WeRead Powered by ReaderPub
Abroad with Mark Twain and Eugene Field cover

Abroad with Mark Twain and Eugene Field

Chapter 43: HIS PORTRAIT—A MIRROR
By Henry W. Fischer
Open in WeRead

About This Book

A travel-writer recounts his time with two well-known American humorists while they lived and circulated in European cities, presenting a series of anecdotal sketches and recollections. The pieces capture their conversation, mannerisms, and responses to social customs, language, royalty, art, and contemporary personalities; they mix light-hearted episodes, reflections on fame and temperament, and brief critical remarks about literary and political topics. The arrangement is episodic rather than continuous, offering vivid vignettes that illuminate public and private behavior abroad.

HIS PORTRAIT—A MIRROR

“People wonder why I spend so much time abroad,” said Mark Twain at a little luncheon party in Vienna, where young wine, fresh from the vat, circulated freely. “One of the reasons is that I have no doubles in foreign countries, while in the States I had notice served on me twice a month on the average that I look exactly like Mr. Cobbler Smith or Mr. Bricklayer Brown. I was told they had the very same warts, in the very same places, where I sport them—accuracy or imagination, which? The day before I left New York I got a letter of that sort and, having booked passage and nothing to fear, I made bold to answer it.

“‘My dear Sir,’ I wrote. ‘I was so much impressed by the resemblance that I bear your face, feet, hands, mustache, eyelids, ears, hair, eyes, eyebrows, cheeks, and other things, that I had the portrait of yourself you so kindly enclosed framed, and hereafter I shall use it in place of a mirror when I shave.’”

“Wife never saw that letter,” added Mark. “She was packing.”