad over him. There is simply no
limit to English affection and, hospitality once aroused. Clemens wrote:

    Surely such weeks as this must be very rare in this world: I had
    seen nothing like them before; I shall see nothing approaching them
    again!

Sir Thomas Lipton and Bram Stoker, old friends, were among the first to
present themselves, and there was no break in the line of callers.

Clemens's resolutions for secluding himself were swept away. On the very
next morning following his arrival he breakfasted with J. Henniker
Heaton, father of International Penny Postage, at the Bath Club, just
across Dover Street from Brown's. He lunched at the Ritz with Marjorie
Bowen and Miss Bisland. In the afternoon he sat for photographs at
Barnett's, and made one or two calls. He could no more resist these
things than a debutante in her first season.

He was breakfasting again with Heaton next morning; lunching with "Toby,
M.P.," and Mrs. Lucy; and having tea with Lady Stanley in the afternoon,
and being elaborately dined next day at Dorchester House by Ambassador
and Mrs. Reid. These were all old and tried friends. He was not a
stranger among them, he said; he was at home. Alfred Austin, Conan
Doyle, Anthony Hope, Alma Tadema, E. A. Abbey, Edmund Goss, George
Smalley, Sir Norman Lockyer, Henry W. Lucy, Sidney Brooks, and Bram
Stoker were among those at Dorchester House--all old comrades, as were
many of the other guests.

"I knew fully half of those present," he said afterward.

Mark Twain's bursting upon London society naturally was made the most of
by the London papers, and all his movements were tabulated and
elaborated, and when there was any opportunity for humor in the situation
it was not left unimproved. The celebrated Ascot racing-cup was stolen
just at the time of his arrival, and the papers suggestively mingled
their head-lines, "Mark Twain Arrives: Ascot Cup Stolen," and kept the
joke going in one form or another. Certain state jewels and other
regalia also disappeared during his stay, and the news of these
burglaries was reported in suspicious juxtaposition with the news of Mark
Twain's doings.

English reporters adopted American habits for the occasion, and invented
or embellished when the demand for a new sensation was urgent. Once,
when following the custom of the place, he descended the hotel elevator
in a perfectly proper and heavy brown bath robe, and stepped across
narrow Dover Street to the Bath Club, the papers flamed next day with the
story that Mark Twain had wandered about the lobby of Brown's and
promenaded Dover Street in a sky-blue bath robe attracting wide
attention.

Clara Clemens, across the ocean, was naturally a trifle disturbed by such
reports, and cabled this delicate "dusting off":

"Much worried. Remember proprieties."

To which he answered:

"They all pattern after me," a reply to the last degree characteristic.

It was on the fourth day after his arrival, June 22d, that he attended
the King's garden-party at Windsor Castle. There were eighty-five
hundred guests at the King's party, and if we may judge from the London
newspapers, Mark Twain was quite as much a figure in that great throng as
any member of the royal family. His presentation to the King and the
Queen is set down as an especially notable incident, and their
conversation is quite fully given. Clemens himself reported:

    His Majesty was very courteous. In the course of the conversation
    I reminded him of an episode of fifteen years ago, when I had the
    honor to walk a mile with him when he was taking the waters at
    Homburg, in Germany. I said that I had often told about that
    episode, and that whenever I was the historian I made good history
    of it and it was worth listening to, but that it had found its way
    into print once or twice in unauthentic ways and was badly damaged
    thereby. I said I should like to go on repeating this history, but
    that I should be quite fair and reasonably honest, and while I
    should probably never tell it twice in the same way I should at
    least never allow it to deteriorate in my hands. His Majesty
    intimated his willingness that I should continue to disseminate that
    piece of history; and he added a compliment, saying that he knew
    good and sound history would not suffer at my hands, and that if
    this good and sound history needed any improvement beyond the facts
    he would trust me to furnish that improvement.

    I think it is not an exaggeration to say that the Queen looked as
    young and beautiful as she did thirty-five years ago when I saw her
    first. I did not say this to her, because I learned long ago never
    to say the obvious thing, but leave the obvious thing to commonplace
    and inexperienced people to say. That she still looked to me as
    young and beautiful as she did thirty-five years ago is good
    evidence that ten thousand people have already noticed this and have
    mentioned it to her. I could have said it and spoken the truth, but
    I was too wise for that. I kept the remark unuttered and saved her
    Majesty the vexation of hearing it the ten-thousand-and-oneth time.

    All that report about my proposal to buy Windsor Castle and its
    grounds was a false rumor. I started it myself.

    One newspaper said I patted his Majesty on the shoulder--an
    impertinence of which I was not guilty; I was reared in the most
    exclusive circles of Missouri and I know how to behave. The King
    rested his hand upon my arm a moment or two while we were chatting,
    but he did it of his own accord. The newspaper which said I talked
    with her Majesty with my hat on spoke the truth, but my reasons for
    doing it were good and sufficient--in fact unassailable. Rain was
    threatening, the temperature had cooled, and the Queen said, "Please
    put your hat on, Mr. Clemens." I begged her pardon and excused
    myself from doing it. After a moment or two she said, "Mr. Clemens,
    put your hat on"--with a slight emphasis on the word "on" "I can't
    allow you to catch cold here." When a beautiful queen commands it
    is a pleasure to obey, and this time I obeyed--but I had already
    disobeyed once, which is more than a subject would have felt
    justified in doing; and so it is true, as charged; I did talk with
    the Queen of England with my hat on, but it wasn't fair in the
    newspaper man to charge it upon me as an impoliteness, since there
    were reasons for it which he could not know of.

Nearly all the members of the British royal family were there, and there
were foreign visitors which included the King of Siam and a party of
India princes in their gorgeous court costumes, which Clemens admired
openly and said he would like to wear himself.

The English papers spoke of it as one of the largest and most
distinguished parties ever given at Windsor. Clemens attended it in
company with Mr. and Mrs. J. Henniker Heaton, and when it was over Sir
Thomas Lipton joined them and motored with them back to Brown's.

He was at Archdeacon Wilberforce's next day, where a curious circumstance
developed. When he arrived Wilberforce said to him, in an undertone:

"Come into my library. I have something to show you."

In the library Clemens was presented to a Mr. Pole, a plain-looking man,
suggesting in dress and appearance the English tradesman. Wilberforce
said:

"Mr. Pole, show to Mr. Clemens what you have brought here."

Mr. Pole unrolled a long strip of white linen and brought to view at last
a curious, saucer-looking vessel of silver, very ancient in appearance,
and cunningly overlaid with green glass. The archdeacon took it and
handed it to Clemens as some precious jewel. Clemens said:

"What is it?"

Wilberforce impressively answered:

"It is the Holy Grail."

Clemens naturally started with surprise.

"You may well start," said Wilberforce; "but it's the truth. That is the
Holy Grail."

Then he gave this explanation: Mr. Pole, a grain merchant of Bristol, had
developed some sort of clairvoyant power, or at all events he had dreamed
several times with great vividness the location of the true Grail.
Another dreamer, a Dr. Goodchild, of Bath, was mixed up in the matter,
and between them this peculiar vessel, which was not a cup, or a goblet,
or any of the traditional things, had been discovered. Mr. Pole seemed a
man of integrity, and it was clear that the churchman believed the
discovery to be genuine and authentic. Of course there could be no
positive proof. It was a thing that must be taken on trust. That the
vessel itself was wholly different from anything that the generations had
conceived, and was apparently of very ancient make, was opposed to the
natural suggestion of fraud.

Clemens, to whom the whole idea of the Holy Grail was simply a poetic
legend and myth, had the feeling that he had suddenly been transmigrated,
like his own Connecticut Yankee, back into the Arthurian days; but he
made no question, suggested no doubt. Whatever it was, it was to them
the materialization of a symbol of faith which ranked only second to the
cross itself, and he handled it reverently and felt the honor of having
been one of the first permitted to see the relic. In a subsequent
dictation he said:

    I am glad I have lived to see that half-hour--that astonishing half-
    hour. In its way it stands alone in my life's experience. In the
    belief of two persons present this was the very vessel which was
    brought by night and secretly delivered to Nicodemus, nearly
    nineteen centuries ago, after the Creator of the universe had
    delivered up His life on the cross for the redemption of the human
    race; the very cup which the stainless Sir Galahad had sought with
    knightly devotion in far fields of peril and adventure in Arthur's
    time, fourteen hundred years ago; the same cup which princely
    knights of other bygone ages had laid down their lives in long and
    patient efforts to find, and had passed from life disappointed--and
    here it was at last, dug up by a grain-broker at no cost of blood or
    travel, and apparently no purity required of him above the average
    purity of the twentieth-century dealer in cereal futures; not even a
    stately name required--no Sir Galahad, no Sir Bors de Ganis, no Sir
    Lancelot of the Lake--nothing but a mere Mr. Pole.--[From the New
    York Sun somewhat later: "Mr. Pole communicated the discovery to a
    dignitary of the Church of England, who summoned a number of eminent
    persons, including psychologists, to see and discuss it. Forty
    attended, including some peers with ecclesiastical interests,
    Ambassador Whitelaw Reid, Professor Crookas, and ministers of
    various religious bodies, including the Rev. R. J. Campbell. They
    heard Mr. Pole's story with deep attention, but he could not prove
    the genuineness of the relic."]

Clemens saw Mr. and Mrs. Rogers at Claridge's Hotel that evening; lunched
with his old friends Sir Norman and Lady Lockyer next day; took tea with
T. P. O'Connor at the House of Commons, and on the day following, which
was June a 5th, he was the guest of honor at one of the most elaborate
occasions of his visit--a luncheon given by the Pilgrims at the Savoy
Hotel. It would be impossible to set down here a report of the doings,
or even a list of the guests, of that gathering. The Pilgrims is a club
with branches on both sides of the ocean, and Mark Twain, on either side,
was a favorite associate. At this luncheon the picture on the bill of
fare represented him as a robed pilgrim, with a great pen for his staff,
turning his back on the Mississippi River and being led along his
literary way by a huge jumping frog, to which he is attached by a string.
On a guest-card was printed:

    Pilot of many Pilgrims since the shout
    "Mark Twain!"--that serves you for a deathless sign
    --On Mississippi's waterway rang out
    Over the plummet's line--
    Still where the countless ripples laugh above
    The blue of halcyon seas long may you keep
    Your course unbroken, buoyed upon a love
    Ten thousand fathoms deep!

                       --O. S. [OWEN SEAMAN].

Augustine Birrell made the speech of introduction, closing with this
paragraph:

    Mark Twain is a man whom Englishmen and Americans do well to honor.
    He is a true consolidator of nations. His delightful humor is of
    the kind which dissipates and destroys national prejudices. His
    truth and his honor--his love of truth and his love of honor
    --overflow all boundaries. He has made the world better by his
    presence, and we rejoice to see him here. Long may he live to reap
    a plentiful harvest of hearty honest human affection.

The toast was drunk standing. Then Clemens rose and made a speech which
delighted all England. In his introduction Mr. Birrell had happened to
say, "How I came here I will not ask!" Clemens remembered this, and
looking down into Mr. Birrell's wine-glass, which was apparently unused,
he said:

"Mr. Birrell doesn't know how he got here. But he will be able to get
away all right--he has not drunk anything since he came."

He told stories about Howells and Twichell, and how Darwin had gone to
sleep reading his books, and then he came down to personal things and
company, and told them how, on the day of his arrival, he had been
shocked to read on a great placard, "Mark Twain Arrives: Ascot Cup
Stolen."

    No doubt many a person was misled by those sentences joined together
    in that unkind way. I have no doubt my character has suffered from
    it. I suppose I ought to defend my character, but how can I defend
    it? I can say here and now that anybody can see by my face that I
    am sincere--that I speak the truth, and that I have never seen that
    Cup. I have not got the Cup, I did not have a chance to get it. I
    have always had a good character in that way. I have hardly ever
    stolen anything, and if I did steal anything I had discretion enough
    to know about the value of it first. I do not steal things that are
    likely to get myself into trouble. I do not think any of us do
    that. I know we all take things--that is to be expected; but really
    I have never taken anything, certainly in England, that amounts to
    any great thing. I do confess that when I was here seven years ago
    I stole a hat--but that did not amount to anything. It was not a
    good hat it was only a clergyman's hat, anyway. I was at a
    luncheon-party and Archdeacon Wilberforce was there also. I dare say
    he is archdeacon now--he was a canon then--and he was serving in the
    Westminster Battery, if that is the proper term. I do not know, as
    you mix military and ecclesiastical things together so much.

He recounted the incident of the exchanged hats; then he spoke of graver
things. He closed:

    I cannot always be cheerful, and I cannot always be chaffing. I
    must sometimes lay the cap and bells aside and recognize that I am
    of the human race. I have my cares and griefs, and I therefore
    noticed what Mr. Birrell said--I was so glad to hear him say it
    --something that was in the nature of these verses here at the top
    of the program:

           He lit our life with shafts of sun
           And vanquished pain.
           Thus two great nations stand as one
           In honoring Twain.

I am very glad to have those verses. I am very glad and very grateful
for what Mr. Birrell said in that connection. I have received since I
have been here, in this one week, hundreds of letters from all conditions
of people in England, men, women, and children, and there is compliment,
praise, and, above all, and better than all, there is in them a note of
affection.

Praise is well, compliment is well, but affection--that is the last and
final and most precious reward that any man can win, whether by character
or achievement, and I am very grateful to have that reward. All these
letters make me feel that here in England, as in America, when I stand
under the English or the American flag I am not a stranger, I am not an
alien, but at home.




CCLVIII

DOCTOR OF LITERATURE, OXFORD

He left, immediately following the Pilgrim luncheon, with Hon. Robert P.
Porter, of the London Times, for Oxford, to remain his guest there during
the various ceremonies. The encenia--the ceremony of conferring the
degrees--occurred at the Sheldonian Theater the following morning, June
26, 1907.

It was a memorable affair. Among those who were to receive degrees that
morning besides Samuel Clemens were: Prince Arthur of Connaught; Prime
Minister Campbell-Bannerman; Whitelaw Reid; Rudyard Kipling; Sidney Lee;
Sidney Colvin; Lord Archbishop of Armagh, Primate of Ireland; Sir Norman
Lockyer; Auguste Rodin, the sculptor; Saint-Saens, and Gen. William
Booth, of the Salvation Army-something more than thirty, in all, of the
world's distinguished citizens.

The candidates assembled at Magdalen College, and led by Lord Curzon, the
Chancellor, and clad in their academic plumage, filed in radiant
procession to the Sheldonian Theater, a group of men such as the world
seldom sees collected together. The London Standard said of it:
    So brilliant and so interesting was the list of those who had been
    selected by Oxford University on Convocation to receive degrees,
    'honoris causa', in this first year of Lord Curzon's chancellorship,
    that it is small wonder that the Sheldonian Theater was besieged
    today at an early hour.

    Shortly after 11 o'clock the organ started playing the strains of
    "God Save the King," and at once a great volume of sound arose as
    the anthem was taken up by the undergraduates and the rest of the
    assemblage. Every one stood up as, headed by the mace of office,
    the procession slowly filed into the theater, under the leadership
    of Lord Curzon, in all the glory of his robes of office, the long
    black gown heavily embroidered with gold, the gold-tasseled mortar-
    board, and the medals on his breast forming an admirable setting,
    thoroughly in keeping with the dignity and bearing of the late
    Viceroy of India. Following him came the members of Convocation, a
    goodly number consisting of doctors of divinity, whose robes of
    scarlet and black enhanced the brilliance of the scene. Robes of
    salmon and scarlet-which proclaim the wearer to be a doctor of civil
    law--were also seen in numbers, while here and there was a gown of
    gray and scarlet, emblematic of the doctorate of science or of
    letters.

The encenia is an impressive occasion; but it is not a silent one. There
is a splendid dignity about it; but there goes with it all a sort of
Greek chorus of hilarity, the time-honored prerogative of the Oxford
undergraduate, who insists on having his joke and his merriment at the
expense of those honored guests. The degrees of doctor of law were
conferred first. Prince Arthur was treated with proper dignity by the
gallery; but when Whitelaw Reid stepped forth a voice shouted, "Where's
your Star-spangled Banner?" and when England's Prime
Minister-Campbell-Bannerman--came forward some one shouted, "What about
the House of Lords?" and so they kept it up, cheering and chaffing, until
General Booth was introduced as the "Passionate advocate of the dregs of
the people, leader of the submerged tenth," and "general of the Salvation
Army," when the place broke into a perfect storm of applause, a storm
that a few minutes later became, according to the Daily News, "a
veritable cyclone," for Mark Twain, clad in his robe of scarlet and gray,
had been summoned forward to receive the highest academic honors which
the world has to give. The undergraduates went wild then. There was
such a mingling of yells and calls and questions, such as, "Have you
brought the jumping Frog with you?" "Where is the Ascot Cup?" "Where are
the rest of the Innocents?" that it seemed as if it would not be possible
to present him at all; but, finally, Chancellor Curzon addressed him (in
Latin), "Most amiable and charming sir, you shake the sides of the whole
world with your merriment," and the great degree was conferred. If only
Tom Sawyer could have seen him then! If only Olivia Clemens could have
sat among those who gave him welcome! But life is not like that. There
is always an incompleteness somewhere, and the shadow across the path.

Rudyard Kipling followed--another supreme favorite, who was hailed with
the chorus, "For he's a jolly good fellow," and then came Saint-Satins.
The prize poems and essays followed, and then the procession of newly
created doctors left the theater with Lord Curzon at their head. So it
was all over-that for which, as he said, he would have made the journey
to Mars. The world had nothing more to give him now except that which he
had already long possessed-its honor and its love.

The newly made doctors were to be the guests of Lord Curzon at All Souls
College for luncheon. As they left the theater (according to Sidney
Lee):

    The people in the streets singled out Mark Twain, formed a vast and
    cheering body-guard around him and escorted him to the college
    gates. But before and after the lunch it was Mark Twain again whom
    everybody seemed most of all to want to meet. The Maharajah of
    Bikanir, for instance, finding himself seated at lunch next to Mrs.
    Riggs (Kate Douglas Wiggin), and hearing that she knew Mark Twain,
    asked her to present him a ceremony duly performed later on the
    quadrangle. At the garden-party given the same afternoon in the
    beautiful grounds of St. John's, where the indefatigable Mark put
    in an appearance, it was just the same--every one pressed forward
    for an exchange of greetings and a hand-shake. On the following
    day, when the Oxford pageant took place, it was even more so. "Mark
    Twain's Pageant," it was called by one of the papers.--[There was a
    dinner that evening at one of the colleges where, through mistaken
    information, Clemens wore black evening dress when he should have
    worn his scarlet gown. "When I arrived," he said, "the place was
    just a conflagration--a kind of human prairie-fire. I looked as out
    of place as a Presbyterian in hell."]

Clemens remained the guest of Robert Porter, whose house was besieged
with those desiring a glimpse of their new doctor of letters. If he went
on the streets he was instantly recognized by some newsboy or cabman or
butcher-boy, and the word ran along like a cry of fire, while the crowds
assembled.

At a luncheon which the Porters gave him the proprietor of the catering
establishment garbed himself as a waiter in order to have the distinction
of serving Mark Twain, and declared it to have been the greatest moment
of his life. This gentleman--for he was no less than that--was a man
well-read, and his tribute was not inspired by mere snobbery. Clemens,
learning of the situation, later withdrew from the drawing-room for a
talk with him.

"I found," he said, "that he knew about ten or fifteen times as much
about my books as I knew about them myself."

Mark Twain viewed the Oxford pageant from a box with Rudyard Kipling and
Lord Curzon, and as they sat there some one passed up a folded slip of
paper, on the outside of which was written, "Not true." Opening it, they
read:

       East is East and West is West,
       And never the Twain shall meet,

         --a quotation from Kipling.

They saw the panorama of history file by, a wonderful spectacle which
made Oxford a veritable dream of the Middle Ages. The lanes and streets
and meadows were thronged with such costumes as Oxford had seen in its
long history. History was realized in a manner which no one could
appreciate more fully than Mark Twain.

"I was particularly anxious to see this pageant," he said, "so that I
could get ideas for my funeral procession, which I am planning on a large
scale."

He was not disappointed; it was a realization to him of all the gorgeous
spectacles that his soul had dreamed from youth up.

He easily recognized the great characters of history as they passed by,
and he was recognized by them in turn; for they waved to him and bowed
and sometimes called his name, and when he went down out of his box, by
and by, Henry VIII. shook hands with him, a monarch he had always
detested, though he was full of friendship for him now; and Charles I.
took off his broad, velvet-plumed hat when they met, and Henry II. and
Rosamond and Queen Elizabeth all saluted him--ghosts of the dead
centuries.




CCLIX

LONDON SOCIAL HONORS

We may not detail all the story of that English visit; even the path of
glory leads to monotony at last. We may only mention a few more of the
great honors paid to our unofficial ambassador to the world: among them a
dinner given to members of the Savage Club by the Lord Mayor of London at
the Mansion House, also a dinner given by the American Society at the
Hotel Cecil in honor of the Fourth of July. Clemens was the guest of
honor, and responded to the toast given by Ambassador Reid, "The Day we
Celebrate." He made an amusing and not altogether unserious reference to
the American habit of exploding enthusiasm in dangerous fireworks.

To English colonists he gave credit for having established American
independence, and closed:

    We have, however, one Fourth of July which is absolutely our own,
    and that is the memorable proclamation issued forty years ago by
    that great American to whom Sir Mortimer Durand paid that just and
    beautiful tribute--Abraham Lincoln: a proclamation which not only
    set the black slave free, but set his white owner free also. The
    owner was set free from that burden and offense, that sad condition
    of things where he was in so many instances a master and owner of
    slaves when he did not want to be. That proclamation set them all
    free. But even in this matter England led the way, for she had set
    her slaves free thirty years before, and we but followed her
    example. We always follow her example, whether it is good or bad.
    And it was an English judge, a century ago, that issued that other
    great proclamation, and established that great principle, that when
    a slave, let him belong to whom he may, and let him come whence he
    may, sets his foot upon English soil his fetters, by that act, fall
    away and he is a free man before the world!

    It is true, then, that all our Fourths of July, and we have five of
    them, England gave to us, except that one that I have mentioned--the
    Emancipation Proclamation; and let us not forget that we owe this
    debt to her. Let us be able to say to old England, this great-
    hearted, venerable old mother of the race, you gave us our Fourths
    of July, that we love and that we honor and revere; you gave us the
    Declaration of Independence, which is the charter of our rights;
    you, the venerable Mother of Liberties, the Champion and Protector
    of Anglo-Saxon Freedom--you gave us these things, and we do most
    honestly thank you for them.

It was at this dinner that he characteristically confessed, at last, to
having stolen the Ascot Cup.

He lunched one day with Bernard Shaw, and the two discussed the
philosophies in which they were mutually interested. Shaw regarded
Clemens as a sociologist before all else, and gave it out with great
frankness that America had produced just two great geniuses--Edgar Allan
Poe and Mark Twain. Later Shaw wrote him a note, in which he said:

I am persuaded that the future historian of America will find your works
as indispensable to him as a French historian finds the political tracts
of Voltaire. I tell you so because I am the author of a play in which a
priest says, "Telling the truth's the funniest joke in the world," a
piece of wisdom which you helped to teach me.

Clemens saw a great deal of Moberly Bell. The two lunched and dined
privately together when there was opportunity, and often met at the
public gatherings.

The bare memorandum of the week following July Fourth will convey
something of Mark Twain's London activities:

    Friday, July 5. Dined with Lord and Lady Portsmouth.

    Saturday, July 6. Breakfasted at Lord Avebury's. Lord Kelvin, Sir
    Charles Lyell, and Sir Archibald Geikie were there. Sat 22 times
    for photos, 16 at Histed's. Savage Club dinner in the evening.
    White suit. Ascot Cup.

    Sunday, July 7. Called on Lady Langattock and others. Lunched with
    Sir Norman Lockyer.

    Monday, July 8. Lunched with Plasmon directors at Bath Club. Dined
    privately at C. F. Moberly Bell's.

    Tuesday, July 9. Lunched at the House with Sir Benjamin Stone.
    Balfour and Komura were the other guests of honor. Punch dinner in
    the evening. Joy Agnew and the cartoon.

    Wednesday, July 10. Went to Liverpool with Tay Pay. Attended
    banquet in the Town Hall in the evening.

    Thursday, July 11. Returned to London with Tay Pay. Calls in the
    afternoon.

The Savage Club would inevitably want to entertain him on its own
account, and their dinner of July 6th was a handsome, affair. He felt at
home with the Savages, and put on white for the only time publicly in
England. He made them one of his reminiscent speeches, recalling his
association with them on his first visit to London, thirty-seven years
before. Then he said:

    That is a long time ago, and as I had come into a very strange land,
    and was with friends, as I could see, that has always remained in my
    mind as a peculiarly blessed evening, since it brought me into
    contact with men of my own kind and my own feelings. I am glad to
    be here, and to see you all, because it is very likely that I shall
    not see you again. I have been received, as you know, in the most
    delightfully generous way in England ever since I came here. It
    keeps me choked up all the time. Everybody is so generous, and they
    do seem to give you such a hearty welcome. Nobody in the world can
    appreciate it higher than I do.

The club gave him a surprise in the course of the evening. A note was
sent to him accompanied by a parcel, which, when opened, proved to
contain a gilded plaster replica of the Ascot Gold Cup. The note said:

    Dere Mark, i return the Cup. You couldn't keep your mouth shut
    about it. 'Tis 2 pretty 2 melt, as you want me 2; nest time I work
    a pinch ile have a pard who don't make after-dinner speeches.

There was a postcript which said: "I changed the acorn atop for another
nut with my knife." The acorn was, in fact, replaced by a well-modeled
head of Mark Twain.

So, after all, the Ascot Cup would be one of the trophies which he would
bear home with him across the Atlantic.

Probably the most valued of his London honors was the dinner given to him
by the staff of Punch. Punch had already saluted him with a front-page
cartoon by Bernard Partridge, a picture in which the presiding genius of
that paper, Mr. Punch himself, presents him with a glass of the
patronymic beverage with the words, "Sir, I honor myself by drinking your
health. Long life to you--and happiness--and perpetual youth!"

Mr. Agnew, chief editor; Linley Sambourne, Francis Burnand, Henry Lucy,
and others of the staff welcomed him at the Punch offices at 10 Bouverie
Street, in the historic Punch dining-room where Thackeray had sat, and
Douglas Jerrold, and so many of the great departed. Mark Twain was the
first foreign visitor to be so honored--in fifty years the first stranger
to sit at the sacred board--a mighty distinction. In the course of the
dinner they gave him a pretty surprise, when little joy Agnew presented
him with the original drawing of Partridge's cartoon.

Nothing could have appealed to him more, and the Punch dinner, with its
associations and that dainty presentation, remained apart in his memory
from all other feastings.

Clemens had intended to return early in July, but so much was happening
that he postponed his sailing until the 13th. Before leaving America, he
had declined a dinner offered by the Lord Mayor of Liverpool.

Repeatedly urged to let Liverpool share in his visit, he had reconsidered
now, and on the day following the Punch dinner, on July 10th, they
carried him, with T. P. O'Connor (Tay Pay) in the Prince of Wales's
special coach to Liverpool, to be guest of honor at the reception and
banquet which Lord Mayor Japp tendered him at the Town Hall. Clemens was
too tired to be present while the courses were being served, but arrived
rested and fresh to respond to his toast. Perhaps because it was his
farewell speech in England, he made that night the most effective address
of his four weeks' visit--one of the most effective of his whole career:
He began by some light reference to the Ascot Cup and the Dublin Jewels
and the State Regalia, and other disappearances that had been laid to his
charge, to amuse his hearers, and spoke at greater length than usual, and
with even greater variety. Then laying all levity aside, he told them,
like the Queen of Sheba, all that was in his heart.

    . . . Home is dear to us all, and now I am departing to my own
    home beyond the ocean. Oxford has conferred upon me the highest
    honor that has ever fallen to my share of this life's prizes. It is
    the very one I would have chosen, as outranking all and any others,
    the one more precious to me than any and all others within the gift
    of man or state. During my four weeks' sojourn in England I have
    had another lofty honor, a continuous honor, an honor which has
    flowed serenely along, without halt or obstruction, through all
    these twenty-six days, a most moving and pulse-stirring honor--the
    heartfelt grip of the hand, and the welcome that does not descend
    from the pale-gray matter of the brain, but rushes up with the red
    blood from the heart. It makes me proud and sometimes it makes me
    humble, too. Many and many a year ago I gathered an incident from
    Dana's Two Years Before the Mast. It was like this: There was a
    presumptuous little self-important skipper in a coasting sloop
    engaged in the dried-apple and kitchen-furniture trade, and he was
    always hailing every ship that came in sight. He did it just to
    hear himself talk and to air his small grandeur. One day a majestic
    Indiaman came plowing by with course on course of canvas towering
    into the sky, her decks and yards swarming with sailors, her hull
    burdened to the Plimsoll line with a rich freightage of precious
    spices, lading the breezes with gracious and mysterious odors of the
    Orient. It was a noble spectacle, a sublime spectacle! Of course
    the little skipper popped into the shrouds and squeaked out a hail,
    "Ship ahoy! What ship is that? And whence and whither?" In a deep
    and thunderous bass the answer came back through the speaking-
    trumpet, "The Begum, of Bengal--142 days out from Canton--homeward
    bound! What ship is that?" Well, it just crushed that poor little
    creature's vanity flat, and he squeaked back most humbly, "Only the
    Mary Ann, fourteen hours out from Boston, bound for Kittery Point
    --with nothing to speak of!" Oh, what an eloquent word that "only,"
    to express the depths of his humbleness! That is just my case.
    During just one hour in the twenty-four--not more--I pause and
    reflect in the stillness of the night with the echoes of your
    English welcome still lingering in my ears, and then I am humble.
    Then I am properly meek, and for that little while I am only the
    Mary Ann, fourteen hours out, cargoed with vegetables and tinware;
    but during all the other twenty-three hours my vain self-complacency
    rides high on the white crests of your approval, and then I am a
    stately Indiaman, plowing the great seas under a cloud of canvas and
    laden with the kindest words that have ever been vouchsafed to any
    wandering alien in this world, I think; then my twenty-six fortunate
    days on this old mother soil seem to be multiplied by six, and I am
    the Begum, of Bengal, 142 days out from Canton--homeward bound!

He returned to London, and with one of his young acquaintances, an
American--he called her Francesca--paid many calls. It took the
dreariness out of that social function to perform it in that way. With a
list of the calls they were to make they drove forth each day to cancel
the social debt. They paid calls in every walk of life. His young
companion was privileged to see the inside of London homes of almost
every class, for he showed no partiality; he went to the homes of the
poor and the rich alike. One day they visited the home of an old
bookkeeper whom he had known in 1872 as a clerk in a large establishment,
earning a salary of perhaps a pound a week, who now had risen mightily,
for he had become head bookkeeper in that establishment on a salary of
six pounds a week, and thought it great prosperity and fortune for his
old age.

He sailed on July 13th for home, besought to the last moment by a crowd
of autograph-seekers and reporters and photographers, and a multitude who
only wished to see him and to shout and wave good-by. He was sailing
away from them for the last time. They hoped he would make a speech, but
that would not have been possible. To the reporters he gave a farewell
message: "It has been the most enjoyable holiday I have ever had, and I
am sorry the end of it has come. I have met a hundred, old friends, and
I have made a hundred new ones. It is a good kind of riches to have;
there is none better, I think." And the London Tribune declared that
"the ship that bore him away had difficulty in getting clear, so thickly
was the water strewn with the bay-leaves of his triumph. For Mark Twain
has triumphed, and in his all-too-brief stay of a month has done more for
the cause of the world's peace than will be accomplished by the Hague
Conference. He has made the world laugh again."

His ship was the Minnetonka, and there were some little folks aboard to
be adopted as grandchildren. On July 5th, in a fog, the Minnetonka
collided with the bark Sterling, and narrowly escaped sinking her. On
the whole, however, the homeward way was clear, and the vessel reached
New York nearly a day in advance of their schedule. Some ceremonies of
welcome had been prepared for him; but they were upset by the early
arrival, so that when he descended the gang-plank to his native soil only
a few who had received special information were there to greet him. But
perhaps he did not notice it. He seldom took account of the absence of
such things. By early afternoon, however, the papers rang with the
announcement that Mark Twain was home again.

It is a sorrow to me that I was not at the dock to welcome him. I had
been visiting in Elmira, and timed my return for the evening of the a 2d,
to be on hand the following morning, when the ship was due. When I saw
the announcement that he had already arrived I called a greeting over the
telephone, and was told to come down and play billiards. I confess I
went with a certain degree of awe, for one could not but be overwhelmed
with the echoes of the great splendor he had so recently achieved, and I
prepared to sit a good way off in silence, and hear something of the tale
of this returning conqueror; but when I arrived he was already in the
billiard-room knocking the balls about--his coat off, for it was a hot
night. As I entered he said:

"Get your cue. I have been inventing a new game." And I think there
were scarcely ten words exchanged before we were at it. The pageant was
over; the curtain was rung down. Business was resumed at the old stand.




CCLX

MATTERS PSYCHIC AND OTHERWISE

He returned to Tuxedo and took up his dictations, and mingled freely with
the social life; but the contrast between his recent London experience
and his semi-retirement must have been very great. When I visited him
now and then, he seemed to me lonely--not especially for companionship,
but rather for the life that lay behind him--the great career which in a
sense now had been completed since he had touched its highest point.
There was no billiard-table at Tuxedo, and he spoke expectantly of
getting back to town and the games there, also of the new home which was
then building in Redding, and which would have a billiard-room where we
could assemble daily--my own habitation being not far away. Various
diversions were planned for Redding; among them was discussed a possible
school of philosophy, such as Hawthorne and Emerson and Alcott had
established at Concord.

He spoke quite freely of his English experiences, but usually of the more
amusing phases. He almost never referred to the honors that had been
paid to him, yet he must have thought of them sometimes, and cherished
them, for it had been the greatest national tribute ever paid to a
private citizen; he must have known that in his heart. He spoke
amusingly of his visit to Marie Corelli, in Stratford, and of the Holy
Grail incident, ending the latter by questioning--in words at least--all
psychic manifestations. I said to him:

"But remember your own dream, Mr. Clemens, which presaged the death of
your brother."

He answered: "I ask nobody to believe that it ever happened. To me it is
true; but it has no logical right to be true, and I do not expect belief
in it." Which I thought a peculiar point of view, but on the whole
characteristic.

He was invited to be a special guest at the Jamestown Exposition on
Fulton Day, in September, and Mr. Rogers lent him his yacht in which to
make the trip. It was a break in the summer's monotonies, and the
Jamestown honors must have reminded him of those in London. When he
entered the auditorium where the services were to be held there was a
demonstration which lasted more than five minutes. Every person in the
hall rose and cheered, waving handkerchiefs and umbrellas. He made them
a brief, amusing talk on Fulton and other matters, then introduced
Admiral Harrington, who delivered a masterly address and was followed by
Martin W. Littleton, the real orator of the day. Littleton acquitted
himself so notably that Mark Twain conceived for him a deep admiration,
and the two men quickly became friends. They saw each other often during
the remainder of the Jamestown stay, and Clemens, learning that Littleton
lived just across Ninth Street from him in New York, invited him to come
over when he had an evening to spare and join the billiard games.

So it happened, somewhat later, when every one was back in town, Mr. and
Mrs. Littleton frequently came over for billiards, and the games became
three-handed with an audience--very pleasant games played in that way.
Clemens sometimes set himself up as umpire, and became critic and gave
advice, while Littleton and I played. He had a favorite shot that he
frequently used himself and was always wanting us to try, which was to
drive the ball to the cushion at the beginning of the shot.

He played it with a good deal of success, and achieved unexpected results
with it. He was even inspired to write a poem on the subject.

              "CUSHION FIRST"

       When all your days are dark with doubt,
       And dying hope is at its worst;
       When all life's balls are scattered wide,
       With not a shot in sight, to left or right,
       Don't give it up;
       Advance your cue and shut your eyes,
       And take the cushion first.

The Harry Thaw trial was in progress just then, and Littleton was Thaw's
chief attorney. It was most interesting to hear from him direct the
day's proceedings and his views of the situation and of Thaw.

Littleton and billiards recall a curious thing which happened one
afternoon. I had been absent the evening before, and Littleton had been
over. It was after luncheon now, and Clemens and I began preparing for
the customary games. We were playing then a game with four balls, two
white and two red. I began by placing the red balls on the table, and
then went around looking in the pockets for the two white cue-balls. When
I had made the round of the table I had found but one white ball. I
thought I must have overlooked the other, and made the round again. Then
I said:

"There is one white ball missing."

Clemens, to satisfy himself, also made the round of the pockets, and
said:

"It was here last night." He felt in the pockets of the little
white-silk coat which he usually wore, thinking that he might
unconsciously have placed it there at the end of the last game, but his
coat pockets were empty.

He said: "I'll bet Littleton carried that ball home with him."

Then I suggested that near the end of the game it might have jumped off
the table, and I looked carefully under the furniture and in the various
corners, but without success. There was another set of balls, and out of
it I selected a white one for our play, and the game began. It went
along in the usual way, the balls constantly falling into the pockets,
and as constantly being replaced on the table. This had continued for
perhaps half an hour, there being no pocket that had not been frequently
occupied and emptied during that time; but then it happened that Clemens
reached into the middle pocket, and taking out a white ball laid it in
place, whereupon we made the discovery that three white balls lay upon
the table. The one just taken from the pocket was the missing ball. We
looked at each other, both at first too astonished to say anything at
all. No one had been in the room since we began to play, and at no time
during the play had there been more than two white balls in evidence,
though the pockets had been emptied at the end of each shot. The pocket
from which the missing ball had been taken had been filled and emptied
again and again. Then Clemens said:

"We must be dreaming."

We stopped the game for a while to discuss it, but we could devise no
material explanation. I suggested the kobold--that mischievous invisible
which is supposed to play pranks by carrying off such things as pencils,
letters, and the like, and suddenly restoring them almost before one's
eyes. Clemens, who, in spite of his material logic, was always a mystic
at heart, said:

"But that, so far as I know, has never happened to more than one person
at a time, and has been explained by a sort of temporary mental
blindness. This thing has happened to two of us, and there can be no
question as to the positive absence of the object."

"How about dematerialization?"

"Yes, if one of us were a medium that might be considered an
explanation."

He went on to recall that Sir Alfred Russel Wallace had written of such
things, and cited instances which Wallace had recorded. In the end he
said:

"Well, it happened, that's all we can say, and nobody can ever convince
me that it didn't."

We went on playing, and the ball remained solid and substantial ever
after, so far as I know.

I am reminded of two more or less related incidents of this period.
Clemens was, one morning, dictating something about his Christian Union
article concerning Mrs. Clemens's government of children, published in
1885. I had discovered no copy of it among the materials, and he was
wishing very much that he could see one. Somewhat later, as he was
walking down Fifth Avenue, the thought of this article and his desire for
it suddenly entered his mind. Reaching the corner of Forty-second
Street, he stopped a moment to let a jam of vehicles pass. As he did so
a stranger crossed the street, noticed him, and came dodging his way
through the blockade and thrust some clippings into his hand.

"Mr. Clemens," he said, "you don't know me, but here is something you may
wish to have. I have been saving them for more than twenty years, and
this morning it occurred to me to send them to you. I was going to mail
them from my office, but now I will give them to you," and with a word or
two he disappeared. The clippings were from the Christian Union of 1885,
and were the much-desired article. Clemens regarded it as a remarkable
case of mental telegraphy.

"Or, if it wasn't that," he said, "it was a most remarkable coincidence."

The other circumstance has been thought amusing. I had gone to Redding
for a few days, and while there, one afternoon about five o'clock, fell
over a coal-scuttle and scarified myself a good deal between the ankle
and the knee. I mention the hour because it seems important. Next
morning I received a note, prompted by Mr. Clemens, in which he said:

Tell Paine I am sorry he fell and skinned his shin at five o'clock
yesterday afternoon.

I was naturally astonished, and immediately wrote:

I did fall and skin my shin at five o'clock yesterday afternoon, but how
did you find it out?

I followed the letter in person next day, and learned that at the same
hour on the same afternoon Clemens himself had fallen up the front steps
and, as he said, peeled off from his "starboard shin a ribbon of skin
three inches long." The disaster was still uppermost in his mind at the
time of writing, and the suggestion of my own mishap had flashed out for
no particular reason.

Clemens was always having his fortune told, in one way or another, being
superstitious, as he readily confessed, though at times professing little
faith in these prognostics. Once when a clairvoyant, of whom he had
never even heard, and whom he had reason to believe was ignorant of his
family history, told him more about it than he knew himself, besides
reading a list of names from a piece of paper which Clemens had concealed
in his vest pocket he came home deeply impressed. The clairvoyant added
that he would probably live to a great age and die in a foreign land--a
prophecy which did not comfort him.




CCLXI

MINOR EVENTS AND DIVERSIONS

Mark Twain was deeply interested during the autumn of 1907 in the
Children's Theater of the Jewish Educational Alliance, on the lower East
Side--a most worthy institution which ought to have survived. A Miss
Alice M. Herts, who developed and directed it, gave her strength and
health to build up an institution through which the interest of the
children could be diverted from less fortunate amusements. She had
interested a great body of Jewish children in the plays of Shakespeare,
and of more modern dramatists, and these they had performed from time to
time with great success. The admission fee to the performance was ten
cents, and the theater was always crowded with other children--certainly
a better diversion for them than the amusements of the street, though of
course, as a business enterprise, the theater could not pay. It required
patrons. Miss Herts obtained permission to play "The Prince and the
Pauper," and Mark Twain agreed to become a sort of chief patron in using
his influence to bring together an audience who might be willing to
assist financially in this worthy work.

"The Prince and the Pauper" evening turned out a distinguished affair. On
the night of November 19, 1907, the hall of the Educational Alliance was
crowded with such an audience as perhaps never before assembled on the
East Side; the finance and the fashion of New York were there. It was a
gala night for the little East Side performers. Behind the curtain they
whispered to each other that they were to play before queens. The
performance they gave was an astonishing one. So fully did they enter
into the spirit of Tom Canty's rise to royalty that they seemed
absolutely to forget that they were lowly-born children of the Ghetto.
They had become little princesses and lords and maids-in-waiting, and
they moved through their pretty tinsel parts as if all their ornaments
were gems and their raiment cloth of gold. There was no hesitation, no
awkwardness of speech or gesture, and they rose really to sublime heights
in the barn scene where the little Prince is in the hands of the mob.
Never in the history of the stage has there been assembled a mob more
wonderful than that. These children knew mobs! A mob to them was a
daily sight, and their reproduction of it was a thing to startle you with
its realism. Never was it absurd; never was there a single note of
artificiality in it. It was Hogarthian in its bigness.

Both Mark Twain and Miss Herts made brief addresses, and the audience
shouted approval of their words. It seems a pity that such a project as
that must fail, and I do not know why it happened. Wealthy men and women
manifested an interest; but there was some hitch somewhere, and the
Children's Theater exists to-day only as history.--[In a letter to a Mrs.
Amelia Dunne Hookway, who had conducted some children's plays at the
Howland School, Chicago, Mark Twain once wrote: "If I were going to begin
life over again I would have a children's theater and watch it, and work
for it, and see it grow and blossom and bear its rich moral and
intellectual fruitage; and I should get more pleasure and a saner and
healthier profit out of my vocation than I should ever be able to get out
of any other, constituted as I am. Yes, you are easily the most
fortunate of women, I think."]

It was at a dinner at The Players--a small, private dinner given by Mr.
George C. Riggs-that I saw Edward L. Burlingame and Mark Twain for the
only time together. They had often met during the forty-two years that
had passed since their long-ago Sandwich Island friendship; but only
incidentally, for Mr. Burlingame cared not much for great public
occasions, and as editor of Scribner's Magazine he had been somewhat out
of the line of Mark Twain's literary doings.

Howells was there, and Gen. Stewart L. Woodford, and David Bispham, John
Finley, Evan Shipman, Nicholas Biddle, and David Munro. Clemens told
that night, for the first time, the story of General Miles and the
three-dollar dog, inventing it, I believe, as he went along, though for
the moment it certainly did sound like history. He told it often after
that, and it has been included in his book of speeches.

Later, in the cab, he said:

"That was a mighty good dinner. Riggs knows how to do that sort of
thing. I enjoyed it ever so much. Now we'll go home and play
billiards."

We began about eleven o'clock, and played until after midnight. I
happened to be too strong for him, and he swore amazingly. He vowed that
it was not a gentleman's game at all, that Riggs's wine had demoralized
the play. But at the end, when we were putting up the cues, he said:

"Well, those were good games. There is nothing like billiards after
all."

We did not play billiards on his birthday that year. He went to the
theater in the afternoon; and it happened that, with Jesse Lynch
Williams, I attended the same performance--the "Toy-Maker of Nuremberg"
--written by Austin Strong. It proved to be a charming play, and I could
see that Clemens was enjoying it. He sat in a box next to the stage, and
the actors clearly were doing their very prettiest for his benefit.

When later I mentioned having seen him at the play, he spoke freely of
his pleasure in it.

"It is a fine, delicate piece of work," he said. "I wish I could do such
things as that."

"I believe you are too literary for play-writing."

"Yes, no doubt. There was never any question with the managers about my
plays. They always said they wouldn't act. Howells has come pretty near
to something once or twice. I judge the trouble is that the literary man
is thinking of the style and quality of the thing, while the playwright
thinks only of how it will play. One is thinking of how it will sound,
the other of how it will look."

"I suppose," I said, "the literary man should have a collaborator with a
genius for stage mechanism. John Luther Long's exquisite plays would
hardly have been successful without David Belasco to stage them. Belasco
cannot write a play himself, but in the matter of acting construction his
genius is supreme."

"Yes, so it is; it was Belasco who made it possible to play 'The Prince
and the Pauper'--a collection of literary garbage before he got hold of
it."

Clemens attended few public functions now. He was beset with
invitations, but he declined most of them. He told the dog story one
night to the Pleiades Club, assembled at the Brevoort; but that was only
a step away, and we went in after the dining was ended and came away
before the exercises were concluded.

He also spoke at a banquet given to Andrew Carnegie--Saint Andrew, as he
called him--by the Engineers Club, and had his usual fun at the chief
guest's expense.

    I have been chief guest at a good many banquets myself, and I know
    what brother Andrew is feeling like now. He has been receiving
    compliments and nothing but compliments, but he knows that there is
    another side to him that needs censure.

    I am going to vary the complimentary monotony. While we have all
    been listening to the complimentary talk Mr. Carnegie's face has
    scintillated with fictitious innocence. You'd think he never
    committed a crime in his life. But he has.

    Look at his pestiferous simplified spelling. Imagine the calamity
    on two sides of the ocean when he foisted his simplified spelling on
    the whole human race. We've got it all now so that nobody could
    spell . . . .

    If Mr. Carnegie had left spelling alone we wouldn't have had any
    spots on the sun, or any San Francisco quake, or any business
    depression.

    There, I trust he feels better now and that he has enjoyed my abuse
    more than he did his compliments. And now that I think I have him
    smoothed down and feeling comfortable I just want to say one thing
    more--that his simplified spelling is all right enough, but, like
    chastity, you can carry it too far.

As he was about to go, Carnegie called his attention to the beautiful
souvenir bronze and gold-plated goblets that stood at each guest's plate.
Carnegie said:

"The club had those especially made at Tiffany's for this occasion. They
cost ten dollars apiece."

Clemens sand: "Is that so? Well, I only meant to take my own; but if
that's the case I'll load my cab with them."

We made an attempt to reform on the matter of billiards. The continued
strain of late hours was doing neither of us any particular good. More
than once I journeyed into the country on one errand and another, mainly
for rest; but a card saying that he was lonely and upset, for lack of his
evening games, quickly brought me back again. It was my wish only to
serve him; it was a privilege and an honor to give him happiness.

Billiards, however, was not his only recreation just then. He walked out
a good deal, and especially of a pleasant Sunday morning he liked the
stroll up Fifth Avenue. Sometimes we went as high as Carnegie's, on
Ninety-second Street, and rode home on top of the electric stage--always
one of Mark Twain's favorite diversions.

From that high seat he liked to look down on the panorama of the streets,
and in that free, open air he could smoke without interference. Oftener,
however, we turned at Fifty-ninth Street, walking both ways.

When it was pleasant we sometimes sat on a bench in Central Park; and
once he must have left a handkerchief there, for a few days later one of
his handkerchiefs came to him accompanied by a note. Its finder, a Mr.
Lockwood, received a reward, for Mark Twain wrote him:

    There is more rejoicing in this house over that one handkerchief
    that was lost and is found again than over the ninety and nine that
    never went to the wash at all. Heaven will reward you, I know it
    will.

On Sunday mornings the return walk would be timed for about the hour that
the churches would be dismissed. On the first Sunday morning we had
started a little early, and I thoughtlessly suggested, when we reached
Fifty-ninth Street, that if we returned at once we would avoid the
throng. He said, quietly:

"I like the throng."

So we rested in the Plaza Hotel until the appointed hour. Men and women
noticed him, and came over to shake his hand. The gigantic man in
uniform; in charge of the carriages at the door, came in for a word. He
had opened carriages for Mr. Clemens at the Twenty-third Street station,
and now wanted to claim that honor. I think he received the most cordial
welcome of any one who came. I am sure he did. It was Mark Twain's way
to warm to the man of the lower social rank. He was never too busy,
never too preoccupied, to grasp the hand of such a man; to listen to his
story, and to say just the words that would make that man happy
remembering them.

We left the Plaza Hotel and presently were amid the throng of outpouring
congregations. Of course he was the object on which every passing eye
turned; the presence to which every hat was lifted. I realized that this
open and eagerly paid homage of the multitude was still dear to him, not
in any small and petty way, but as the tribute of a nation, the
expression of that affection which in his London and Liverpool speeches
he had declared to be the last and final and most precious reward that
any man can win, whether by character or achievement. It was his final
harvest, and he had the courage to claim it--the aftermath of all his
years of honorable labor and noble living.




CCLXII

FROM MARK TWAIN's MAIL

If the reader has any curiosity as to some of the less usual letters
which a man of wide public note may inspire, perhaps he will find a
certain interest in a few selected from the thousands which yearly came
to Mark Twain.

For one thing, he was constantly receiving prescriptions and remedies
whenever the papers reported one of his bronchial or rheumatic attacks.
It is hardly necessary to quote examples of these, but only a form of his
occasional reply, which was likely to be in this wise:

    DEAR SIR [or MADAM],--I try every remedy sent to me. I am now on
    No. 87. Yours is 2,653. I am looking forward to its beneficial
    results.

Of course a large number of the nostrums and palliatives offered were
preparations made by the wildest and longest-haired medical cranks. One
of these sent an advertisement of a certain Elixir of Life, which was
guaranteed to cure everything--to "wash and cleanse the human molecules,
and so restore youth and preserve life everlasting."

Anonymous letters are not usually popular or to be encouraged, but Mark
Twain had an especial weakness for compliments that came in that way.
They were not mercenary compliments. The writer had nothing to gain. Two
such letters follow--both written in England just at the time of his
return.

    MARK TWAIN.

    DEAR SIR,--Please accept a poor widow's good-by and kindest wishes.
    I have had some of your books sent to me; have enjoyed them very
    much--only wish I could afford to buy some.

    I should very much like to have seen you. I have many photos of you
    which I have cut from several papers which I read. I have one where
    you are writing in bed, which I cut from the Daily News. Like
    myself, you believe in lots of sleep and rest. I am 70 and I find I
    need plenty. Please forgive the liberty I have taken in writing to
    you. If I can't come to your funeral may we meet beyond the river.

    May God guard you, is the wish of a lonely old widow.
                  Yours sincerely,

The other letter also tells its own story:

    DEAR, KIND MARK TWAIN,--For years I have wanted to write and thank
    you for the comfort you were to me once, only I never quite knew
    where you were, and besides I did not want to bother you; but to-day
    I was told by some one who saw you going into the lift at the Savoy
    that you looked sad and I thought it might cheer you a little tiny
    bit to hear how you kept a poor lonely girl from ruining her eyes
    with crying every night for long months.

    Ten years ago I had to leave home and earn my living as a governess
    and Fate sent me to spend a winter with a very dull old country
    family in the depths of Staffordshire. According to the genial
    English custom, after my five charges had gone to bed, I took my
    evening meal alone in the school-room, where "Henry Tudor had supped
    the night before Bosworth," and there I had to stay without a soul
    to speak to till I went to bed. At first I used to cry every night,
    but a friend sent me a copy of your Huckleberry Finn and I never
    cried any more. I kept him handy under the copy-books and maps, and
    when Henry Tudor commenced to stretch out his chilly hands toward me
    I grabbed my dear Huck and he never once failed me; I opened him at
    random and in two minutes I was in another world. That's why I am
    so grateful to you and so fond of you, and I thought you might like
    to know; for it is yourself that has the kind heart, as is easily
    seen from the way you wrote about the poor old nigger. I am a
    stenographer now and live at home, but I shall never forget how you
    helped me. God bless you and spare you long to those you are dear
    to.

A letter which came to him soon after his return from England contained a
clipping which reported the good work done by Christian missionaries in
the Congo, especially among natives afflicted by the terrible sleeping
sickness. The letter itself consisted merely of a line, which said:

    Won't you give your friends, the missionaries, a good mark for this?

The writer's name was signed, and Mark Twain answered:

    In China the missionaries are not wanted, & so they ought to be
    decent & go away. But I have not heard that in the Congo the
    missionary servants of God are unwelcome to the native.

    Evidently those missionaries axe pitying, compassionate, kind. How
    it would improve God to take a lesson from them! He invented &
    distributed the germ of that awful disease among those helpless,
    poor savages, & now He sits with His elbows on the balusters & looks
    down & enjoys this wanton crime. Confidently, & between you & me
    --well, never mind, I might get struck by lightning if I said it.

    Those are good and kindly men, those missionaries, but they are a
    measureless satire upon their Master.

To which the writer answered:

    O wicked Mr. Clemens! I have to ask Saint Joan of Arc to pray for
    you; then one of these days, when we all stand before the Golden
    Gates and we no longer "see through a glass darkly and know only in
    part," there will be a struggle at the heavenly portals between Joan
    of Arc and St. Peter, but your blessed Joan will conquer and she'll
    lead Mr. Clemens through the gates of pearl and apologize and plead
    for him.

Of the letters that irritated him, perhaps the following is as fair a
sample as any, and it has additional interest in its sequel.

    DEAR SIR,--I have written a book--naturally--which fact, however,
    since I am not your enemy, need give you no occasion to rejoice.
    Nor need you grieve, though I am sending you a copy. If I knew of
    any way of compelling you to read it I would do so, but unless the
    first few pages have that effect I can do nothing. Try the first
    few pages. I have done a great deal more than that with your books,
    so perhaps you owe me some thing--say ten pages. If after that
    attempt you put it aside I shall be sorry--for you.

    I am afraid that the above looks flippant--but think of the
    twitterings of the soul of him who brings in his hand an unbidden
    book, written by himself. To such a one much is due in the way of
    indulgence. Will you remember that? Have you forgotten early
    twitterings of your own?

In a memorandum made on this letter Mark Twain wrote:

    Another one of those peculiarly depressing letters--a letter cast in
    artificially humorous form, whilst no art could make the subject
    humorous--to me.

Commenting further, he said:

    As I have remarked before about one thousand times the coat of arms
    of the human race ought to consist of a man with an ax on his
    shoulder proceeding toward a grindstone, or it ought to represent
    the several members of the human race holding out the hat to one
    another; for we are all beggars, each in his own way. One beggar is
    too proud to beg for pennies, but will beg for an introduction into
    society; another does not care for society, but he wants a
    postmastership; another will inveigle a lawyer into conversation and
    then sponge on him for free advice. The man who wouldn't do any of
    these things will beg for the Presidency. Each admires his own
    dignity and greatly guards it, but in his opinion the others haven't
    any.

    Mendicancy is a matter of taste and temperament, no doubt, but no
    human being is without some form of it. I know my own form, you
    know yours. Let us conceal them from view and abuse the others.
    There is no man so poor but what at intervals some man comes to him
    with an ax to grind. By and by the ax's aspect becomes familiar to
    the proprietor of the grindstone. He perceives that it is the same
    old ax. If you are a governor you know that the stranger wants an
    office. The first time he arrives you are deceived; he pours out
    such noble praises of you and your political record that you are
    moved to tears; there's a lump in your throat and you are thankful
    that you have lived for this happiness. Then the stranger discloses
    his ax, and you are ashamed of yourself and your race. Six
    repetitions will cure you. After that you interrupt the compliments
    and say, "Yes, yes, that's all right; never mind about that. What
    is it you want?"

    But you and I are in the business ourselves. Every now and then we
    carry our ax to somebody and ask a whet. I don't carry mine to
    strangers--I draw the line there; perhaps that is your way. This is
    bound to set us up on a high and holy pinnacle and make us look down
    in cold rebuke on persons who carry their axes to strangers.

    I do not know how to answer that stranger's letter. I wish he had
    spared me. Never mind about him--I am thinking about myself. I
    wish he had spared me. The book has not arrived yet; but no matter,
    I am prejudiced against it.

It was a few days later that he added:

    I wrote to that man. I fell back upon the old Overworked, polite
    lie, and thanked him for his book and said I was promising myself
    the pleasure of reading it. Of course that set me free; I was not
    obliged to read it now at all, and, being free, my prejudice was
    gone, and as soon as the book came I opened it to see what it was
    like. I was not able to put it down until I had finished. It was
    an embarrassing thing to have to write to that man and confess that
    fact, but I had to do it. That first letter was merely a lie. Do
    you think I wrote the second one to give that man pleasure? Well, I
    did, but it was second-hand pleasure. I wrote it first to give
    myself comfort, to make myself forget the original lie.

Mark Twain's interest was once aroused by the following:

    DEAR SIR,--I have had more or less of your works on my shelves for
    years, and believe I have practically a complete set now. This is
    nothing unusual, of course, but I presume it will seem to you
    unusual for any one to keep books constantly in sight which the
    owner regrets ever having read.

    Every time my glance rests on the books I do regret having read
    them, and do not hesitate to tell you so to your face, and care not
    who may know my feelings. You, who must be kept busy attending to
    your correspondence, will probably pay little or no attention to
    this small fraction of it, yet my reasons, I believe, are sound and
    are probably shared by more people than you are aware of.

    Probably you will not read far enough through this to see who has
    signed it, but if you do, and care to know why I wish I had left
    your work unread, I will tell you as briefly as possible if you will
    ask me.
                            GEORGE B. LAUDER.

Clemens did not answer the letter, but put it in his pocket, perhaps
intending to do so, and a few days later, in Boston, when a reporter
called, he happened to remember it. The reporter asked permission to
print the queer document, and it appeared in his Mark Twain interview
next morning. A few days later the writer of it sent a second letter,
this time explaining:

    MY DEAR SIR,--I saw in to-day's paper a copy of the letter which I
    wrote you October 26th.

    I have read and re-read your works until I can almost recall some of
    them word for word. My familiarity with them is a constant source
    of pleasure which I would not have missed, and therefore the regret
    which I have expressed is more than offset by thankfulness.

    Believe me, the regret which I feel for having read your works is
    entirely due to the unalterable fact that I can never again have the
    pleasure of reading them for the first time.

                  Your sincere admirer,
                            GEORGE B. LADDER.

Mark Twain promptly replied this time:
    DEAR SIR, You fooled me completely; I didn't divine what the letter
    was concealing, neither did the newspaper men, so you are a very
    competent deceiver.
                     Truly yours,
                                S. L. CLEMENS.

It was about the end of 1907 that the new St. Louis Harbor boat, was
completed. The editor of the St. Louis Republic reported that it has
been christened "Mark Twain," and asked for a word of comment. Clemens
sent this line:

    May my namesake follow in my righteous footsteps, then neither of us
    will need any fire insurance.




CCLXIII

SOME LITERARY LUNCHEONS

Howells, in his book, refers to the Human Race Luncheon Club, which
Clemens once organized for the particular purpose of damning the species
in concert. It was to consist, beside Clemens himself, of Howells,
Colonel Harvey, and Peter Dunne; but it somehow never happened that even
this small membership could be assembled while the idea was still fresh,
and therefore potent.

Out of it, however, grew a number of those private social gatherings
which Clemens so dearly loved--small luncheons and dinners given at his
own table. The first of these came along toward the end of 1907, when
Howells was planning to spend the winter in Italy.

"Howells is going away," he said, "and I should like to give him a
stag-party. We'll enlarge the Human Race Club for the occasion."

So Howells, Colonel Harvey, Martin Littleton, Augustus Thomas, Robert
Porter, and Paderewski were invited. Paderewski was unable to come, and
seven in all assembled.

Howells was first to arrive.

"Here comes Howells," Clemens said. "Old Howells a thousand years old."

But Howells didn't look it. His face was full of good-nature and
apparent health, and he was by no means venerable, either in speech or
action. Thomas, Porter, Littleton, and Harvey drifted in. Cocktails
were served and luncheon was announced.

Claude, the butler, had prepared the table with fine artistry--its center
a mass of roses. There was to be no woman in the neighborhood--Clemens
announced this fact as a sort of warrant for general freedom of
expression.

Thomas's play, "The Witching Hour," was then at the height of its great
acceptance, and the talk naturally began there. Thomas told something of
the difficulty which he found in being able to convince a manager that it
would succeed, and declared it to be his own favorite work. I believe
there was no dissenting opinion as to its artistic value, or concerning
its purpose and psychology, though these had been the stumbling-blocks
from a managerial point of view.

When the subject was concluded, and there had come a lull, Colonel
Harvey, who was seated at Clemens's left, said:

"Uncle Mark"--he often called him that--"Major Leigh handed me a report
of the year's sales just as I was leaving. It shows your royalty returns
this year to be very close to fifty thousand dollars. I don't believe
there is another such return from old books on record."

This was said in an undertone, to Clemens only, but was overheard by one
or two of those who sat nearest. Clemens was not unwilling to repeat it
for the benefit of all, and did so. Howells said:

"A statement like that arouses my basest passions. The books are no
good; it's just the advertising they get."

Clemens said: "Yes, my contract compels the publisher to advertise. It
costs them two hundred dollars every time they leave the advertisement
out of the magazines."

"And three hundred every time we put it in," said Harvey. "We often
debate whether it is more profitable to put in the advertisement or to
leave it out."

The talk switched back to plays and acting. Thomas recalled an incident
of Beerbohm Tree's performance of "Hamlet." W. S. Gilbert, of
light-opera celebrity, was present at a performance, and when the play
ended Mrs. Tree hurried over to him and said:

"Oh, Mr. Gilbert, what did you think of Mr. Tree's rendition of Hamlet?"
"Remarkable," said Gilbert. "Funny without being vulgar."

It was with such idle tales and talk-play that the afternoon passed. Not
much of it all is left to me, but I remember Howells saying, "Did it ever
occur to you that the newspapers abolished hell? Well, they did--it was
never done by the church. There was a consensus of newspaper opinion
that the old hell with its lake of fire and brimstone was an antiquated
institution; in fact a dead letter." And again, "I was coming down
Broadway last night, and I stopped to look at one of the street-venders
selling those little toy fighting roosters. It was a bleak, desolate
evening; nobody was buying anything, and as he pulled the string and kept
those little roosters dancing and fighting his remarks grew more and more
cheerless and sardonic.

"'Japanese game chickens,' he said; 'pretty toys, amuse the children with
their antics. Child of three can operate it. Take them home for
Christmas. Chicken-fight at your own fireside.' I tried to catch his eye
to show him that I understood his desolation and sorrow, but it was no
use. He went on dancing his toy chickens, and saying, over and over,
'Chicken-fight at your own fireside.'"

The luncheon over, we wandered back into the drawing-room, and presently
all left but Colonel Harvey. Clemens and the Colonel went up to the
billiard-room and engaged in a game of cushion caroms, at twenty-five
cents a game. I was umpire and stakeholder, and it was a most
interesting occupation, for the series was close and a very cheerful one.
It ended the day much to Mark Twain's satisfaction, for he was oftenest
winner. That evening he said:

"We will repeat that luncheon; we ought to repeat it once a month.
Howells will be gone, but we must have the others. We cannot have a
thing like that too often."

There was, in fact, a second stag-luncheon very soon after, at which
George Riggs was present and that rare Irish musician, Denis O'Sullivan.
It was another choice afternoon, with a mystical quality which came of
the music made by O'Sullivan on some Hindu reeds-pipes of Pan. But we
shall have more of O'Sullivan presently--all too little, for his days
were few and fleeting.

Howells could not get away just yet. Colonel Harvey, who, like James
Osgood, would not fail to find excuse for entertainment, chartered two
drawing-room cars, and with Mrs. Harvey took a party of fifty-five or
sixty congenial men and women to Lakewood for a good-by luncheon to
Howells. It was a day borrowed from June, warm and beautiful.

The trip down was a sort of reception. Most of the guests were
acquainted, but many of them did not often meet. There was constant
visiting back and forth the full length of the two coaches. Denis
O'Sullivan was among the guests. He looked in the bloom of health, and
he had his pipes and played his mystic airs; then he brought out the
tin-whistle of Ireland, and blew such rollicking melodies as capering
fairies invented a long time ago. This was on the train going down.

There was a brief program following the light-hearted feasting--an
informal program fitting to that sunny day. It opened with some
recitations by Miss Kitty Cheatham; then Colonel Harvey introduced
Howells, with mention of his coming journey. As a rule, Howells does not
enjoy speaking. He is willing to read an address on occasion, but he has
owned that the prospect of talking without his notes terrifies him. This
time, however, there was no reluctance, though he had prepared no speech.
He was among friends. He looked even happy when he got on his feet, and
he spoke like a happy man. He talked about Mark Twain. It was all
delicate, delicious chaffing which showed Howells at his very best--all
too short for his listeners.

Clemens, replying, returned the chaff, and rambled amusingly among his
fancies, closing with a few beautiful words of "Godspeed and safe return"
to his old comrade and friend.

Then once more came Denis and his pipes. No one will ever forget his
part of the program. The little samples we had heard on the train were
expanded and multiplied and elaborated in a way that fairly swept his
listeners out of themselves into that land where perhaps Denis himself
wanders playing now; for a month later, strong and lusty and beautiful as
he seemed that day, he suddenly vanished from among us and his reeds were
silent. It never occurred to us then that Denis could die; and as he
finished each melody and song there was a shout for a repetition, and I
think we could have sat there and let the days and years slip away
unheeded, for time is banished by music like that, and one wonders if it
might not even divert death.

It was dark when we crossed the river homeward; the myriad lights from
heaven-climbing windows made an enchanted city in the sky. The evening,
like the day, was warm, and some of the party left the ferry-cabin to
lean over and watch the magic spectacle, the like of which is not to be
found elsewhere on the earth.




CCLXIV

"CAPTAIN STORMFIELD" IN PRINT

During the forty years or so that had elapsed since the publication of
the "Gates Ajar" and the perpetration of Mark Twain's intended burlesque,
built on Captain Ned Wakeman's dream, the Christian religion in its more
orthodox aspects had undergone some large modifications. It was no
longer regarded as dangerous to speak lightly of hell, or even to suggest
that the golden streets and jeweled architecture of the sky might be
regarded as symbols of hope rather than exhibits of actual bullion and
lapidary construction. Clemens re-read his extravaganza, Captain
Stormfields Visit to Heaven, gave it a modernizing touch here and there,
and handed it to his publishers, who must have agreed that it was no
longer dangerous, for it was promptly accepted and appeared in the
December and January numbers (1907-8) of Harper's Magazine, and was also
issued as a small book. If there were any readers who still found it
blasphemous, or even irreverent, they did not say so; the letters that
came--and they were a good many--expressed enjoyment and approval, also
(some of them) a good deal of satisfaction that Mark Twain "had returned
to his earlier form."

The publication of this story recalled to Clemens's mind another heresy
somewhat similar which he had written during the winter of 1891 and 1892
in Berlin. This was a dream of his own, in which he had set out on a
train with the evangelist Sam Jones and the Archbishop of Canterbury for
the other world. He had noticed that his ticket was to a different
destination than the Archbishop's, and so, when the prelate nodded and
finally went to sleep, he changed the tickets in their hats with
disturbing results. Clemens thought a good deal of this fancy when he
wrote it, and when Mrs. Clemens had refused to allow it to be printed he
had laboriously translated it into German, with some idea of publishing
it surreptitiously; but his conscience had been too much for him. He had
confessed, and even the German version had been suppressed.

Clemens often allowed his fancy to play with the idea of the orthodox
heaven, its curiosities of architecture, and its employments of
continuous prayer, psalm-singing, and harpistry.

"What a childish notion it was," he said, "and how curious that only a
little while ago human beings were so willing to accept such fragile
evidences about a place of so much importance. If we should find
somewhere to-day an ancient book containing an account of a beautiful and
blooming tropical Paradise secreted in the center of eternal icebergs--an
account written by men who did not even claim to have seen it themselves
--no geographical society on earth would take any stock in that book, yet
that account would be quite as authentic as any we have of heaven. If
God has such a place prepared for us, and really wanted us to know it, He
could have found some better way than a book so liable to alterations and
misinterpretation. God has had no trouble to prove to man the laws of
the constellations and the construction of the world, and such things as
that, none of which agree with His so-called book. As to a hereafter, we
have not the slightest evidence that there is any--no evidence that
appeals to logic and reason. I have never seen what to me seemed an atom
of proof that there is a future life."

Then, after a long pause, he added:

"And yet--I am strongly inclined to expect one."




CCLXV

LOTOS CLUB HONORS

It was on January 11, 1908, that Mark Twain was given his last great
banquet by the Lotos Club. The club was about to move again, into
splendid new quarters, and it wished to entertain him once more in its
old rooms.

He wore white, and amid the throng of black-clad men was like a white
moth among a horde of beetles. The room fairly swarmed with them, and
they seemed likely to overwhelm him.

President Lawrence was toast-master of the evening, and he ended his
customary address by introducing Robert Porter, who had been Mark Twain's
host at Oxford. Porter told something of the great Oxford week, and
ended by introducing Mark Twain. It had been expected that Clemens would
tell of his London experiences. Instead of doing this, he said he had
started a new kind of collection, a collection of compliments. He had
picked up a number of valuable ones abroad and some at home. He read
selections from them, and kept the company going with cheers and
merriment until just before the close of his speech. Then he repeated,
in his most impressive manner, that stately conclusion of his Liverpool
speech, and the room became still and the eyes of his hearers grew dim.
It may have been even more moving than when originally given, for now the
closing words, "homeward bound," had only the deeper meaning.

Dr. John MacArthur followed with a speech that was as good a sermon as
any he ever delivered, and closed it by saying:

"I do not want men to prepare for heaven, but to prepare to remain on
earth, and it is such men as Mark Twain who make other men not fit to
die, but fit to live."

Andrew Carnegie also spoke, and Colonel Harvey, and as the speaking ended
Robert Porter stepped up behind Clemens and threw over his shoulders the
scarlet Oxford robe which had been surreptitiously brought, and placed
the mortar-board cap upon his head, while the diners vociferated their
approval. Clemens was quite calm.

"I like this," he said, when the noise had subsided. "I like its
splendid color. I would dress that way all the time, if I dared."

In the cab going home I mentioned the success of his speech, how well it
had been received.

"Yes," he said; "but then I have the advantage of knowing now that I am
likely to be favorably received, whatever I say. I know that my
audiences are warm and responseful. It is an immense advantage to feel
that. There are cold places in almost every speech, and if your audience
notices them and becomes cool, you get a chill yourself in those zones,
and it is hard to warm up again. Perhaps there haven't been so many
lately; but I have been acquainted with them more than once." And then I
could not help remembering that deadly Whittier birthday speech of more
than thirty years before--that bleak, arctic experience from beginning to
end.

"We have just time for four games," he said, as we reached the
billiard-room; but there was no sign of stopping when the four games were
over. We were winning alternately, and neither noted the time. I was
leaving by an early train, and was willing to play all night. The
milk-wagons were rattling outside when he said:

"Well, perhaps we'd better quit now. It seems pretty early, though." I
looked at my watch. It was quarter to four, and we said good night.




CCLXVI

A WINTER IN BERMUDA

Edmund Clarence Stedman died suddenly at his desk, January 18, 1908, and
Clemens, in response to telegrams, sent this message:

I do not wish to talk about it. He was a valued friend from days that
date back thirty-five years. His loss stuns me and unfits me to speak.

He recalled the New England dinners which he used to attend, and where he
had often met Stedman.

"Those were great affairs," he said. "They began early, and they ended
early. I used to go down from Hartford with the feeling that it wasn't
an all-night supper, and that it was going to be an enjoyable time.
Choate and Depew and Stedman were in their prime then--we were all young
men together. Their speeches were always worth listening to. Stedman
was a prominent figure there. There don't seem to be any such men now
--or any such occasions."

Stedman was one of the last of the old literary group. Aldrich had died
the year before. Howells and Clemens were the lingering "last leaves."

Clemens gave some further luncheon entertainments to his friends, and
added the feature of "doe" luncheons--pretty affairs where, with Clara
Clemens as hostess, were entertained a group of brilliant women, such as
Mrs. Kate Douglas Riggs, Geraldine Farrax, Mrs. Robert Collier, Mrs.
Frank Doubleday, and others. I cannot report those luncheons, for I was
not present, and the drift of the proceedings came to me later in too
fragmentary a form to be used as history; but I gathered from Clemens
himself that he had done all of the talking, and I think they must have
been very pleasant afternoons. Among the acknowledgments that followed
one of these affairs is this characteristic word-play from Mrs. Riggs:

    N. B.--A lady who is invited to and attends a doe luncheon is, of
    course, a doe. The question is, if she attends two doe luncheons in
    succession is she a doe-doe? If so is she extinct and can never
    attend a third?

Luncheons and billiards, however, failed to give sufficient brightness to
the dull winter days, or to insure him against an impending bronchial
attack, and toward the end of January he sailed away to Bermuda, where
skies were bluer and roadsides gay with bloom. His sojourn was brief
this time, but long enough to cure him, he said, and he came back full of
happiness. He had been driving about over the island with a newly
adopted granddaughter, little Margaret Blackmer, whom he had met one
morning in the hotel dining-room. A part of his dictated story will
convey here this pretty experience.

    My first day in Bermuda paid a dividend--in fact a double dividend:
    it broke the back of my cold and it added a jewel to my collection.
    As I entered the breakfast-room the first object I saw in that
    spacious and far-reaching place was a little girl seated solitary at
    a table for two. I bent down over her and patted her cheek and
    said:

    "I don't seem to remember your name; what is it?"

    By the sparkle in her brown eyes it amused her. She said:

    "Why, you've never known it, Mr. Clemens, because you've never seen
    me before."

    "Why, that is true, now that I come to think; it certainly is true,
    and it must be one of the reasons why I have forgotten your name.
    But I remember it now perfectly--it's Mary."

    She was amused again; amused beyond smiling; amused to a chuckle,
    and she said:

    "Oh no, it isn't; it's Margaret."

    I feigned to be ashamed of my mistake and said:

    "Ah, well, I couldn't have made that mistake a few years ago; but I
    am old, and one of age's earliest infirmities is a damaged memory;
    but I am clearer now--clearer-headed--it all comes back to me just
    as if it were yesterday. It's Margaret Holcomb."

    She was surprised into a laugh this time, the rippling laugh that a
    happy brook makes when it breaks out of the shade into the sunshine,
    and she said:

    "Oh, you are wrong again; you don't get anything right. It isn't
    Holcomb, it's Blackmer."

    I was ashamed again, and confessed it; then:

    "How old are you, dear?"

    "Twelve; New-Year's. Twelve and a month."

    We were close comrades-inseparables, in fact-for eight days. Every
    day we made pedestrian excursions--called them that anyway, and
    honestly they were intended for that, and that is what they would
    have been but for the persistent intrusion of a gray and grave and
    rough-coated donkey by the name of Maud. Maud was four feet long;
    she was mounted on four slender little stilts, and had ears that
    doubled her altitude when she stood them up straight. Her tender
    was a little bit of a cart with seat room for two in it, and you
    could fall out of it without knowing it, it was so close to the
    ground. This battery was in command of a nice, grave, dignified,
    gentlefaced little black boy whose age was about twelve, and whose
    name, for some reason or other, was Reginald. Reginald and Maud--I
    shall not easily forget those names, nor the combination they stood
    for. The trips going and coming were five or six miles, and it
    generally took us three hours to make it. This was because Maud set
    the pace. Whenever she detected an ascending grade she respected
    it; she stopped and said with her ears:

    "This is getting unsatisfactory. We will camp here."

    The whole idea of these excursions was that Margaret and I should
    employ them for the gathering of strength, by walking, yet we were
    oftener in the cart than out of it. She drove and I superintended.
    In the course of the first excursions I found a beautiful little
    shell on the beach at Spanish Point; its hinge was old and dry, and
    the two halves came apart in my hand. I gave one of them to
    Margaret and said:

    "Now dear, sometime or other in the future I shall run across you
    somewhere, and it may turn out that it is not you at all, but will
    be some girl that only resembles you. I shall be saying to myself
    'I know that this is a Margaret by the look of her, but I don't know
    for sure whether this is my Margaret or somebody else's'; but, no
    matter, I can soon find out, for I shall take my half shell out of
    my pocket and say, 'I think you are my Margaret, but I am not
    certain; if you are my Margaret you can produce the other half of
    this shell.'"

    Next morning when I entered the breakfast-room and saw the child I
    approached and scanned her searchingly all over, then said, sadly:

    "No, I am mistaken; it looks like my Margaret,--but it isn't, and I
    am so sorry. I shall go away and cry now."

    Her eyes danced triumphantly, and she cried out:

    "No, you don't have to. There!" and she fetched out the identifying
    shell.

    I was beside myself with gratitude and joyful surprise, and revealed
    it from every pore. The child could not have enjoyed this thrilling
    little drama more if we had been playing it on the stage. Many
    times afterward she played the chief part herself, pretending to be
    in doubt as to my identity and challenging me to produce my half of
    the shell. She was always hoping to catch me without it, but I
    always defeated that game--wherefore she came to recognize at last
    that I was not only old, but very smart.

Sometimes, when they were not walking or driving, they sat on the
veranda, and he prepared history-lessons for little Margaret by making
grotesque figures on cards with numerous legs and arms and other
fantastic symbols end features to fix the length of some king's reign.
For William the Conqueror, for instance, who reigned twenty-one years, he
drew a figure of eleven legs and ten arms. It was the proper method of
impressing facts upon the mind of a child. It carried him back to those
days at Elmira when he had arranged for his own little girls the game of
kings. A Miss Wallace, a friend of Margaret's, and usually one of the
pedestrian party, has written a dainty book of those Bermudian days.
--[Mark Twain and the Happy Islands, by Elizabeth Wallace.]

Miss Wallace says:

    Margaret felt for him the deep affection that children have for an
    older person who understands them and treats them with respect. Mr.
    Clemens never talked down to her, but considered her opinions with a
    sweet dignity.

There were some pretty sequels to the shell incident. After Mark Twain
had returned to New York, and Margaret was there, she called one day with
her mother, and sent up her card. He sent back word, saying:

    "I seem to remember the name; but if this is really the person whom
    I think it is she can identify herself by a certain shell I once
    gave her, of which I have the other half. If the two halves fit, I
    shall know that this is the same little Margaret that I remember."

The message went down, and the other half of the shell was promptly sent
up. Mark Twain had the two half-shells incised firmly in gold, and one
of these he wore on his watch-fob, and sent the other to Margaret.

He afterward corresponded with Margaret, and once wrote her:

    I'm already making mistakes. When I was in New York, six weeks ago,
    I was on a corner of Fifth Avenue and I saw a small girl--not a big
    one--start across from the opposite corner, and I exclaimed to
    myself joyfully, "That is certainly my Margaret!" so I rushed to
    meet her. But as she came nearer I began to doubt, and said to
    myself, "It's a Margaret--that is plain enough--but I'm afraid it is
    somebody else's." So when I was passing her I held my shell so she
    couldn't help but see it. Dear, she only glanced at it and passed
    on! I wondered if she could have overlooked it. It seemed best to
    find out; so I turned and followed and caught up with her, and said,
    deferentially; "Dear Miss, I already know your first name by the
    look of you, but would you mind telling me your other one?" She was
    vexed and said pretty sharply, "It's Douglas, if you're so anxious
    to know. I know your name by your looks, and I'd advise you to shut
    yourself up with your pen and ink and write some more rubbish. I am
    surprised that they allow you to run' at large. You are likely to
    get run over by a baby-carriage any time. Run along now and don't
    let the cows bite you."

    What an idea! There aren't any cows in Fifth Avenue. But I didn't
    smile; I didn't let on to perceive how uncultured she was. She was
    from the country, of course, and didn't know what a comical blunder.
    she was making.

Mr. Rogers's health was very poor that winter, and Clemens urged him to
try Bermuda, and offered to go back with him; so they sailed away to the
summer island, and though Margaret was gone, there was other entertaining
company--other granddaughters to be adopted, and new friends and old
friends, and diversions of many sorts. Mr. Rogers's son-in-law, William
Evarts Benjamin, came down and joined the little group. It was one of
Mark Twain's real holidays. Mr. Rogers's health improved rapidly, and
Mark Twain was in fine trim. To Mrs. Rogers, at the end of the first
week, he wrote:

    DEAR MRS. ROGERS, He is getting along splendidly! This was the very
    place for him. He enjoys himself & is as quarrelsome as a cat.

    But he will get a backset if Benjamin goes home. Benjamin is the
    brightest man in these regions, & the best company. Bright? He is
    much more than that, he is brilliant. He keeps the crowd intensely
    alive.

    With love & all good wishes.
                            S. L. C.

Mark Twain and Henry Rogers were much together and much observed. They
were often referred to as "the King" and "the Rajah," and it was always a
question whether it was "the King" who took care of "the Rajah," or vice
versa. There was generally a group to gather around them, and Clemens
was sure of an attentive audience, whether he wanted to air his
philosophies, his views of the human race, or to read aloud from the
verses of Kipling.

"I am not fond of all poetry," he would say; "but there's something in
Kipling that appeals to me. I guess he's just about my level."

Miss Wallace recalls certain Kipling readings in his room, when his
friends gathered to listen.

    On those Kipling evenings the 'mise-en-scene' was a striking one.
    The bare hotel room, the pine woodwork and pine furniture, loose
    windows which rattled in the sea-wind. Once in a while a gust of
    asthmatic music from the spiritless orchestra downstairs came up the
    hallway. Yellow, unprotected gas-lights burned uncertainly, and
    Mark Twain in the midst of this lay on his bed (there was no couch)
    still in his white serge suit, with the light from the jet shining
    down on the crown of his silver hair, making it gleam and glisten
    like frosted threads.

In one hand he held his book, in the other he had his pipe, which he used
principally to gesture with in the most dramatic passages.

Margaret's small successors became the earliest members of the Angel Fish
Club, which Clemens concluded to organize after a visit to the
spectacular Bermuda aquarium. The pretty angel-fish suggested youth and
feminine beauty to him, and his adopted granddaughters became angel-fish
to him from that time forward. He bought little enamel angel-fish pins,
and carried a number of them with him most of the time, so that he could
create membership on short notice. It was just another of the harmless
and happy diversions of his gentler side. He was always fond of youth
and freshness. He regarded the decrepitude of old age as an unnecessary
part of life. Often he said:

"If I had been helping the Almighty when, He created man, I would have
had Him begin at the other end, and start human beings with old age. How
much better it would have been to start old and have all the bitterness
and blindness of age in the beginning! One would not mind then if he
were looking forward to a joyful youth. Think of the joyous prospect of
growing young instead of old! Think of looking forward to eighteen
instead of eighty! Yes, the Almighty made a poor job of it. I wish He
had invited my assistance."

To one of the angel fish he wrote, just after his return:

    I miss you, dear. I miss Bermuda, too, but not so much as I miss
    you; for you were rare, and occasional and select, and Ltd.; whereas
    Bermuda's charms and, graciousnesses were free and common and
    unrestricted--like the rain, you know, which falls upon the just and
    the unjust alike; a thing which would not happen if I were
    superintending the rain's affairs. No, I would rain softly and
    sweetly upon the just, but whenever I caught a sample of the unjust
    outdoors I would drown him.




CCLXVII

VIEWS AND ADDRESSES

    [As I am beginning this chapter, April 16, 1912, the news comes of
    the loss, on her first trip, of the great White Star Line steamer
    Titanic, with the destruction of many passengers, among whom are
    Frank D. Millet, William T. Stead, Isadore Straus, John Jacob Astor,
    and other distinguished men. They died as heroes, remaining with
    the ship in order that the women and children might be saved.

    It was the kind of death Frank Millet would have wished to die.
    He was always a soldier--a knight. He has appeared from time to
    time in these pages, for he was a dear friend of the Clemens
    household. One of America's foremost painters; at the time of his
    death he was head of the American Academy of Arts in Rome.]

Mark Twain made a number of addresses during the spring of 1908. He spoke
at the Cartoonists' dinner, very soon after his return from Bermuda; he
spoke at the Booksellers' banquet, expressing his debt of obligation to
those who had published and sold his books; he delivered a fine address
at the dinner given by the British Schools and University Club at
Delmonico's, May 25th, in honor of Queen Victoria's birthday. In that
speech he paid high tribute to the Queen for her attitude toward America,
during the crisis of the Civil Wax, and to her royal consort, Prince
Albert.

    What she did for us in America in our time of storm and stress we
    shall not forget, and whenever we call it to mind we shall always
    gratefully remember the wise and righteous mind that guided her in
    it and sustained and supported her--Prince Albert's. We need not
    talk any idle talk here to-night about either possible or impossible
    war between two countries; there will be no war while we remain sane
    and the son of Victoria and Albert sits upon the throne. In
    conclusion, I believe I may justly claim to utter the voice of my
    country in saying that we hold him in deep honor, and also in
    cordially wishing him a long life and a happy reign.

But perhaps his most impressive appearance was at the dedication of the
great City College (May 14, 1908), where President John Finley, who had
been struggling along with insufficient room, was to have space at last
for his freer and fuller educational undertakings. A great number of
honored scholars, statesmen, and diplomats assembled on the college
campus, a spacious open court surrounded by stately college architecture
of medieval design. These distinguished guests were clad in their
academic robes, and the procession could not have been widely different
from that one at Oxford of a year before. But there was something rather
fearsome about it, too. A kind of scaffolding had been reared in the
center of the campus for the ceremonies; and when those grave men in
their robes of state stood grouped upon it the picture was strikingly
suggestive of one of George Cruikshank's drawings of an execution scene
at the Tower of London. Many of the robes were black--these would be the
priests--and the few scarlet ones would be the cardinals who might have
assembled for some royal martyrdom. There was a bright May sunlight over
it all, one of those still, cool brightnesses which served to heighten
the weird effect. I am sure that others felt it besides myself, for
everybody seemed wordless and awed, even at times when there was no
occasion for silence. There was something of another age about the whole
setting, to say the least.

We left the place in a motor-car, a crowd of boys following after. As
Clemens got in they gathered around the car and gave the college yell,
ending with "Twain! Twain! Twain!" and added three cheers for Tom
Sawyer, Huck Finn, and Pudd'nhead Wilson. They called for a speech, but
he only said a few words in apology for not granting their request. He
made a speech to them that night at the Waldorf--where he proposed for
the City College a chair of citizenship, an idea which met with hearty
applause.

In the same address he referred to the "God Trust" motto on the coins,
and spoke approvingly of the President's order for its removal.

    We do not trust in God, in the important matters of life, and not
    even a minister of the Gospel will take any coin for a cent more
    than its accepted value because of that motto. If cholera should
    ever reach these shores we should probably pray to be delivered from
    the plague, but we would put our main trust in the Board of Health.

Next morning, commenting on the report of this speech, he said:

"If only the reporters would not try to improve on what I say. They seem
to miss the fact that the very art of saying a thing effectively is in
its delicacy, and as they can't reproduce the manner and intonation in
type they make it emphatic and clumsy in trying to convey it to the
reader."

I pleaded that the reporters were often young men, eager, and unmellowed
in their sense of literary art.

"Yes," he agreed, "they are so afraid their readers won't see my good
points that they set up red flags to mark them and beat a gong. They
mean well, but I wish they wouldn't do it."

He referred to the portion of his speech concerning the motto on the
coins. He had freely expressed similar sentiments on other public
occasions, and he had received a letter criticizing him for saying that
we do not really trust in God in any financial matter.

"I wanted to answer it," he said; "but I destroyed it. It didn't seem
worth noticing."

I asked how the motto had originated.

"About 1853 some idiot in Congress wanted to announce to the world that
this was a religious nation, and proposed putting it there, and no other
Congressman had courage enough to oppose it, of course. It took courage
in those days to do a thing like that; but I think the same thing would
happen to-day."

"Still the country has become broader. It took a brave man before the
Civil War to confess he had read the 'Age of Reason'."

"So it did, and yet that seems a mild book now. I read it first when I
was a cub pilot, read it with fear and hesitation, but marveling at its
fearlessness and wonderful power. I read it again a year or two ago, for
some reason, and was amazed to see how tame it had become. It seemed
that Paine was apologizing everywhere for hurting the feelings of the
reader."

He drifted, naturally, into a discussion of the Knickerbocker Trust
Company's suspension, which had tied up some fifty-five thousand dollars
of his capital, and wondered how many were trusting in God for the return
of these imperiled sums. Clemens himself, at this time, did not expect
to come out whole from that disaster. He had said very little when the
news came, though it meant that his immediate fortunes were locked up,
and it came near stopping the building activities at Redding. It was
only the smaller things of life that irritated him. He often met large
calamities with a serenity which almost resembled indifference. In the
Knickerbocker situation he even found humor as time passed, and wrote a
number of gay letters, some of which found their way into print.

It should be added that in the end there was no loss to any of the
Knickerbocker depositors.




CCLXVIII

REDDING

The building of the new home at Redding had been going steadily forward
for something more than a year. John Mead Howells had made the plans; W.
W. Sunderland and his son Philip, of Danbury, Connecticut, were the
builders, and in the absence of Miss Clemens, then on a concert tour,
Mark Twain's secretary, Miss I. V. Lyon, had superintended the
furnishing.

"Innocence at Home," as the place was originally named, was to be ready
for its occupant in June, with every detail in place, as he desired. He
had never visited Redding; he had scarcely even glanced at the plans or
discussed any of the decorations of the new home. He had required only
that there should be one great living-room for the orchestrelle, and
another big room for the billiard-table, with plenty of accommodations
for guests. He had required that the billiard-room be red, for something
in his nature answered to the warm luxury of that color, particularly in
moments of diversion. Besides, his other billiard-rooms had been red,
and such association may not be lightly disregarded. His one other
requirement was that the place should be complete.

"I don't want to see it," he said, "until the cat is purring on the
hearth."

Howells says:

"He had grown so weary of change, and so indifferent to it, that he was
without interest."

But it was rather, I think, that he was afraid of losing interest by
becoming wearied with details which were likely to exasperate him; also,
he wanted the dramatic surprise of walking into a home that had been
conjured into existence as with a word.

It was expected that the move would be made early in the month; but there
were delays, and it was not until the 18th of June that he took
possession.

The plan, at this time, was only to use the Redding place as a summer
residence, and the Fifth Avenue house was not dismantled. A few days
before the 18th the servants, with one exception, were taken up to the
new house, Clemens and myself remaining in the loneliness of No. 21,
attending to the letters in the morning and playing billiards the rest of
the time, waiting for the appointed day and train. It was really a
pleasant three days. He invented a new game, and we were riotous and
laughed as loudly as we pleased. I think he talked very little of the
new home which he was so soon to see. It was referred to no oftener than
once or twice a day, and then I believe only in connection with certain
of the billiard-room arrangements. I have wondered since what picture of
it he could have had in his mind, for he had never seen a photograph. He
had a general idea that it was built upon a hill, and that its
architecture was of the Italian villa order. I confess I had moments of
anxiety, for I had selected the land for him, and had been more or less
accessory otherwise. I did not really worry, for I knew how beautiful
and peaceful it all was; also something of his taste and needs.

It had been a dry spring, and country roads were dusty, so that those who
were responsible had been praying for rain, to be followed by a pleasant
day for his arrival. Both petitions were granted; June 18th would fall
on Thursday, and Monday night there came a good, thorough, and refreshing
shower that washed the vegetation clean and laid the dust. The morning
of the 18th was bright and sunny and cool. Clemens was up and shaved by
six o'clock in order to be in time, though the train did not leave until
four in the afternoon--an express newly timed to stop at Redding--its
first trip scheduled for the day of Mark Twain's arrival.

We were still playing billiards when word was brought up that the cab was
waiting. My daughter, Louise, whose school on Long Island had closed
that day, was with us. Clemens wore his white flannels and a Panama hat,
and at the station a group quickly collected, reporters and others, to
interview him and speed him to his new home. He was cordial and
talkative, and quite evidently full of pleasant anticipation. A reporter
or two and a special photographer came along, to be present at his
arrival.

The new, quick train, the green, flying landscape, with glimpses of the
Sound and white sails, the hillsides and clear streams becoming rapidly
steeper and dearer as we turned northward: all seemed to gratify him, and
when he spoke at all it was approvingly. The hour and a half required to
cover the sixty miles of distance seemed very short. As the train slowed
down for the Redding station, he said:

"We'll leave this box of candy"--he had bought a large box on the way
--"those colored porters sometimes like candy, and we can get some more."

He drew out a great handful of silver.

"Give them something--give everybody liberally that does any service."

There was a sort of open-air reception in waiting. Redding had
recognized the occasion as historic. A varied assemblage of vehicles
festooned with flowers had gathered to offer a gallant country welcome.

It was now a little before six o'clock of that long June day, still and
dreamlike; and to the people assembled there may have been something
which was not quite reality in the scene. There was a tendency to be
very still. They nodded, waved their hands to him, smiled, and looked
their fill; but a spell lay upon them, and they did not cheer. It would
have been a pity if they had done so. A noise, and the illusion would
have been shattered.

His carriage led away on the three-mile drive to the house on the
hilltop, and the floral turnout fell in behind. No first impression of a
fair land could have come at a sweeter time. Hillsides were green,
fields were white with daisies, dog-wood and laurel shone among the
trees. And over all was the blue sky, and everywhere the fragrance of
June.

He was very quiet as we drove along. Once with gentle humor, looking
over a white daisy field, he said:

"That is buckwheat. I always recognize buckwheat when I see it. I wish
I knew as much about other things as I know about buckwheat. It seems to
be very plentiful here; it even grows by the roadside." And a little
later: "This is the kind of a road I like; a good country road through
the woods."

The water was flowing over the mill-dam where the road crosses the
Saugatuck, and he expressed approval of that clear, picturesque little
river, one of those charming Connecticut streams. A little farther on a
brook cascaded down the hillside, and he compared it with some of the
tiny streams of Switzerland, I believe the Giessbach. The lane that led
to the new home opened just above, and as he entered the leafy way he
said, "This is just the kind of a lane I like," thus completing his
acceptance of everything but the house and the location.

The last of the procession had dropped away at the entrance of the lane,
and he was alone with those who had most anxiety for his verdict. They
had not long to wait. As the carriage ascended higher to the open view
he looked away, across the Saugatuck Valley to the nestling village and
church-spire and farm-houses, and to the distant hills, and declared the
land to be a good land and beautiful--a spot to satisfy one's soul. Then
came the house--simple and severe in its architecture--an Italian villa,
such as he had known in Florence, adapted now to American climate and
needs. The scars of building had not all healed yet, but close to the
house waved green grass and blooming flowers that might have been there
always. Neither did the house itself look new. The soft, gray stucco
had taken on a tone that melted into the sky and foliage of its
background. At the entrance his domestic staff waited to greet him, and
then he stepped across the threshold into the wide hall and stood in his
own home for the first time in seventeen years. It was an anxious
moment, and no one spoke immediately. But presently his eye had taken in
the satisfying harmony of the place and followed on through the wide
doors that led to the dining-room--on through the open French windows to
an enchanting vista of tree-tops and distant farmside and blue hills. He
said, very gently:

"How beautiful it all is? I did not think it could be as beautiful as
this."

He was taken through the rooms; the great living-room at one end of the
hall--a room on the walls of which there was no picture, but only
color-harmony--and at the other end of the hall, the splendid, glowing
billiard-room, where hung all the pictures in which he took delight. Then
to the floor above, with its spacious apartments and a continuation of
color--welcome and concord, the windows open to the pleasant evening
hills. When he had seen it all--the natural Italian garden below the
terraces; the loggia, whose arches framed landscape vistas and formed a
rare picture-gallery; when he had completed the round and stood in the
billiard-room--his especial domain--once more he said, as a final
verdict:

"It is a perfect house--perfect, so far as I can see, in every detail. It
might have been here always."

He was at home there from that moment--absolutely, marvelously at home,
for he fitted the setting perfectly, and there was not a hitch or flaw in
his adaptation. To see him over the billiard-table, five minutes later,
one could easily fancy that Mark Twain, as well as the house, had "been
there always." Only the presence of his daughters was needed now to
complete his satisfaction in everything.

There were guests that first evening--a small home dinner-party--and so
perfect were the appointments and service, that one not knowing would
scarcely have imagined it to be the first dinner served in that lovely
room. A little later; at the foot of the garden of bay and cedar,
neighbors, inspired by Dan Beard, who had recently located near by, set
off some fireworks. Clemens stepped out on the terrace and saw rockets
climbing through the summer sky to announce his arrival.

"I wonder why they all go to so much trouble for me," he said, softly. "I
never go to any trouble for anybody"--a statement which all who heard it,
and all his multitude of readers in every land, stood ready to deny.

That first evening closed with billiards--boisterous, triumphant
billiards--and when with midnight the day ended and the cues were set in
the rack, there was none to say that Mark Twain's first day in his new
home had not been a happy one.




CCLXIX

FIRST DAYS AT STORMFIELD

I went up next afternoon, for I knew how he dreaded loneliness. We
played billiards for a time, then set out for a walk, following the long
drive to the leafy lane that led to my own property. Presently he said:

"In one way I am sorry I did not see this place sooner. I never want to
leave it again. If I had known it was so beautiful I should have vacated
the house in town and moved up here permanently."

I suggested that he could still do so, if he chose, and he entered
immediately into the idea. By and by we turned down a deserted road,
grassy and beautiful, that ran along his land. At one side was a slope
facing the west, and dotted with the slender, cypress-like cedars of New
England. He had asked if that were part of his land, and on being told
it was he said:

"I would like Howells to have a house there. We must try to give that to
Howells."

At the foot of the hill we came to a brook and followed it into a meadow.
I told him that I had often caught fine trout there, and that soon I
would bring in some for breakfast. He answered:

"Yes, I should like that. I don't care to catch them any more myself. I
like them very hot."

We passed through some woods and came out near my own ancient little
house. He noticed it and said:

"The man who built that had some memory of Greece in his mind when he put
on that little porch with those columns."

My second daughter, Frances, was coming from a distant school on the
evening train, and the carriage was starting just then to bring her. I
suggested that perhaps he would find it pleasant to make the drive.

"Yes," he agreed, "I should enjoy that."

So I took the reins, and he picked up little Joy, who came running out
just then, and climbed into the back seat. It was another beautiful
evening, and he was in a talkative humor. Joy pointed out a small turtle
in the road, and he said:

"That is a wild turtle. Do you think you could teach it arithmetic?"

Joy was uncertain.

"Well," he went on, "you ought to get an arithmetic--a little ten-cent
arithmetic--and teach that turtle."

We passed some swampy woods, rather dim and junglelike.

"Those," he said, "are elephant woods."

But Joy answered:

"They are fairy woods. The fairies are there, but you can't see them
because they wear magic cloaks."

He said: "I wish I had one of those magic cloaks, sometimes. I had one
once, but it is worn out now."

Joy looked at him reverently, as one who had once been the owner of a
piece of fairyland.

It was a sweet drive to and from the village. There are none too many
such evenings in a lifetime. Colonel Harvey's little daughter, Dorothy,
came up a day or two later, and with my daughter Louise spent the first
week with him in the new home. They were created "Angel-Fishes"--the
first in the new aquarium; that is to say, the billiard-room, where he
followed out the idea by hanging a row of colored prints of Bermuda
fishes in a sort of frieze around the walls. Each visiting member was
required to select one as her particular patron fish and he wrote her
name upon it. It was his delight to gather his juvenile guests in this
room and teach them the science of billiard angles; but it was so
difficult to resist taking the cue and making plays himself that he was
required to stand on a little platform and give instruction just out of
reach. His snowy flannels and gleaming white hair, against those rich
red walls, with those small, summer-clad players, made a pretty picture.

The place did not retain its original name. He declared that it would
always be "Innocence at Home" to the angel-fish visitors, but that the
title didn't remain continuously appropriate. The money which he had
derived from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven had been used to build
the loggia wing, and he considered the name of "Stormfield" as a
substitute. When, presently, the summer storms gathered on that
rock-bound, open hill, with its wide reaches of vine and shrub-wild,
fierce storms that bent the birch and cedar, and strained at the bay and
huckleberry, with lightning and turbulent wind and thunder, followed by
the charging rain--the name seemed to become peculiarly appropriate.
Standing with his head bared to the tumult, his white hair tossing in the
blast, and looking out upon the wide splendor of the spectacle, he
rechristened the place, and "Stormfield" it became and remained.

The last day of Mark Twain's first week in Redding, June 25th, was
saddened by the news of the death of Grover Cleveland at his home in
Princeton, New Jersey. Clemens had always been an ardent Cleveland
admirer, and to Mrs. Cleveland now he sent this word of condolence--

    Your husband was a man I knew and loved and honored for twenty-five
    years. I mourn with you.

And once during the evening he said:

"He was one of our two or three real Presidents. There is none to take
his place."




CCLXX

THE ALDRICH MEMORIAL

At the end of June came the dedication at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, of
the Thomas Bailey Aldrich Memorial Museum, which the poet's wife had
established there in the old Aldrich homestead. It was hot weather. We
were obliged to take a rather poor train from South Norwalk, and Clemens
was silent and gloomy most of the way to Boston. Once there, however,
lodged in a cool and comfortable hotel, matters improved. He had brought
along for reading the old copy of Sir Thomas Malory's Arthur Tales, and
after dinner he took off his clothes and climbed into bed and sat up and
read aloud from those stately legends, with comments that I wish I could
remember now, only stopping at last when overpowered with sleep.

We went on a special train to Portsmouth next morning through the summer
heat, and assembled, with those who were to speak, in the back portion of
the opera-house, behind the scenes: Clemens was genial and good-natured
with all the discomfort of it; and he liked to fancy, with Howells, who
had come over from Kittery Point, how Aldrich must be amused at the whole
circumstance if he could see them punishing themselves to do honor to his
memory. Richard Watson Gilder was there, and Hamilton Mabie; also
Governor Floyd of New Hampshire; Colonel Higginson, Robert Bridges, and
other distinguished men. We got to the more open atmosphere of the stage
presently, and the exercises began. Clemens was last on the program.

The others had all said handsome, serious things, and Clemens himself had
mentally prepared something of the sort; but when his turn came, and he
rose to speak, a sudden reaction must have set in, for he delivered an
address that certainly would have delighted Aldrich living, and must have
delighted him dead, if he could hear it. It was full of the most
charming humor, delicate, refreshing, and spontaneous. The audience,
that had been maintaining a proper gravity throughout, showed its
appreciation in ripples of merriment that grew presently into genuine
waves of laughter. He spoke out his regret for having worn black
clothes. It was a mistake, he said, to consider this a solemn time
--Aldrich would not have wished it to be so considered. He had been a
man who loved humor and brightness and wit, and had helped to make life
merry and delightful. Certainly, if he could know, he would not wish
this dedication of his own home to be a lugubrious, smileless occasion.
Outside, when the services were ended, the venerable juvenile writer, J.
T. Trowbridge, came up to Clemens with extended hand. Clemens said:
"Trowbridge, are you still alive? You must be a thousand years old. Why,
I listened to your stories while I was being rocked in the cradle."
Trowbridge said:

"Mark, there's some mistake. My earliest infant smile was wakened with
one of your jokes."

They stood side by side against a fence in the blazing sun and were
photographed--an interesting picture.

We returned to Boston that evening. Clemens did not wish to hurry in the
summer heat, and we remained another day quietly sight-seeing, and
driving around and around Commonwealth Avenue in a victoria in the cool
of the evening. Once, remembering Aldrich, he said:

"I was just planning Tom Sawyer when he was beginning the 'Story of a Bad
Boy'. When I heard that he was writing that I thought of giving up mine,
but Aldrich insisted that it would be a foolish thing to do. He thought
my Missouri boy could not by any chance conflict with his boy of New
England, and of course he was right."

He spoke of how great literary minds usually came along in company. He
said:

"Now and then, on the stream of time, small gobs of that thing which we
call genius drift down, and a few of these lodge at some particular
point, and others collect about them and make a sort of intellectual
island--a towhead, as they say on the river--such an accumulation of
intellect we call a group, or school, and name it.

"Thirty years ago there was the Cambridge group. Now there's been still
another, which included Aldrich and Howells and Stedman and Cable. It
will soon be gone. I suppose they will have to name it by and by."

He pointed out houses here and there of people he had known and visited
in other days. The driver was very anxious to go farther, to other and
more distinguished sights. Clemens mildly but firmly refused any
variation of the program, and so we kept on driving around and around the
shaded loop of Beacon Street until dusk fell and the lights began to
twinkle among the trees.




CCLXXI

DEATH OF "SAM" MOFFETT

Clemens' next absence from Redding came on August 1, 1908, when the
sudden and shocking news was received of the drowning of his nephew,
Samuel E. Moffett, in the surf of the Jersey shore. Moffett was his
nearest male relative, and a man of fine intellect and talents. He was
superior in those qualities which men love--he was large-minded and
large-hearted, and of noble ideals. With much of the same sense of humor
which had made his uncle's fame, he had what was really an abnormal
faculty of acquiring and retaining encyclopedic data. Once as a child he
had visited Hartford when Clemens was laboring over his history game. The
boy was much interested, and asked permission to help. His uncle
willingly consented, and referred him to the library for his facts. But
he did not need to consult the books; he already had English history
stored away, and knew where to find every detail of it. At the time of
his death Moffett held an important editorial position on Collier's
Weekly.

Clemens was fond and proud of his nephew. Returning from the funeral, he
was much depressed, and a day or two later became really ill. He was in
bed for a few days, resting, he said, after the intense heat of the
journey. Then he was about again and proposed billiards as a diversion.
We were all alone one very still, warm August afternoon playing, when he
suddenly said:

"I feel a little dizzy; I will sit down a moment."

I brought him a glass of water and he seemed to recover, but when he rose
and started to play I thought he had a dazed look. He said:

"I have lost my memory. I don't know which is my ball. I don't know
what game we are playing."

But immediately this condition passed, and we thought little of it,
considering it merely a phase of biliousness due to his recent journey. I
have been told since, by eminent practitioners, that it was the first
indication of a more serious malady.

He became apparently quite himself again and showed his usual vigor-light
of step and movement, able to skip up and down stairs as heretofore. In
a letter to Mrs. Crane, August 12th, he spoke of recent happenings:

    DEAR AUNT SUE,--It was a most moving, a most heartbreaking sight,
    the spectacle of that stunned & crushed & inconsolable family. I
    came back here in bad shape, & had a bilious collapse, but I am all
    right again, though the doctor from New York has given peremptory
    orders that I am not to stir from here before frost. O fortunate
    Sam Moffett! fortunate Livy Clemens! doubly fortunate Susy! Those
    swords go through & through my heart, but there is never a moment
    that I am not glad, for the sake of the dead, that they have
    escaped.

    How Livy would love this place! How her very soul would steep
    itself thankfully in this peace, this tranquillity, this deep
    stillness, this dreamy expanse of woodsy hill & valley! You must
    come, Aunt Sue, & stay with us a real good visit. Since June 26 we
    have had 21 guests, & they have all liked it and said they would
    come again.

To Howells, on the same day, he wrote:

    Won't you & Mrs. Howells & Mildred come & give us as many days as
    you can spare & examine John's triumph? It is the most satisfactory
    house I am acquainted with, & the most satisfactorily situated . .
    . . I have dismissed my stenographer, & have entered upon a
    holiday whose other end is the cemetery.




CCLXXII

STORMFIELD ADVENTURES

Clemens had fully decided, by this time, to live the year round in the
retirement at Stormfield, and the house at 21 Fifth Avenue was being
dismantled. He had also, as he said, given up his dictations for the
time, at least, after continuing them, with more or less regularity, for
a period of two and a half years, during which he had piled up about half
a million words of comment and reminiscence. His general idea had been
to add portions of this matter to his earlier books as the copyrights
expired, to give them new life and interest, and he felt that he had
plenty now for any such purpose.

He gave his time mainly to his guests, his billiards, and his reading,
though of course he could not keep from writing on this subject and that
as the fancy moved him, and a drawer in one of his dressers began to
accumulate fresh though usually fragmentary manuscripts. . . He read the
daily paper, but he no longer took the keen, restless interest in public
affairs. New York politics did not concern him any more, and national
politics not much. When the Evening Post wrote him concerning the
advisability of renominating Governor Hughes he replied:

    If you had asked me two months ago my answer would have been prompt
    & loud & strong: yes, I want Governor Hughes renominated. But it is
    too late, & my mouth is closed. I have become a citizen & taxpayer
    of Connecticut, & could not now, without impertinence, meddle in
    matters which are none of my business. I could not do it with
    impertinence without trespassing on the monopoly of another.

Howells speaks of Mark Twain's "absolute content" with his new home, and
these are the proper words' to express it. He was like a storm-beaten
ship that had drifted at last into a serene South Sea haven.

The days began and ended in tranquillity. There were no special morning
regulations: One could have his breakfast at any time and at almost any
place. He could have it in bed if he liked, or in the loggia or
livingroom, or billiard-room. He might even have it in the diningroom,
or on the terrace, just outside. Guests--there were usually guests
--might suit their convenience in this matter--also as to the forenoons.
The afternoon brought games--that is, billiards, provided the guest knew
billiards, otherwise hearts. Those two games were his safety-valves, and
while there were no printed requirements relating to them the unwritten
code of Stormfield provided that guests, of whatever age or previous
faith, should engage in one or both of these diversions.

Clemens, who usually spent his forenoon in bed with his reading and his
letters, came to the green table of skill and chance eager for the onset;
if the fates were kindly, he approved of them openly. If not--well, the
fates were old enough to know better, and, as heretofore, had to take the
consequences. Sometimes, when the weather was fine and there were no
games (this was likely to be on Sunday afternoons), there were drives
among the hills and along the Saugatuck through the Bedding Glen.

The cat was always "purring on the hearth" at Stormfield--several cats
--for Mark Twain's fondness for this clean, intelligent domestic animal
remained, to the end, one of his happiest characteristics. There were
never too many cats at Stormfield, and the "hearth" included the entire
house, even the billiard-table. When, as was likely to happen at any
time during the game, the kittens Sinbad, or Danbury, or Billiards would
decide to hop up and play with the balls, or sit in the pockets and grab
at them as they went by, the game simply added this element of chance,
and the uninvited player was not disturbed. The cats really owned
Stormfield; any one could tell that from their deportment. Mark Twain
held the title deeds; but it was Danbury and Sinbad and the others that
possessed the premises. They occupied any portion of the house or its
furnishings at will, and they never failed to attract attention. Mark
Twain might be preoccupied and indifferent to the comings and goings of
other members of the household; but no matter what he was doing, let
Danbury appear in the offing and he was observed and greeted with due
deference, and complimented and made comfortable. Clemens would arise
from the table and carry certain choice food out on the terrace to
Tammany, and be satisfied with almost no acknowledgment by way of
appreciation. One could not imagine any home of Mark Twain where the
cats were not supreme. In the evening, as at 21 Fifth Avenue, there was
music--the stately measures of the orchestrelle--while Mark Twain smoked
and mingled unusual speculation with long, long backward dreams.

It was three months from the day of arrival in Redding that some guests
came to Stormfield without invitation--two burglars, who were carrying
off some bundles of silver when they were discovered. Claude, the
butler, fired a pistol after them to hasten their departure, and Clemens,
wakened by the shots, thought the family was opening champagne and went
to sleep again.

It was far in the night; but neighbor H. A. Lounsbury and Deputy-Sheriff
Banks were notified, and by morning the thieves were captured, though
only after a pretty desperate encounter, during which the officer
received a bullet-wound. Lounsbury and a Stormfield guest had tracked
them in the dark with a lantern to Bethel, a distance of some seven
miles. The thieves, also their pursuers, had boarded the train there.
Sheriff Banks was waiting at the West Redding station when the train came
down, and there the capture was made. It was a remarkably prompt and
shrewd piece of work. Clemens gave credit for its success chiefly to
Lounsbury, whose talents in many fields always impressed him. The
thieves were taken to the Redding Town Hall for a preliminary healing.
Subsequently they received severe sentences.

Clemens tacked this notice on his front door:

                       NOTICE

                   TO THE NEXT BURGLAR

    There is nothing but plated ware in this house now and henceforth.

    You will find it in that brass thing in the dining-room over in the
    corner by the basket of kittens.

    If you want the basket put the kittens in the brass thing. Do not
    make a noise--it disturbs the family.

    You will find rubbers in the front hall by that thing which has the
    umbrellas in it, chiffonnier, I think they call it, or pergola, or
    something like that.

    Please close the door when you go away!

                  Very truly yours,
                                S. L. CLEMENS.




CCLXXIII

STORMFIELD PHILOSOPHIES

Now came the tranquil days of the Connecticut autumn. The change of the
landscape colors was a constant delight to Mark Twain. There were
several large windows in his room, and he called them his
picture-gallery. The window-panes were small, and each formed a separate
picture of its own that was changing almost hourly. The red tones that
began to run through the foliage; the red berry bushes; the fading grass,
and the little touches of sparkling frost that came every now and then at
early morning; the background of distant blue hills and changing
skies-these things gave his gallery a multitude of variation that no
art-museums could furnish. He loved it all, and he loved to walk out in
it, pacing up and down the terrace, or the long path that led to the
pergola at the foot of a natural garden. If a friend came, he was
willing to walk much farther; and we often descended the hill in one
direction or another, though usually going toward the "gorge," a romantic
spot where a clear brook found its way through a deep and rather
dangerous-looking chasm. Once he was persuaded to descend into this
fairy-like place, for it was well worth exploring; but his footing was no
longer sure and he did not go far.

He liked better to sit on the grass-grown, rocky arch above and look down
into it, and let his talk follow his mood. He liked to contemplate the
geology of his surroundings, the record of the ageless periods of
construction required to build the world. The marvels of science always
appealed to him. He reveled in the thought of the almost limitless
stretches of time, the millions upon millions of years that had been
required for this stratum and that--he liked to amaze himself with the
sounding figures. I remember him expressing a wish to see the Grand
Canon of Arizona, where, on perpendicular walls six thousand feet high,
the long story of geological creation is written. I had stopped there
during my Western trip of the previous year, and I told him something of
its wonders. I urged him to see them for himself, offering to go with
him. He said:

"I should enjoy that; but the railroad journey is so far and I should
have no peace. The papers would get hold of it, and I would have to make
speeches and be interviewed, and I never want to do any of those things
again."

I suggested that the railroads would probably be glad to place a private
car at his service, so that he might travel in comfort; but he shook his
head.

"That would only make me more conspicuous."

"How about a disguise?"

"Yes," he said, "I might put on a red wig and false whiskers and change
my name, but I couldn't disguise my drawling speech and they'd find me
out."

It was amusing, but it was rather sad, too. His fame had deprived him of
valued privileges.

He talked of many things during these little excursions. Once he told
how he had successively advised his nephew, Moffett, in the matter of
obtaining a desirable position. Moffett had wanted to become a reporter.
Clemens devised a characteristic scheme. He said:

"I will get you a place on any newspaper you may select if you promise
faithfully to follow out my instructions."

The applicant agreed, eagerly enough. Clemens said:

"Go to the newspaper of your choice. Say that you are idle and want
work, that you are pining for work--longing for it, and that you ask no
wages, and will support yourself. All that you ask is work. That you
will do anything, sweep, fill the inkstands, mucilage-bottles, run
errands, and be generally useful. You must never ask for wages. You
must wait until the offer of wages comes to you. You must work just as
faithfully and just as eagerly as if you were being paid for it. Then
see what happens."

The scheme had worked perfectly. Young Moffett had followed his
instructions to the letter. By and by he attracted attention. He was
employed in a variety of ways that earned him the gratitude and the
confidence of the office. In obedience to further instructions, he began
to make short, brief, unadorned notices of small news matters that came
under his eye and laid them on the city editor's desk. No pay was asked;
none was expected. Occasionally one of the items was used. Then, of
course, it happened, as it must sooner or later at a busy time, that he
was given a small news assignment. There was no trouble about his
progress after that. He had won the confidence of the management and
shown that he was not afraid to work.

The plan had been variously tried since, Clemens said, and he could not
remember any case in which it had failed. The idea may have grown out of
his own pilot apprenticeship on the river, when cub pilots not only
received no salary, but paid for the privilege of learning.

Clemens discussed public matters less often than formerly, but they were
not altogether out of his mind. He thought our republic was in a fair
way to become a monarchy--that the signs were already evident. He
referred to the letter which he had written so long ago in Boston, with
its amusing fancy of the Archbishop of Dublin and his Grace of Ponkapog,
and declared that, after all, it contained something of prophecy.--[See
chap. xcvii; also Appendix M.]--He would not live to see the actual
monarchy, he said, but it was coming.

"I'm not expecting it in my time nor in my children's time, though it may
be sooner than we think. There are two special reasons for it and one
condition. The first reason is, that it is in the nature of man to want
a definite something to love, honor, reverently look up to and obey; a
God and King, for example. The second reason is, that while little
republics have lasted long, protected by their poverty and
insignificance, great ones have not. And the condition is, vast power
and wealth, which breed commercial and political corruptions, and incite
public favorites to dangerous ambitions."

He repeated what I had heard him say before, that in one sense we already
had a monarchy; that is to say, a ruling public and political aristocracy
which could create a Presidential succession. He did not say these
things bitterly now, but reflectively and rather indifferently.

He was inclined to speak unhopefully of the international plans for
universal peace, which were being agitated rather persistently.

"The gospel of peace," he said, "is always making a deal of noise, always
rejoicing in its progress but always neglecting to furnish statistics.
There are no peaceful nations now. All Christendom is a soldier-camp.
The poor have been taxed in some nations to the starvation point to
support the giant armaments which Christian governments have built up,
each to protect itself from the rest of the Christian brotherhood, and
incidentally to snatch any scrap of real estate left exposed by a weaker
owner. King Leopold II. of Belgium, the most intensely Christian
monarch, except Alexander VI., that has escaped hell thus far, has stolen
an entire kingdom in Africa, and in fourteen years of Christian endeavor
there has reduced the population from thirty millions to fifteen by
murder and mutilation and overwork, confiscating the labor of the
helpless natives, and giving them nothing in return but salvation and a
home in heaven, furnished at the last moment by the Christian priest.

"Within the last generation each Christian power has turned the bulk of
its attention to finding out newer and still newer and more and more
effective ways of killing Christians, and, incidentally, a pagan now and
then; and the surest way to get rich quickly in Christ's earthly kingdom
is to invent a kind of gun that can kill more Christians at one shot than
any other existing kind. All the Christian nations are at it. The more
advanced they are, the bigger and more destructive engines of war they
create."

Once, speaking of battles great and small, and how important even a small
battle must seem to a soldier who had fought in no other, he said:

"To him it is a mighty achievement, an achievement with a big A, when to
a wax-worn veteran it would be a mere incident. For instance, to the
soldier of one battle, San Juan Hill was an Achievement with an A as big
as the Pyramids of Cheops; whereas, if Napoleon had fought it, he would
have set it down on his cuff at the time to keep from forgetting it had
happened. But that is all natural and human enough. We are all like
that."

The curiosities and absurdities of religious superstitions never failed
to furnish him with themes more or less amusing. I remember one Sunday,
when he walked down to have luncheon at my house, he sat under the shade
and fell to talking of Herod's slaughter of the innocents, which he said
could not have happened.

"Tacitus makes no mention of it," he said, "and he would hardly have
overlooked a sweeping order like that, issued by a petty ruler like
Herod. Just consider a little king of a corner of the Roman Empire
ordering the slaughter of the first-born of a lot of Roman subjects. Why,
the Emperor would have reached out that long arm of his and dismissed
Herod. That tradition is probably about as authentic as those connected
with a number of old bridges in Europe which are said to have been built
by Satan. The inhabitants used to go to Satan to build bridges for them,
promising him the soul of the first one that crossed the bridge; then,
when Satan had the bridge done, they would send over a rooster or a
jackass--a cheap jackass; that was for Satan, and of course they could
fool him that way every time. Satan must have been pretty simple, even
according to the New Testament, or he wouldn't have led Christ up on a
high mountain and offered him the world if he would fall down and worship
him. That was a manifestly absurd proposition, because Christ, as the
Son of God, already owned the world; and, besides, what Satan showed him
was only a few rocky acres of Palestine. It is just as if some one
should try to buy Rockefeller, the owner of all the Standard Oil Company,
with a gallon of kerosene."

He often spoke of the unseen forces of creation, the immutable laws that
hold the planet in exact course and bring the years and the seasons
always exactly on schedule time. "The Great Law" was a phrase often on
his lips. The exquisite foliage, the cloud shapes, the varieties of
color everywhere: these were for him outward manifestations of the Great
Law, whose principle I understood to be unity--exact relations throughout
all nature; and in this I failed to find any suggestion of pessimism, but
only of justice. Once he wrote on a card for preservation:

    From everlasting to everlasting, this is the law: the sum of wrong &
    misery shall always keep exact step with the sum of human
    blessedness.

    No "civilization," no "advance," has ever modified these proportions
    by even the shadow of a shade, nor ever can, while our race endures.




CCLXIV

CITIZEN AND FARMER

The procession of guests at Stormfield continued pretty steadily. Clemens
kept a book in which visitors set down their names and the dates of
arrival and departure, and when they failed to attend to these matters he
diligently did it himself after they were gone.

Members of the Harper Company came up with their wives; "angel-fish" swam
in and out of the aquarium; Bermuda friends came to see the new home;
Robert Collier, the publisher, and his wife--"Mrs. Sally," as Clemens
liked to call her--paid their visits; Lord Northcliffe, who was visiting
America, came with Colonel Harvey, and was so impressed with the
architecture of Stormfield that he adopted its plans for a country-place
he was about to build in Newfoundland. Helen Keller, with Mr. and Mrs.
Macy, came up for a week-end visit. Mrs. Crane came over from Elmira;
and, behold! one day came the long-ago sweetheart of his childhood,
little Laura Hawkins--Laura Frazer now, widowed and in the seventies,
with a granddaughter already a young lady quite grown up.

That Mark Twain was not wearying of the new conditions we may gather from
a letter written to Mrs. Rogers in October:

    I've grown young in these months of dissipation here. And I have
    left off drinking--it isn't necessary now. Society & theology are
    sufficient for me.

To Helen Allen, a Bermuda "Angel-Fish," he wrote:

    We have good times here in this soundless solitude on the hilltop.
    The moment I saw the house I was glad I built it, & now I am gladder
    & gladder all the time. I was not dreaming of living here except in
    the summer-time--that was before I saw this region & the house, you
    see--but that is all changed now; I shall stay here winter & summer
    both & not go back to New York at all. My child, it's as tranquil &
    contenting as Bermuda. You will be very welcome here, dear.

He interested himself in the affairs and in the people of Redding. Not
long after his arrival he had gathered in all the inhabitants of the
country-side, neighbors of every quality, for closer acquaintance, and
threw open to them for inspection every part of the new house. He
appointed Mrs. Lounsbury, whose acquaintance was very wide; a sort of
committee on reception, and stood at the entrance with her to welcome
each visitor in person.

It was a sort of gala day, and the rooms and the grounds were filled with
the visitors. In the dining-room there were generous refreshments.
Again, not long afterward, he issued a special invitation to all of
those-architects, builders, and workmen who had taken any part, however
great or small, in the building of his home. Mr. and Mrs. Littleton were
visiting Stormfield at this time, and both Clemens and Littleton spoke to
these assembled guests from the terrace, and made them feel that their
efforts had been worth while.

Presently the idea developed to establish something that would be of
benefit to his neighbors, especially to those who did not have access to
much reading-matter. He had been for years flooded with books by authors
and publishers, and there was a heavy surplus at his home in the city.
When these began to arrive he had a large number of volumes set aside as
the nucleus of a public library. An unused chapel not far away--it could
be seen from one of his windows--was obtained for the purpose; officers
were elected; a librarian was appointed, and so the Mark Twain Library of
Redding was duly established. Clemens himself was elected its first
president, with the resident physician, Dr. Ernest H. Smith,
vice-president, and another resident, William E. Grumman, librarian. On
the afternoon of its opening the president made a brief address. He
said:

    I am here to speak a few instructive words to my fellow-farmers.
    I suppose you are all farmers: I am going to put in a crop next
    year, when I have been here long enough and know how. I couldn't
    make a turnip stay on a tree now after I had grown it. I like to
    talk. It would take more than the Redding air to make me keep
    still, and I like to instruct people. It's noble to be good, and
    it's nobler to teach others to be good, and less trouble. I am glad
    to help this library. We get our morals from books. I didn't get
    mine from books, but I know that morals do come from books
    --theoretically at least. Mr. Beard or Mr. Adams will give some
    land, and by and by we are going to have a building of our own.

This statement was news to both Mr. Beard and Mr. Adams and an
inspiration of the moment; but Mr. Theodore Adams, who owned a most
desirable site, did in fact promptly resolve to donate it for library
purposes. Clemens continued:

    I am going to help build that library with contributions from my
    visitors. Every male guest who comes to my house will have to
    contribute a dollar or go away without his baggage.

    --[A characteristic notice to guests requiring them to contribute a
    dollar to the Library Building Fund was later placed on the
    billiard-room mantel at Stormfield with good results.]--If those
    burglars that broke into my house recently had done that they would
    have been happier now, or if they'd have broken into this library
    they would have read a few books and led a better life. Now they
    are in jail, and if they keep on they will go to Congress. When a
    person starts downhill you can never tell where he's going to stop.
    I am sorry for those burglars. They got nothing that they wanted
    and scared away most of my servants. Now we are putting in a
    burglar-alarm instead of a dog. Some advised the dog, but it costs
    even more to entertain a dog than a burglar. I am having the ground
    electrified, so that for a mile around any one who puts his foot
    across the line sets off an alarm that will be heard in Europe. Now
    I will introduce the real president to you, a man whom you know
    already--Dr. Smith.

So a new and important benefit was conferred upon the community, and
there was a feeling that Redding, besides having a literary colony, was
to be literary in fact.

It might have been mentioned earlier that Redding already had literary
associations when Mark Twain arrived. As far back as Revolutionary days
Joel Barlow, a poet of distinction, and once Minister to France, had been
a resident of Redding, and there were still Barlow descendants in the
township.

William Edgar Grumman, the librarian, had written the story of Redding's
share in the Revolutionary War--no small share, for Gen. Israel Putnam's
army had been quartered there during at least one long, trying winter.
Charles Burr Todd, of one of the oldest Redding families, himself--still
a resident, was also the author of a Redding history.

Of literary folk not native to Redding, Dora Reed Goodale and her sister
Elaine, the wife of Dr. Charles A. Eastman, had, long been residents of
Redding Center; Jeanette L. Gilder and Ida M. Tarbell had summer homes on
Redding Ridge; Dan Beard, as already mentioned, owned a place near the
banks of the Saugatuck, while Kate V. St. Maur, also two of Nathaniel
Hawthorne's granddaughters had recently located adjoining the Stormfield
lands. By which it will be seen that Redding was in no way unsuitable as
a home for Mark Twain.




CCLXV

A MANTEL AND A BABY ELEPHANT

Mark Twain was the receiver of two notable presents that year. The first
of these, a mantel from Hawaii, presented to him by the Hawaiian
Promotion Committee, was set in place in the billiard-room on the morning
of his seventy-third birthday. This committee had written, proposing to
build for his new home either a mantel or a chair, as he might prefer,
the same to be carved from the native woods. Clemens decided on a
billiard-room mantel, and John Howells forwarded the proper measurements.
So, in due time, the mantel arrived, a beautiful piece of work and in
fine condition, with the Hawaiian word, "Aloha," one of the sweetest
forms of greeting in any tongue, carved as its central ornament.

To the donors of the gift Clemens wrote:

    The beautiful mantel was put in its place an hour ago, & its
    friendly "Aloha" was the first uttered greeting received on my 73d
    birthday. It is rich in color, rich in quality, & rich in
    decoration; therefore it exactly harmonized with the taste for such
    things which was born in me & which I have seldom been able to
    indulge to my content. It will be a great pleasure to me, daily
    renewed, to have under my eye this lovely reminder of the loveliest
    fleet of islands that lies anchored in any ocean, & I beg to thank
    the committee for providing me that pleasure.

To F. N. Otremba, who had carved the mantel, he sent this word:

    I am grateful to you for the valued compliment to me in the labor of
    heart and hand and brain which you have put upon it. It is worthy
    of the choicest place in the house and it has it.

It was the second beautiful mantel in Stormfield--the Hartford library
mantel, removed when that house was sold, having been installed in the
Stormfield living-room.

Altogether the seventy-third birthday was a pleasant one. Clemens, in
the morning, drove down to see the library lot which Mr. Theodore Adams
had presented, and the rest of the day there were fine, close billiard
games, during which he was in the gentlest and happiest moods. He
recalled the games of two years before, and as we stopped playing I said:

"I hope a year from now we shall be here, still playing the great game."

And he answered, as then:

"Yes, it is a great game--the best game on earth." And he held out his
hand and thanked me for coming, as he never failed to do when we parted,
though it always hurt me a little, for the debt was so largely mine.

Mark Twain's second present came at Christmas-time. About ten days
earlier, a letter came from Robert J. Collier, saying that he had bought
a baby elephant which he intended to present to Mark Twain as a Christmas
gift. He added that it would be sent as soon as he could get a car for
it, and the loan of a keeper from Barnum & Bailey's headquarters at
Bridgeport.

The news created a disturbance in Stormfield. One could not refuse,
discourteously and abruptly, a costly present like that; but it seemed a
disaster to accept it. An elephant would require a roomy and warm place,
also a variety of attention which Stormfield was not prepared to supply.
The telephone was set going and certain timid excuses were offered by the
secretary. There was no good place to put an elephant in Stormfield, but
Mr. Collier said, quite confidently:

"Oh, put him in the garage."

"But there's no heat in the garage."

"Well, put him in the loggia, then. That's closed in, isn't it, for the
winter? Plenty of sunlight--just the place for a young elephant."

"But we play cards in the loggia. We use it for a sort of sun-parlor."

"But that wouldn't matter. He's a kindly, playful little thing. He'll
be just like a kitten. I'll send the man up to look over the place and
tell you just how to take care of him, and I'll send up several bales of
hay in advance. It isn't a large elephant, you know: just a little one
--a regular plaything."

There was nothing further to be done; only to wait and dread until the
Christmas present's arrival.

A few days before Christmas ten bales of hay arrived and several bushels
of carrots. This store of provender aroused no enthusiasm at Stormfield.
It would seem there was no escape now.

On Christmas morning Mr. Lounsbury telephoned up that there was a man at
the station who said he was an elephant-trainer from Barnum & Bailey's,
sent by Mr. Collier to look at the elephant's quarters and get him
settled when he should arrive. Orders were given to bring the man over.
The day of doom was at hand.

But Lounsbury's detective instinct came once more into play. He had seen
a good many elephant-trainers at Bridgeport, and he thought this one had
a doubtful look.

"Where is the elephant?" he asked, as they drove along.

"He will arrive at noon."

"Where are you going to put him?"

"In the loggia."

"How big is he?"

"About the size of a cow."

"How long have you been with Barnum and Bailey?"

"Six years."

"Then you must know some friends of mine" (naming two that had no
existence until that moment).

"Oh yes, indeed. I know them well."

Lounsbury didn't say any more just then, but he had a feeling that
perhaps the dread at Stormfield had grown unnecessarily large. Something
told him that this man seemed rather more like a butler, or a valet, than
an elephant-trainer. They drove to Stormfield, and the trainer looked
over the place. It would do perfectly, he said. He gave a few
instructions as to the care of this new household feature, and was driven
back to the station to bring it.

Lounsbury came back by and by, bringing the elephant but not the trainer.
It didn't need a trainer. It was a beautiful specimen, with soft, smooth
coat and handsome trappings, perfectly quiet, well-behaved and small
--suited to the loggia, as Collier had said--for it was only two feet
long and beautifully made of cloth and cotton--one of the forest toy
elephants ever seen anywhere.

It was a good joke, such as Mark Twain loved--a carefully prepared,
harmless bit of foolery. He wrote Robert Collier, threatening him with
all sorts of revenge, declaring that the elephant was devastating
Stormfield.

"To send an elephant in a trance, under pretense that it was dead or
stuffed!" he said. "The animal came to life, as you knew it would, and
began to observe Christmas, and we now have no furniture left and no
servants and no visitors, no friends, no photographs, no burglars
--nothing but the elephant. Be kind, be merciful, be generous; take him
away and send us what is left of the earthquake."

Collier wrote that he thought it unkind of him to look a gift-elephant in
the trunk. And with such chaffing and gaiety the year came to an end.




CCLXXVI

SHAKESPEARE-BACON TALK

When the bad weather came there was not much company at Stormfield, and I
went up regularly each afternoon, for it was lonely on that bleak hill,
and after his forenoon of reading or writing he craved diversion. My own
home was a little more than a half mile away, and I enjoyed the walk,
whatever the weather. I usually managed to arrive about three o'clock.
He would watch from his high windows until he saw me raise the hilltop,
and he would be at the door when I arrived, so that there might be no
delay in getting at the games. Or, if it happened that he wished to show
me something in his room, I would hear his rich voice sounding down the
stair. Once, when I arrived, I heard him calling, and going up I found
him highly pleased with the arrangement of two pictures on a chair,
placed so that the glasses of them reflected the sunlight on the ceiling.
He said:

"They seem to catch the reflection of the sky and the winter colors.
Sometimes the hues are wonderfully iridescent."

He pointed to a bunch of wild red berries on the mantel with the sun on
them.

"How beautifully they light up!" he said; "some of them in the sunlight,
some still in the shadow."

He walked to the window and stood looking out on the somber fields.

"The lights and colors are always changing there," he said. "I never
tire of it."

To see him then so full of the interest and delight of the moment, one
might easily believe he had never known tragedy and shipwreck. More than
any one I ever knew, he lived in the present. Most of us are either
dreaming of the past or anticipating the future--forever beating the
dirge of yesterday or the tattoo of to-morrow. Mark Twain's step was
timed to the march of the moment. There were days when he recalled the
past and grieved over it, and when he speculated concerning the future;
but his greater interest was always of the now, and of the particular
locality where he found it. The thing which caught his fancy, however
slight or however important, possessed him fully for the time, even if
never afterward.

He was especially interested that winter in the Shakespeare-Bacon
problem. He had long been unable to believe that the actor-manager from
Stratford had written those great plays, and now a book just published,
'The Shakespeare Problem Restated', by George Greenwood, and another one
in press, 'Some Characteristic Signatures of Francis Bacon', by William
Stone Booth, had added the last touch of conviction that Francis Bacon,
and Bacon only, had written the Shakespeare dramas. I was ardently
opposed to this idea. The romance of the boy, Will Shakespeare, who had
come up to London and began, by holding horses outside of the theater,
and ended by winning the proudest place in the world of letters, was
something I did not wish to let perish. I produced all the stock
testimony--Ben Jonson's sonnet, the internal evidence of the plays
themselves, the actors who had published them--but he refused to accept
any of it. He declared that there was not a single proof to show that
Shakespeare had written one of them.

"Is there any evidence that he didn't?" I asked.

"There's evidence that he couldn't," he said. "It required a man with
the fullest legal equipment to have written them. When you have read
Greenwood's book you will see how untenable is any argument for
Shakespeare's authorship."

I was willing to concede something, and offered a compromise.

"Perhaps," I said, "Shakespeare was the Belasoo of that day--the
managerial genius, unable to write plays himself, but with the supreme
gift of making effective drama from the plays of others. In that case it
is not unlikely that the plays would be known as Shakespeare's. Even in
this day John Luther Long's 'Madam Butterfly' is sometimes called
Belasco's play; though it is doubtful if Belasco ever wrote a line of
it."

He considered this view, but not very favorably. The Booth book was at
this time a secret, and he had not told me anything concerning it; but he
had it in his mind when he said, with an air of the greatest conviction:

"I know that Shakespeare did not write those plays, and I have reason to
believe he did not touch the text in any way."

"How can you be so positive?" I asked.

He replied:

"I have private knowledge from a source that cannot be questioned."

I now suspected that he was joking, and asked if he had been consulting a
spiritual medium; but he was clearly in earnest.

"It is the great discovery of the age," he said, quite seriously. "The
world will soon ring with it. I wish I could tell you about it, but I
have passed my word. You will not have long to wait."

I was going to sail for the Mediterranean in February, and I asked if it
would be likely that I would know this great secret before I sailed. He
thought not; but he said that more than likely the startling news would
be given to the world while I was on the water, and it might come to me
on the ship by wireless. I confess I was amazed and intensely curious by
this time. I conjectured the discovery of some document--some Bacon or
Shakespeare private paper which dispelled all the mystery of the
authorship. I hinted that he might write me a letter which I could open
on the ship; but he was firm in his refusal. He had passed his word, he
repeated, and the news might not be given out as soon as that; but he
assured me more than once that wherever I might be, in whatever remote
locality, it would come by cable, and the world would quake with it. I
was tempted to give up my trip, to be with him at Stormfield at the time
of the upheaval.

Naturally the Shakespeare theme was uppermost during the remaining days
that we were together. He had engaged another stenographer, and was now
dictating, forenoons, his own views on the subject--views coordinated
with those of Mr. Greenwood, whom he liberally quoted, but embellished
and decorated in his own gay manner. These were chapters for his
autobiography, he said, and I think he had then no intention of making a
book of them. I could not quite see why he should take all this
argumentary trouble if he had, as he said, positive evidence that Bacon,
and not Shakespeare, had written the plays. I thought the whole matter
very curious.

The Shakespeare interest had diverging by-paths. One evening, when we
were alone at dinner, he said:

"There is only one other illustrious man in history about whom there is
so little known," and he added, "Jesus Christ."

He reviewed the statements of the Gospels concerning Christ, though he
declared them to be mainly traditional and of no value. I agreed that
they contained confusing statements, and inflicted more or less with
justice and reason; but I said I thought there was truth in them, too.

"Why do you think so?" he asked.

"Because they contain matters that are self-evident--things eternally and
essentially just."

"Then you make your own Bible?"

"Yes, from those materials combined with human reason."

"Then it does not matter where the truth, as you call it, comes from?"

I admitted that the source did not matter; that truth from Shakespeare,
Epictetus, or Aristotle was quite as valuable as from the Scriptures. We
were on common ground now. He mentioned Marcus Aurelius, the Stoics, and
their blameless lives. I, still pursuing the thought of Jesus, asked:

"Do you not think it strange that in that day when Christ came, admitting
that there was a Christ, such a character could have come at all--in the
time of the Pharisees and the Sadducees, when all was ceremony and
unbelief?"

"I remember," he said, "the Sadducees didn't believe in hell. He brought
them one."

"Nor the resurrection. He brought them that, also."

He did not admit that there had been a Christ with the character and
mission related by the Gospels.

"It is all a myth," he said. "There have been Saviours in every age of
the world. It is all just a fairy tale, like the idea of Santa Claus."

"But," I argued, "even the spirit of Christmas is real when it is
genuine. Suppose that we admit there was no physical Saviour--that it is
only an idea--a spiritual embodiment which humanity has made for itself
and is willing to improve upon as its own spirituality improves, wouldn't
that make it worthy?"

"But then the fairy story of the atonement dissolves, and with it
crumbles the very foundations of any established church. You can create
your own Testament, your own Scripture, and your own Christ, but you've
got to give up your atonement."

"As related to the crucifixion, yes, and good riddance to it; but the
death of the old order and the growth of spirituality comes to a sort of
atonement, doesn't it?"

He said:

"A conclusion like that has about as much to do with the Gospels and
Christianity as Shakespeare had to do with Bacon's plays. You are
preaching a doctrine that would have sent a man to the stake a few
centuries ago. I have preached that in my own Gospel."

I remembered then, and realized that, by my own clumsy ladder, I had
merely mounted from dogma, and superstition to his platform of training
the ideals to a higher contentment of soul.




CCLXXVII

"IS SHAKESPEARE DEAD?"

I set out on my long journey with much reluctance. However, a series of
guests with various diversions had been planned, and it seemed a good
time to go. Clemens gave me letters of introduction, and bade me
Godspeed. It would be near the end of April before I should see him
again.

Now and then on the ship, and in the course of my travels, I remembered
the great news I was to hear concerning Shakespeare. In Cairo, at
Shepheard's, I looked eagerly through English newspapers, expecting any
moment to come upon great head-lines; but I was always disappointed. Even
on the return voyage there was no one I could find who had heard any
particular Shakespeare news.

Arriving in New York, I found that Clemens himself had published his
Shakespeare dictations in a little volume of his own, entitled, 'Is
Shakespeare Dead?' The title certainly suggested spiritistic matters,
and I got a volume at Harpers', and read it going up on the train, hoping
to find somewhere in it a solution of the great mystery. But it was only
matter I had already known; the secret was still unrevealed.

At Redding I lost not much time in getting up to Stormfield. There had
been changes in my absence. Clara Clemens had returned from her travels,
and Jean, whose health seemed improved, was coming home to be her
father's secretary. He was greatly pleased with these things, and
declared he was going to have a home once more with his children about
him.

He was quite alone that day, and we walked up and down the great
living-room for an hour, perhaps, while he discussed his new plans. For
one thing, he had incorporated his pen-name, Mark Twain, in order that
the protection of his copyrights and the conduct of his literary business
in general should not require his personal attention. He seemed to find
a relief in this, as he always did in dismissing any kind of
responsibility. When we went in for billiards I spoke of his book, which
I had read on the way up, and of the great Shakespearian secret which was
to astonish the world. Then he told me that the matter had been delayed,
but that he was no longer required to suppress it; that the revelation
was in the form of a book--a book which revealed conclusively to any one
who would take the trouble to follow the directions that the acrostic
name of Francis Bacon in a great variety of forms ran through many
--probably through all of the so-called Shakespeare plays. He said it
was far and away beyond anything of the kind ever published; that
Ignatius Donnelly and others had merely glimpsed the truth, but that the
author of this book, William Stone Booth, had demonstrated, beyond any
doubt or question, that the Bacon signatures were there. The book would
be issued in a few days, he said. He had seen a set of proofs of it, and
while it had not been published in the best way to clearly demonstrate
its great revelation, it must settle the matter with every reasoning
mind. He confessed that his faculties had been more or less defeated in,
attempting to follow the ciphers, and he complained bitterly that the
evidence had not been set forth so that he who merely skims a book might
grasp it.

He had failed on the acrostics at first; but more recently he had
understood the rule, and had been able to work out several Bacon
signatures. He complimented me by saying that he felt sure that when the
book came I would have no trouble with it.

Without going further with this matter, I may say here that the book
arrived presently, and between us we did work out a considerable number
of the claimed acrostics by following the rules laid down. It was
certainly an interesting if not wholly convincing occupation, and it
would be a difficult task for any one to prove that the ciphers are not
there. Just why this pretentious volume created so little agitation it
would be hard to say. Certainly it did not cause any great upheaval in
the literary world, and the name of William Shakespeare still continues
to be printed on the title-page of those marvelous dramas so long
associated with his name.

Mark Twain's own book on the subject--'Is Shakespeare Dead?'--found a
wide acceptance, and probably convinced as many readers. It contained no
new arguments; but it gave a convincing touch to the old ones, and it was
certainly readable.--[Mark Twain had the fullest conviction as to the
Bacon authorship of the Shakespeare plays. One evening, with Mr. Edward
Loomis, we attended a fine performance of "Romeo and Juliet" given by
Sothern and Marlowe. At the close of one splendid scene he said, quite
earnestly, "That is about the best play that Lord Bacon ever wrote."]

Among the visitors who had come to Stormfield was Howells. Clemens had
called a meeting of the Human Race Club, but only Howells was able to
attend. We will let him tell of his visit:

    We got on very well without the absentees, after finding them in the
    wrong, as usual, and the visit was like those I used to have with
    him so many years before in Hartford, but there was not the old
    ferment of subjects. Many things had been discussed and put away
    for good, but we had our old fondness for nature and for each other,
    who were so differently parts of it. He showed his absolute content
    with his house, and that was the greater pleasure for me because it
    was my son who designed it. The architect had been so fortunate as
    to be able to plan it where a natural avenue of savins, the close-
    knit, slender, cypress-like cedars of New England, led away from the
    rear of the villa to the little level of a pergola, meant some day
    to be wreathed and roofed with vines. But in the early spring days
    all the landscape was in the beautiful nakedness of the Northern
    winter. It opened in the surpassing loveliness of wooded and
    meadowed uplands, under skies that were the first days blue, and the
    last gray over a rainy and then a snowy floor. We walked up and
    down, up and down, between the villa terrace and the pergola, and
    talked with the melancholy amusement, the sad tolerance of age for
    the sort of men and things that used to excite us or enrage us; now
    we were far past turbulence or anger. Once we took a walk together
    across the yellow pastures to a chasmal creek on his grounds, where
    the ice still knit the clayey banks together like crystal mosses;
    and the stream far down clashed through and over the stones and the
    shards of ice. Clemens pointed out the scenery he had bought to
    give himself elbowroom, and showed me the lot he was going to have
    me build on. The next day we came again with the geologist he had
    asked up to Stormfield to analyze its rocks. Truly he loved the
    place . . . .

    My visit at Stormfield came to an end with tender relucting on his
    part and on mine. Every morning before I dressed I heard him
    sounding my name through the house for the fun of it and I know for
    the fondness, and if I looked out of my door there he was in his
    long nightgown swaying up and down the corridor, and wagging his
    great white head like a boy that leaves his bed and comes out in the
    hope of frolic with some one. The last morning a soft sugar-snow
    had fallen and was falling, and I drove through it down to the
    station in the carriage which had been given him by his wife's
    father when they were first married, and had been kept all those
    intervening years in honorable retirement for this final use.--[This
    carriage--a finely built coup--had been presented to Mrs. Crane when
    the Hartford house was closed. When Stormfield was built she
    returned it to its original owner.]--Its springs had not grown
    yielding with time, it had rather the stiffness and severity of age;
    but for him it must have swung low like the sweet chariot of the
    negro "spiritual" which I heard him sing with such fervor when those
    wonderful hymns of the slaves began to make their way northward.

Howells's visit resulted in a new inspiration. Clemens started to write
him one night when he could not sleep, and had been reading the volume of
letters of James Russell Lowell. Then, next morning, he was seized with
the notion of writing a series of letters to such friends as Howells,
Twichell, and Rogers--letters not to be mailed, but to be laid away for
some future public. He wrote two of these immediately--to Howells and to
Twichell. The Howells letter (or letters, for it was really double) is
both pathetic and amusing. The first part ran:
                         3 in the morning, April 17, 1909.

    My pen has gone dry and the ink is out of reach. Howells, did you
    write me day-before-day-before yesterday or did I dream it? In my
    mind's eye I most vividly see your hand-write on a square blue
    envelope in the mail-pile. I have hunted the house over, but there
    is no such letter. Was it an illusion?

    I am reading Lowell's letters & smoking. I woke an hour ago & am
    reading to keep from wasting the time. On page 305, Vol. I, I have
    just margined a note:

    "Young friend! I like that! You ought to see him now."

    It seemed startlingly strange to hear a person call you young. It
    was a brick out of a blue sky, & knocked me groggy for a moment. Ah
    me, the pathos of it is that we were young then. And he--why, so
    was he, but he didn't know it. He didn't even know it 9 years
    later, when we saw him approaching and you warned me, saying:

    "Don't say anything about age--he has just turned 50 & thinks he is
    old, & broods over it."

    Well, Clara did sing! And you wrote her a dear letter.

    Time to go to sleep.

                     Yours ever,
                                MARK

The second letter, begun at 10 A.M., outlines the plan by which he is to
write on the subject uppermost in his mind without restraint, knowing
that the letter is not to be mailed.

    . . .The scheme furnishes a definite target for each letter, & you
    can choose the target that's going to be the most sympathetic for
    what you are hungering & thirsting to say at that particular moment.
    And you can talk with a quite unallowable frankness & freedom
    because you are not going to send the letter. When you are on fire
    with theology you'll not write it to Rogers, who wouldn't be an
    inspiration; you'll write it to Twichell, because it will make him
    writhe and squirm & break the furniture. When you are on fire with
    a good thing that's indecent you won't waste it on Twichell; you'll
    save it for Howells, who will love it. As he will never see it you
    can make it really indecenter than he could stand; & so no harm is
    done, yet a vast advantage is gained.

The letter was not finished, and the scheme perished there. The Twichell
letter concerned missionaries, and added nothing to what he had already
said on the subject.

He wrote no letter to Mr. Rogers--perhaps never wrote to him again.




CCLXXVIII

THE DEATH OF HENRY ROGERS

Clemens, a little before my return, had been on a trip to Norfolk,
Virginia, to attend the opening ceremonies of the Virginia Railway. He
had made a speech on that occasion, in which he had paid a public tribut

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