to be proud when she commended me or my work—as proud as if Livy
had done it herself—& I took it as the accolade from the hand of
genius. I see now—as Livy always saw—that she had greatness in
her, & that she herself was dimly conscious of it.
And now she is dead—& I can never tell her.
And closing a letter to Howells:
And shall we see Susy? Without doubt! without a shadow of doubt if
it can furnish opportunity to break our hearts again.
On November 26th, Thanksgiving, occurs this note:
the first time.”
And on Christmas:
merely quiet, they are dead. There is not a sound. At intervals a
Sunday-looking person passes along. The family have been to
breakfast. We three sat & talked as usual, but the name of the day
was not mentioned. It was in our minds, but we said nothing.
And a little later:
us. Our cook's sweetheart was healthy. He is rushing for the grave
now. Emily, one of the maids, has lost the sight of one eye and the
other is in danger. Wallace carried up coal & blacked the boots two
months—has suddenly gone to the hospital—pleurisy and a bad case.
We began to allow ourselves to see a good deal of our friends, the
Bigelows—straightway their baby sickened & died. Next Wilson got
his skull fractured.
January 23, 1897. I wish the Lord would disguise Himself in
citizen's clothing & make a personal examination of the sufferings
of the poor in London. He would be moved & would do something for
them Himself.
CXCV. “PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF JOAN OF ARC”.
Meantime certain publishing events had occurred. During his long voyage a number of Mark Twain's articles had appeared in the magazines, among them “Mental Telegraphy Again,” in Harpers, and in the North American Review that scorching reply to Paul Bourget's reflections upon America. Clemens could criticize his own nation freely enough, but he would hardly be patient under the strictures of a Frenchman, especially upon American women.
There had been book publication also during this period. The Harpers had issued an edition of 'Tom Sawyer Abroad', which included another Tom and Huck story 'Tom Sawyer, Detective', written in Paris, and the contents of the old White Elephant book.
But there had been a much more important book event. The chapters of his story of Joan having run their course in Harper's Magazine had been issued as a volume.
As already mentioned, Joan had been early recognized as Mark Twain's work, and it was now formally acknowledged as such on the title-page. It is not certain now that the anonymous beginning had been a good thing. Those who began reading it for its lofty charm, with the first hint of Mark Twain as the author became fearful of some joke or burlesque. Some who now promptly hastened to read it as Mark Twain's, were inclined to be disappointed at the very lack of these features. When the book itself appeared the general public, still doubtful as to its merits, gave it a somewhat dubious reception. The early sales were disappointing.
Nor were the reviewers enthusiastic, as a rule. Perhaps they did not read it over-carefully, or perhaps they were swayed a good deal by a sort of general verdict that, in attempting 'Joan of Arc', Mark Twain had gone out of his proper field. Furthermore, there were a number of Joan books published just then, mainly sober, somber books, in which Joan was pictured properly enough as a saint, and never as anything else—never being permitted to smile or enjoy the lighter side of life, to be a human being, in fact, at all.
But this is just the very wonder of Mark Twain's Joan. She is a saint; she is rare, she is exquisite, she is all that is lovely, and she is a human being besides. Considered from every point of view, Joan of Arc is Mark Twain's supreme literary expression, the loftiest, the most delicate, the most luminous example of his work. It is so from the first word of its beginning, that wonderful “Translator's Preface,” to the last word of the last chapter, where he declares that the figure of Joan with the martyr's crown upon her head shall stand for patriotism through all time.
The idyllic picture of Joan's childhood with her playmates around the fairy tree is so rare in its delicacy and reality that any attempt to recall it here would disturb its bloom. The little poem, “L'Arbre fee de Bourlemont,” Mark Twain's own composition, is a perfect note, and that curiously enough, for in versification he was not likely to be strong. Joan's girlhood, the picture of her father's humble cottage, the singing there by the wandering soldier of the great song of Roland which stirred her deepest soul with the love of France, Joan's heroism among her playmates, her wisdom, her spiritual ideals-are not these all reverently and nobly told, and with that touch of tenderness which only Mark Twain could give? And the story of her voices, and her march, and of her first appearance before the wavering king. And then the great coronation scene at Rheims, and the dramatic moment when Joan commands the march on Paris—the dragging of the hopeless trial, and that last, fearful day of execution, what can surpass these? Nor must we forget those charming, brighter moments where Joan is shown just as a human being, laughing until the tears run at the absurdities of the paladin or the simple home prattle of her aged father and uncle. Only here and there does one find a touch—and it is never more than that—of the forbidden thing, the burlesque note which was so likely to be Mark Twain's undoing.
It seems incredible to-day that any reader, whatever his preconceived notions of the writer might have been, could have followed these chapters without realizing their majesty, and that this tale of Joan was a book such as had not before been written. Let any one who read it then and doubted, go back and consider it now. A surprise will await him, and it will be worth while. He will know the true personality of Joan of Arc more truly than ever before, and he will love her as the author loved her, for “the most innocent, the most lovely, the most adorable child the ages have produced.”
The tale is matchless in its workmanship. The quaint phrasing of the old Sieur de Conte is perfectly adapted to the subject-matter, and the lovely character of the old narrator himself is so perfectly maintained that we find ourselves all the time as in an atmosphere of consecration, and feel that somehow we are helping him to weave a garland to lay on Joan's tomb. Whatever the tale he tells, he is never more than a step away. We are within sound of his voice, we can touch his presence; we ride with him into battle; we laugh with him in the by-play and humors of warfare; we sit hushed at his side through the long, fearful days of the deadly trial, and when it is all ended it is to him that we turn to weep for Joan—with him only would we mingle our tears. It is all bathed in the atmosphere of romance, but it is the ultimate of realism, too; not hard, sordid, ugly realism, but noble, spiritual, divine realism, belonging to no particular class or school—a creation apart. Not all of Mark Twain's tales have been convincing, but there is no chapter of his Joan that we doubt. We believe it all happened—we know that it must have happened, for our faith in the Sieur de Conte never for an instant wavers.
Aside from the personality of the book—though, in truth, one never is aside from it—the tale is a marvel in its pageantry, its splendid panorama and succession of stirring and stately scenes. The fight before Orleans, the taking of the Tourelles and of Jargeau, all the movement of that splendid march to Rheims, there are few better battle-pictures than these. Howells, always interested mainly in the realism of to-day, in his review hints at staginess in the action and setting and even in Joan herself. But Howells himself did not accept his earlier judgment as final. Five years later he wrote:
“She is indeed realized to the modern sense as few figures of the past have been realized in fiction.”
As for the action, suppose we consider a brief bit of Joan's warfare. It is from the attack on the Tourelles:
people saw us coming they raised a great shout, and were at once
eager for another assault on the boulevard. Joan rode straight to
the foss where she had received her wound, and, standing there in
the rain of bolts and arrows, she ordered the paladin to let her
long standard blow free, and to note when its fringes should touch
the fortress. Presently he said:
“It touches.”
“Now, then,” said Joan to the waiting battalions, “the place is
yours—enter in! Bugles, sound the assault! Now, then—all
together—go!”
And go it was. You never saw anything like it. We swarmed up the
ladders and over the battlements like a wave—and the place was our
property. Why, one might live a thousand years and never see so
gorgeous a thing as that again....
We were busy and never heard the five cannon-shots fired, but they
were fired a moment after Joan had ordered the assault; and so,
while we were hammering and being hammered in the smaller fortress,
the reserve on the Orleans side poured across the bridge and
attacked the Tourelles from that side. A fireboat was brought down
and moored under the drawbridge which connected the Tourelles with
our boulevard; wherefore, when at last we drove our English ahead of
us, and they tried to cross that drawbridge and join their friends
in the Tourelles, the burning timbers gave way under them and
emptied them in a mass into the river in their heavy armor—and a
pitiful sight it was to see brave men die such a death as that.
“God pity them!” said Joan, and wept to see that sorrowful
spectacle. She said those gentle words and wept those compassionate
tears, although one of those perishing men had grossly insulted her
with a coarse name three days before when she had sent him a message
asking him to surrender. That was their leader, Sir William
Glasdale, a most valorous knight. He was clothed all in steel; so
he plunged under the water like a lance, and of course came up no
more.
We soon patched a sort of bridge together and threw ourselves
against the last stronghold of the English power that barred Orleans
from friends and supplies. Before the sun was quite down Joan's
forever memorable day's work was finished, her banner floated from
the fortress of the Tourelles, her promise was fulfilled, she had
raised the siege of Orleans!
England had resented the Yankee, but it welcomed Joan. Andrew Lang adored it, and some years later contemplated dedicating his own book, 'The Maid of France', to Mark Twain.'—[His letter proposing this dedication, received in 1909, appears to have been put aside and forgotten by Mr. Clemens, whose memory had not improved with failing health.]
Brander Matthews ranks Huck Finn before Joan of Arc, but that is understandable. His literary culture and research enable him, in some measure, to comprehend the production of Joan; whereas to him Huck is pure magic. Huck is not altogether magic to those who know the West—the character of that section and the Mississippi River, especially of an older time—it is rather inspiration resulting from these existing things. Joan is a truer literary magic—the reconstruction of a far-vanished life and time. To reincarnate, as in a living body of the present, that marvelous child whose life was all that was pure and exalted and holy, is veritable necromancy and something more. It is the apotheosis of history.
Throughout his life Joan of Arc had been Mark Twain's favorite character in the world's history. His love for her was a beautiful and a sacred thing. He adored young maidenhood always and nobility of character, and he was always the champion of the weak and the oppressed. The combination of these characteristics made him the ideal historian of an individuality and of a career like hers. It is fitting that in his old age (he was nearing sixty when it was finished) he should have written this marvelously beautiful thing. He could not have written it at an earlier time. It had taken him all these years to prepare for it; to become softened, to acquire the delicacy of expression, the refinement of feeling, necessary to the achievement.
It was the only book of all he had written that Mark Twain considered worthy of this dedication:
OLIVIA LANGDON CLEMENS
THIS BOOK
is tendered on our wedding anniversary in grateful recognition
of her twenty-five years of valued service as my literary
adviser and editor.
THE AUTHOR
The Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc was a book not understood in the beginning, but to-day the public, that always renders justice in the end, has reversed its earlier verdict. The demand for Joan has multiplied many fold and it continues to multiply with every year. Its author lived long enough to see this change and to be comforted by it, for though the creative enthusiasm in his other books soon passed, his glory in the tale of Joan never died. On his seventy-third birthday, when all of his important books were far behind him, and he could judge them without prejudice, he wrote as his final verdict:
I like the Joan of Arc best of all my books; & it is the best; I know it perfectly well. And besides, it furnished me seven times the pleasure afforded me by any of the others: 12 years of preparation & a years of writing. The others needed no preparation, & got none.
CXCVI. MR. ROGERS AND HELEN KELLER
It was during the winter of '96, in London, that Clemens took an active interest in the education of Helen Keller and enlisted the most valuable adherent in that cause, that is to say, Henry H. Rogers. It was to Mrs. Rogers that he wrote, heading his letter:
of Helen Keller,
Stone blind & deaf,
& formerly dumb.
DEAR MRS. ROGERS,—Experience has convinced me that when one
wished to set a hard-worked man at something which he mightn't
prefer to be bothered with it is best to move upon him behind his
wife. If she can't convince him it isn't worth while for other
people to try.
Mr. Rogers will remember our visit with that astonishing girl at
Lawrence Hutton's house when she was fourteen years old. Last July,
in Boston, when she was 16 she underwent the Harvard examination for
admission to Radcliffe College. She passed without a single
condition. She was allowed only the same amount of time that is
granted to other applicants, & this was shortened in her case by the
fact that the question-papers had to be read to her. Yet she scored
an average of 90, as against an average of 78 on the part of the
other applicants.
It won't do for America to allow this marvelous child to retire from
her studies because of poverty. If she can go on with them she will
make a fame that will endure in history for centuries. Along her
special lines she is the most extraordinary product of all the ages.
There is danger that she must retire from the struggle for a college
degree for lack of support for herself & for Miss Sullivan (the
teacher who has been with her from the start—Mr. Rogers will
remember her). Mrs. Hutton writes to ask me to interest rich
Englishmen in her case, & I would gladly try, but my secluded life
will not permit it. I see nobody. Nobody knows my address.
Nothing but the strictest hiding can enable me to write my book in
time.
So I thought of this scheme: Beg you to lay siege to your husband &
get him to interest himself and Messrs. John D. & William
Rockefeller & the other Standard Oil chiefs in Helen's case; get
them to subscribe an annual aggregate of six or seven hundred or a
thousand dollars—& agree to continue this for three or four years,
until she has completed her college course. I'm not trying to limit
their generosity—indeed no; they may pile that Standard Oil Helen
Keller College Fund as high as they please; they have my consent.
Mrs. Hutton's idea is to raise a permanent fund, the interest upon
which shall support Helen & her teacher & put them out of the fear
of want. I sha'n't say a word against it, but she will find it a
difficult & disheartening job, & meanwhile what is to become of that
miraculous girl?
No, for immediate and sound effectiveness, the thing is for you to
plead with Mr. Rogers for this hampered wonder of your sex, & send
him clothed with plenary powers to plead with the other chiefs—they
have spent mountains of money upon the worthiest benevolences, & I
think that the same spirit which moved them to put their hands down
through their hearts into their pockets in those cases will answer
“Here!” when its name is called in this one.
There—I don't need to apologize to you or to H. H. for this appeal
that I am making; I know you too well for that:
Good-by, with love to all of you,
S. L. CLEMENS.
The result of this letter was that Mr. Rogers personally took charge of Helen Keller's fortunes, and out of his own means made it possible for her to continue her education and to achieve for herself the enduring fame which Mark Twain had foreseen.
Mr. Rogers wrote that, by a curious coincidence, a letter had come to him from Mrs. Hutton on the same morning that Mrs. Rogers had received hers from Tedworth Square. Clemens sent grateful acknowledgments to Mrs. Rogers.
to you both. I knew you would be interested in that wonderful girl,
& that Mr. Rogers was already interested in her & touched by her; &
I was sure that if nobody else helped her you two would; but you
have gone far & away beyond the sum I expected—may your lines fall
in pleasant places here, & Hereafter for it!
The Huttons are as glad & grateful as they can be, & I am glad for
their sakes as well as for Helen's.
I want to thank Mr. Rogers for crucifying himself on the same old
cross between Bliss & Harper; & goodness knows I hope he will come
to enjoy it above all other dissipations yet, seeing that it has
about it the elements of stability & permanency. However, at any
time that he says sign we're going to do it.
Ever sincerely yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
CXCVII. FINISHING THE BOOK OF TRAVEL.
One reading the Equator book to-day, and knowing the circumstances under which it was written, might be puzzled to reconcile the secluded household and its atmosphere of sorrow with certain gaieties of the subject matter. The author himself wondered at it, and to Howells wrote:
Indifferent to nearly everything but work. I like that; I enjoy it,
& stick to it. I do it without purpose & without ambition; merely
for the love of it. Indeed, I am a mud-image; & it puzzles me to
know what it is in me that writes & has comedy fancies & finds
pleasure in phrasing them. It is the law of our nature, of course,
or it wouldn't happen; the thing in me forgets the presence of the
mud-image, goes its own way wholly unconscious of it & apparently of
no kinship with it.
He saw little company. Now and, then a good friend, J.Y.W. MacAlister, came in for a smoke with him. Once Clemens sent this line:
Could you come and smoke some manilas; I would, of course, say dine,
but my family are hermits & cannot see any one, but I would have a
fire in my study, & if you came at any time after your dinner that
might be most convenient for you you would find me & a welcome.
Clemens occasionally went out to dinner, but very privately. He dined with Bram Stoker, who invited Anthony Hope and one or two others, and with the Chattos and Mr. Percy Spalding; also with Andrew Lang, who wrote, “Your old friend, Lord Lome, wants to see you again”; with the Henry M. Stanleys and Poultney Bigelow, and with Francis H. Skrine, a government official he had met in India. But in all such affairs he was protected from strangers and his address was kept a secret from the public. Finally, the new-found cousin, Dr. Jim Clemens, fell ill, and the newspapers had it presently that Mark Twain was lying at the point of death. A reporter ferreted him out and appeared at Tedworth Square with cabled instructions from his paper. He was a young man, and innocently enough exhibited his credentials. His orders read:
“If Mark Twain very ill, five hundred words. If dead, send one thousand.”
Clemens smiled grimly as he handed back the cable.
“You don't need as much as that,” he said. “Just say the report of my death has been grossly exaggerated.”
The young man went away quite seriously, and it was not until he was nearly to his office that he saw the joke. Then, of course, it was flashed all over the world.
Clemens kept grinding steadily at the book, for it was to be a very large volume—larger than he had ever written before. To MacAlister, April 6, 1897, he wrote, replying to some invitation:
publisher is hurrying me & I am almost through. I am up at work
now—4 o'clock in the morning-and a few more spurts will pull me
through. You come down here & smoke; that is better than tempting a
working-man to strike & go to tea.
And it would move me too deeply to see Miss Corelli. When I saw her
last it was on the street in Homburg, & Susy was walking with me.
On April 13th he makes a note-book entry: “I finished my book to-day,” and on the 15th he wrote MacAlister, inclosing some bits of manuscript:
it—on the ground that the first part is not delicate & the last
part is indelicate. Now, there's a nice distinction for you—&
correctly stated, too, & perfectly true.
It may interest the reader to consider briefly the manner in which Mark Twain's “editor” dealt with his manuscript, and a few pages of this particular book remain as examples. That he was not always entirely tractable, or at least submissive, but that he did yield, and graciously, is clearly shown.
In one of her comments Mrs. Clemens wrote:
minutely into particulars in describing the feats of the
aboriginals. I felt it in the boomerang-throwing.
And Clemens just below has written:
turned it into “Appendix.” Will that answer?
Page 1002. I don't like the “shady-principled cat that has a family
in every port.”
Then I'll modify him just a little.
Page 1020. 9th line from the top. I think some other word would be
better than “stench.” You have used that pretty often.
But can't I get it in anywhere? You've knocked it out every time.
Out it goes again. And yet “stench” is a noble, good word.
Page 1038. I hate to have your father pictured as lashing a slave
boy.
It's out, and my father is whitewashed.
Page 1050. 2d line from the bottom. Change breech-clout. It's a
word that you love and I abominate. I would take that and “offal”
out of the language.
You are steadily weakening the English tongue, Livy.
Page 1095. Perhaps you don't care, but whoever told you that the
Prince's green stones were rubies told an untruth. They were superb
emeralds. Those strings of pearls and emeralds were famous all over
Bombay.
All right, I'll make them emeralds, but it loses force. Green
rubies is a fresh thing. And besides it was one of the Prince's own
staff liars that told me.
That the book was not quite done, even after the triumphant entry of April 13th, is shown by another note which followed something more than a month later:
And to MacAlister he wrote:
time. Now I am ready for dissipation with a good conscience. What
night will you come down & smoke?
His book finished, Clemens went out rather more freely, and one evening allowed MacAlister to take him around to the Savage Club. There happened to be a majority of the club committee present, and on motion Mark Twain was elected an honorary life member. There were but three others on whom this distinction had been conferred—Stanley, Nansen, and the Prince of Wales. When they told Mark Twain this he said:
“Well, it must make the Prince feel mighty fine.”—[In a volume of Savage Club anecdotes the date of Mark Twain's election to honorary membership is given as 1899. Clemens's notebook gives it in 1897.]
He did not intend to rest; in another entry we find:
The “above story” is a synopsis of a tale which he tried then and later in various forms—a tale based on a scientific idea that one may dream an episode covering a period of years in minute detail in what, by our reckoning, may be no more than a few brief seconds. In this particular form of the story a man sits down to write some memories and falls into a doze. The smell of his cigarette smoke causes him to dream of the burning of his home, the destruction of his family, and of a long period of years following. Awakening a few seconds later, and confronted by his wife and children, he refuses to believe in their reality, maintaining that this condition, and not the other, is the dream. Clemens tried the psychological literary experiment in as many as three different ways during the next two or three years, and each at considerable length; but he developed none of them to his satisfaction, or at least he brought none of them to conclusion. Perhaps the most weird of these attempts, and the most intensely interesting, so long as the verisimilitude is maintained, is a dream adventure in a drop of water which, through an incredible human reduction to microbic, even atomic, proportions, has become a vast tempestuous sea. Mark Twain had the imagination for these undertakings and the literary workmanship, lacking only a definite plan for development of his tale—a lack which had brought so many of his literary ventures to the rocks.
CXCVIII. A SUMMER IN SWITZERLAND
The Queen's Jubilee came along—June 22, 1897, being the day chosen to celebrate the sixty-year reign. Clemens had been asked to write about it for the American papers, and he did so after his own ideas, illustrating some of his material with pictures of his own selection. The selections were made from various fashion-plates, which gave him a chance to pick the kind of a prince or princess or other royal figure that he thought fitted his description without any handicap upon his imagination. Under his portrait of Henry V. (a very correctly dressed person in top hat and overcoat) he wrote:
for the King to wear when he has come home on business. He ought to
wear something he can collect taxes in. You will find this
representation of Henry V. active, full of feeling, full of
sublimity. I have pictured him looking out over the battle of
Agincourt and studying up where to begin.
Mark Twain's account of the Jubilee probably satisfied most readers; but James Tufts, then managing editor of the San Francisco Examiner, had a rather matter-of-fact Englishman on the staff, who, after reading the report, said:
“Well, Jim Tufts, I hope you are satisfied with that Mark Twain cable.”
“Why, yes,” said Tufts; “aren't you?”
“I should say not. Just look what he says about the number of soldiers. He says, 'I never saw so many soldiers anywhere except on the stage of a theater.' Why, Tufts, don't you know that the soldiers in the theater are the same old soldiers marching around and around? There aren't more than a hundred soldiers in the biggest army ever put on the stage.”
It was decided to vacate the house in Tedworth Square and go to Switzerland for the summer. Mrs. Crane and Charles Langdon's daughter, Julia, joined them early in July, and they set out for Switzerland a few days later. Just before leaving, Clemens received an offer from Pond of fifty thousand dollars for one hundred and twenty-five nights on the platform in America. It was too great a temptation to resist at once, and they took it under advisement. Clemens was willing to accept, but Mrs. Clemens opposed the plan. She thought his health no longer equal to steady travel. She believed that with continued economy they would be able to manage their problem without this sum. In the end the offer was declined.
They journeyed to Switzerland by way of Holland and Germany, the general destination being Lucerne. They did not remain there, however. They found a pretty little village farther up the lake—Weggis, at the foot of the Rigi—where, in the Villa Buhlegg, they arranged for the summer at very moderate rates indeed. Weggis is a beautiful spot, looking across the blue water to Mount Pilatus, the lake shore dotted with white villages. Down by the water, but a few yards from the cottage—for it was scarcely a villa except by courtesy—there was a little inclosure, and a bench under a large tree, a quiet spot where Clemens often sat to rest and smoke. The fact is remembered there to-day, and recorded. A small tablet has engraved upon it “Mark Twain Ruhe.” Farther along the shore he discovered a neat, white cottage were some kindly working-people agreed to rent him an upper room for a study. It was a sunny room with windows looking out upon the lake, and he worked there steadily. To Twichell he wrote:
This is the charmingest place we have ever lived in for repose and restfulness, superb scenery whose beauty undergoes a perpetual change from one miracle to another, yet never runs short of fresh surprises and new inventions. We shall always come here for the summers if we can.
The others have climbed the Rigi, he says, and he expects to some day if Twichell will come and climb it with him. They had climbed it together during that summer vagabondage, nineteen years before.
He was full of enthusiasm over his work. To F. H. Skrine, in London, he wrote that he had four or five books all going at once, and his note-book contains two or three pages merely of titles of the stories he proposed to write.
But of the books begun that summer at Weggis none appears to have been completed. There still exists a bulky, half-finished manuscript about Tom and Huck, most of which was doubtless written at this time, and there is the tale already mentioned, the “dream” story; and another tale with a plot of intricate psychology and crime; still another with the burning title of “Hell-Fire Hotchkiss”—a story of Hannibal life—and some short stories. Clemens appeared to be at this time out of tune with fiction. Perhaps his long book of travel had disqualified his invention. He realized that these various literary projects were leading nowhere, and one after another he dropped them. The fact that proofs of the big book were coming steadily may also have interfered with his creative faculty.
As was his habit, Clemens formed the acquaintance of a number of the native residents, and enjoyed talking to them about their business and daily affairs. They were usually proud and glad of these attentions, quick to see the humor of his remarks.
But there was an old watchmaker-an 'Uhrmacher' who remained indifferent. He would answer only in somber monosyllables, and he never smiled. Clemens at last brought the cheapest kind of a watch for repairs.
“Be very careful of this watch,” he said. “It is a fine one.”
The old man merely glared at him.
“It is not a valuable watch. It is a worthless watch.”
“But I gave six francs for it in Paris.”
“Still, it is a cheap watch,” was the unsmiling answer. Defeat waits somewhere for every conqueror.
Which recalls another instance, though of a different sort. On one of his many voyages to America, he was sitting on deck in a steamer-chair when two little girls stopped before him. One of them said, hesitatingly:
“Are you Mr. Mark Twain?”
“Why, yes, dear, they call me that.”
“Won't you please say something funny?”
And for the life of him he couldn't make the required remark.
In one of his letters to Twichell of that summer, Clemens wrote of the arrival there of the colored jubilee singers, always favorites of his, and of his great delight in them.
beer-hall, where a crowd of German & Swiss men & women sat grouped
around tables with their beer-mugs in front of them—self-contained
& unimpressionable-looking people—an indifferent & unposted &
disheartening audience—& up at the far end of the room sat the
jubilees in a row. The singers got up & stood—the talking & glass-
jingling went on. Then rose & swelled out above those common
earthly sounds one of those rich chords, the secret of whose make
only the jubilees possess, & a spell fell upon that house. It was
fine to see the faces light up with the pleased wonder & surprise of
it. No one was indifferent any more; & when the singers finished
the camp was theirs. It was a triumph. It reminded me of Lancelot
riding in Sir Kay's armor, astonishing complacent knights who
thought they had struck a soft thing. The jubilees sang a lot of
pieces. Arduous & painstaking cultivation has not diminished or
artificialized their music, but on the contrary—to my surprise—has
mightily reinforced its eloquence and beauty. Away back in the
beginning—to my mind—their music made all other vocal music cheap;
& that early notion is emphasized now. It is entirely beautiful to
me; & it moves me infinitely more than any other music can. I think
that in the jubilees & their songs America has produced the
perfectest flower of the ages; & I wish it were a foreign product,
so that she would worship it & lavish money on it & go properly
crazy over it.
Now, these countries are different: they would do all that if it
were native. It is true they praise God, but that is merely a
formality, & nothing in it; they open out their whole hearts to no
foreigner.
As the first anniversary of Susy's death drew near the tension became very great. A gloom settled on the household, a shadow of restraint. On the morning of the 18th Clemens went early to his study. Somewhat later Mrs. Clemens put on her hat and wrap, and taking a small bag left the house. The others saw her go toward the steamer-landing, but made no inquiries as to her destination. They guessed that she would take the little boat that touched at the various points along the lake shore. This she did, in fact, with no particular plan as to where she would leave it. One of the landing-places seemed quiet and inviting, and there she went ashore, and taking a quiet room at a small inn spent the day in reading Susy's letters. It was evening when she returned, and her husband, lonely and anxious, was waiting for her at the landing. He had put in the day writing the beautiful poem, “In Memoriam,” a strain lofty, tender, and dirge-like-liquidly musical, though irregular in form.—[Now included in the Uniform Edition.]
CXCIX. WINTER IN VIENNA
They remained two months in Weggis—until toward the end of September; thence to Vienna, by way of Innsbruck, in the Tyrol, “where the mountains seem more approachable than in Switzerland.” Clara Clemens wished to study the piano under Leschetizky, and this would take them to Austria for the winter. Arriving at Vienna, they settled in the Hotel Metropole, on the banks of the Danube. Their rooms, a corner suite, looked out on a pretty green square, the Merzimplatz, and down on the Franz Josef quay. A little bridge crosses the river there, over which all kinds of life are continually passing. On pleasant days Clemens liked to stand on this bridge and watch the interesting phases of the Austrian capital. The Vienna humorist, Poetzl, quickly formed his acquaintance, and they sometimes stood there together. Once while Clemens was making some notes, Poetzl interested the various passers by asking each one—the errand-boy, the boot-black, the chestnut-vender, cabmen, and others—to guess who the stranger was and what he wanted. Most of them recognized him when their attention was called, for the newspapers had proudly heralded his arrival and his picture was widely circulated.
Clemens had scarcely arrived in Vienna, in fact, before he was pursued by photographers, journalists, and autograph-hunters. The Viennese were his fond admirers, and knowing how the world elsewhere had honored him they were determined not to be outdone. The 'Neues Viener Tageblatt', a fortnight after his arrival, said:
in Vienna as that accorded to Mark Twain, who not only has the
reputation of being the foremost humorist in the whole civilized.
world, but one whose personality arouses everywhere a peculiar
interest on account of the genuine American character which sways
it.
He was the guest of honor at the Concordia Club soon after his arrival, and the great ones of Vienna assembled to do him honor. Charlemagne Tower, then American minister, was also one of the guests. Writers, diplomats, financiers, municipal officials, everybody in Vienna that was worth while, was there. Clemens gave them a surprise, for when Ferdinand Gross, Concordia president, introduced him first in English, then in German, Mark Twain made his reply wholly in the latter language.
The paper just quoted gives us a hint of the frolic and wassail of that old 'Festkneipe' when it says:
applause took his seat at the head of the table. His characteristic
shaggy and flowing mane of hair adorning a youthful countenance
attracted the attention at once of all present. After a few formal
convivial commonplaces the president of the Concordia, Mr. Ferdinand
Gross, delivered an excellent address in English, which he wound up
with a few German sentences. Then Mr. Tower was heard in praise of
his august countryman. In the course of his remarks he said he
could hardly find words enough to express his delight at the
presence of the popular American. Then followed the greatest
attraction of the evening, an impromptu speech by Mark Twain in the
German language, which it is true he has not fully mastered, but
which he nevertheless controls sufficiently well to make it
difficult to detect any harsh foreign accent. He had entitled his
speech, “Die Schrecken der Deutschen Sprache” (the terrors of the
German language). At times he would interrupt himself in English
and ask, with a stuttering smile, “How do you call this word in
German” or “I only know that in mother-tongue.” The Festkneipe
lasted far into the morning hours.
It was not long after their arrival in Vienna that the friction among the unamalgamated Austrian states flamed into a general outbreak in the Austrian Reichsrath, or Imperial Parliament. We need not consider just what the trouble was. Any one wishing to know can learn from Mark Twain's article on the subject, for it is more clearly pictured there than elsewhere. It is enough to say here that the difficulty lay mainly between the Hungarian and German wings of the house; and in the midst of it Dr. Otto Lecher made his famous speech, which lasted twelve hours without a break, in order to hold the floor against the opposing forces. Clemens was in the gallery most of the time while that speech, with its riotous accompaniment, was in progress.—[“When that house is legislating you can't tell it from artillery practice.” From Mark Twain's report, “Stirring Times in Austria,” in Literary Essays,]—He was intensely interested. Nothing would appeal to him more than that, unless it should be some great astronomic or geologic change. He was also present somewhat later when a resolution was railroaded through which gave the chair the right to invoke the aid of the military, and he was there when the military arrived and took the insurgents in charge. It was a very great occasion, a “tremendous episode,” he says.