The Upton House stands on the edge of a beautiful beech forest some
two or three miles from Dublin, just under Monadnock--a good way up the
slope. It is a handsome, roomy frame-house, and had a long colonnaded
veranda overlooking one of the most beautiful landscape visions on the
planet: lake, forest, hill, and a far range of blue mountains--all the
handiwork of God is there. I had seen these things in paintings, but
I had not dreamed that such a view really existed. The immediate
foreground was a grassy slope, with ancient, blooming apple-trees; and
just at the right hand Monadnock rose, superb and lofty, sloping down to
the panorama below that stretched away, taking on an ever deeper blue,
until it reached that remote range on which the sky rested and the world
seemed to end. It was a masterpiece of the Greater Mind, and of the
highest order, perhaps, for it had in it nothing of the touch of man. A
church spire glinted here and there, but there was never a bit of field,
or stone wall, or cultivated land. It was lonely; it was unfriendly; it
cared nothing whatever for humankind; it was as if God, after creating
all the world, had wrought His masterwork here, and had been so
engrossed with the beauty of it that He had forgotten to give it a soul.
In a sense this was true, for He had not made the place suitable for the
habitation of men. It lacked the human touch; the human interest, and I
could never quite believe in its reality.
The time of arrival heightened this first impression. It was mid-May and
the lilacs were prodigally in bloom; but the bright sunlight was chill
and unnatural, and there was a west wind that laid the grass flat and
moaned through the house, and continued as steadily as if it must never
stop from year's end to year's end. It seemed a spectral land, a place
of supernatural beauty. Warm, still, languorous days would come, but
that first feeling of unreality would remain permanent. I believe Jean
Clemens was the only one who ever really loved the place. Something
about it appealed to her elemental side and blended with her melancholy
moods. She dressed always in white, and she was tall and pale and
classically beautiful, and she was often silent, like a spirit. She had
a little retreat for herself farther up the mountain-side, and spent
most of her days there wood-carving, which was her chief diversion.
Clara Clemens did not come to the place at all. She was not yet strong,
and went to Norfolk, Connecticut, where she could still be in quiet
retirement and have her physician's care. Miss Hobby came, and on the
21st of May the dictations were resumed. We began in his bedroom, as
before, but the feeling there was depressing--the absence of the great
carved bed and other furnishings, which had been so much a part of the
picture, was felt by all of us. Nothing of the old luxury and richness
was there. It was a summer-furnished place, handsome but with the
customary bareness. At the end of this first session he dressed in his
snowy flannels, which he had adopted in the place of linen for summer
wear, and we descended to the veranda and looked out over that wide,
wonderful expanse of scenery.
“I think I shall like it,” he said, “when I get acquainted with it, and
get it classified and labeled, and I think we'll do our dictating out
here hereafter. It ought to be an inspiring place.”
So the dictations were transferred to the long veranda, and he was
generally ready for them, a white figure pacing up and down before
that panoramic background. During the earlier, cooler weeks he usually
continued walking with measured step during the dictations, pausing now
and then to look across the far-lying horizon. When it stormed we moved
into the great living-room, where at one end there was a fireplace with
blazing logs, and at the other the orchestrelle, which had once
more been freighted up those mountain heights for the comfort of its
harmonies. Sometimes, when the wind and rain were beating outside, and
he was striding up and down the long room within, with only the blurred
shapes of mountains and trees outlined through the trailing rain, the
feeling of the unreality became so strong that it was hard to believe
that somewhere down below, beyond the rain and the woods, there was a
literal world--a commonplace world, where the ordinary things of life
were going on in the usual way. When the dictation finished early, there
would be music--the music that he loved most--Beethoven's symphonies,
or the Schubert impromptu, or the sonata by Chopin.--[Schubert, Op.
142, No. 2; Chopin, Op. 37, No. 2.]--It is easy to understand that this
carried one a remove farther from the customary things of life. It was a
setting far out of the usual, though it became that unique white figure
and his occupation. In my notes, made from day to day, I find that I
have set down more than once an impression of the curious unreality of
the place and its surroundings, which would show that it was not a mere
passing fancy.
I had lodgings in the village, and drove out mornings for the
dictations, but often came out again afoot on pleasant afternoons; for
he was not much occupied with social matters, and there was opportunity
for quiet, informing interviews. There was a woods path to the Upton
place, and it was a walk through a fairyland. A part of the way was
through such a growth of beech timber as I have never seen elsewhere:
tall, straight, mottled trees with an undergrowth of laurel, the
sunlight sifting through; one found it easy to expect there storybook
ladies, wearing crowns and green mantles, riding on white palfreys. Then
came a more open way, an abandoned grass-grown road full of sunlight and
perfume; and this led to a dim, religious place, a natural cathedral,
where the columns were stately pine-trees branching and meeting at the
top: a veritable temple in which it always seemed that music was about
to play. You crossed a brook and climbed a little hill, and pushed
through a hedge into a place more open, and the house stood there among
the trees.
The days drifted along, one a good deal like another, except, as the
summer deepened, the weather became warmer, the foliage changed, a
drowsy haze gathered along the valleys and on the mountain-side. He
sat more often now in a large rocking-chair, and generally seemed to be
looking through half-dosed lids toward the Monadnock heights, that were
always changing in aspect-in color and in form--as cloud shapes drifted
by or gathered in those lofty hollows. White and yellow butterflies
hovered over the grass, and there were some curious, large black
ants--the largest I have ever seen and quite harmless--that would slip
in and out of the cracks on the veranda floor, wholly undisturbed by us.
Now and then a light flutter of wind would come murmuring up from the
trees below, and when the apple-bloom was falling there would be a whirl
of white and pink petals that seemed a cloud of smaller butterflies.
On June 1st I find in my note-book this entry:
Warm and pleasant. The dictation about Grant continues; a great
privilege to hear this foremost man, of letters review his
associations with that foremost man of arms. He remained seated
today, dressed in white as usual, a large yellow pansy in his
buttonhole, his white hair ruffled by the breeze. He wears his worn
morocco slippers with black hose; sits in the rocker, smoking and
looking out over the hazy hills, delivering his sentences with a
measured accuracy that seldom calls for change. He is speaking just
now of a Grant dinner which he attended where Depew spoke. One is
impressed with the thought that we are looking at and listening to
the war-worn veteran of a thousand dinners--the honored guest of
many; an honored figure of all. Earlier, when he had been
chastising some old offender, he added, “However, he's dead, and I
forgive him.” Then, after a moment's reflection, “No; strike that
last sentence out.” When we laughed, he added, “We can't forgive
him yet.”
A few days later--it was June 4th, the day before the second anniversary
of the death of Mrs. Clemens--we found him at first in excellent humor
from the long dictation of the day before. Then his mind reverted to the
tragedy of the season, and he began trying to tell of it. It was hard
work. He walked back and forth in the soft sunlight, saying almost
nothing. He gave it up at last, remarking, “We will not work to-morrow.”
So we went away.
He did not dictate on the 5th or the 6th, but on the 7th he resumed the
story of Mrs. Clemens's last days at Florence. The weather had changed:
the sunlight and warmth had all gone; a chill, penetrating mist was on
the mountains; Monadnock was blotted out. We expected him to go to the
fire, but evidently he could not bear being shut in with that subject in
his mind. A black cape was brought out and thrown about his shoulders,
which seemed to fit exactly into the somberness of the picture. For two
hours or more we sat there in the gloom and chill, while he paced up
and down, detailing as graphically as might be that final chapter in the
life of the woman he had loved.
It is hardly necessary to say that beyond the dictation Clemens did very
little literary work during these months. He had brought his “manuscript
trunk” as usual, thinking, perhaps, to finish the “microbe” story and
other of the uncompleted things; but the dictation gave him sufficient
mental exercise, and he did no more than look over his “stock in trade,”
as he called it, and incorporate a few of the finished manuscripts into
“autobiography.” Among these were the notes of his trip down the Rhone,
made in 1891, and the old Stormfield story, which he had been treasuring
and suppressing so long. He wrote Howells in June:
The dictating goes lazily and pleasantly on. With intervals. I
find that I've been at it, off & on, nearly two hours for 155 days
since January 9. To be exact, I've dictated 75 hours in 80 days &
loafed 75 days. I've added 60,000 words in the month that I've been
here; which indicates that I've dictated during 20 days of that
time--40 hours, at an average of 1,500 words an hour. It's a
plenty, & I'm satisfied.
There's a good deal of “fat.” I've dictated (from January 9)
210,000 words, & the “fat” adds about 50,000 more.
The “fat” is old pigeonholed things of the years gone by which I or
editors didn't das't to print. For instance, I am dumping in the
little old book which I read to you in Hartford about 30 years ago &
which you said “publish & ask Dean Stanley to furnish an
introduction; he'll do it” (Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven).
It reads quite to suit me without altering a word now that it isn't
to see print until I am dead.
To-morrow I mean to dictate a chapter which will get my heirs &
assigns burned alive if they venture to print it this side of A.D.
2006--which I judge they won't. There'll be lots of such chapters
if I live 3 or 4 years longer. The edition of A.D. 2006 will make a
stir when it comes out. I shall be hovering around taking notice,
along with other dead pals. You are invited.
The chapter which was to invite death at the stake for his successors
was naturally one of religious heresies a violent attack on the
orthodox, scriptural God, but really an expression of the highest
reverence for the God which, as he said, had created the earth and sky
and the music of the constellations. Mark Twain once expressed himself
concerning reverence and the lack of it:
“I was never consciously and purposely irreverent in my life, yet
one person or another is always charging me with a lack of reverence.
Reverence for what--for whom? Who is to decide what ought to command my
reverence--my neighbor or I? I think I ought to do the electing myself.
The Mohammedan reveres Mohammed--it is his privilege; the Christian
doesn't--apparently that is his privilege; the account is square enough.
They haven't any right to complain of the other, yet they do complain
of each other, and that is where the unfairness comes in. Each says that
the other is irreverent, and both are mistaken, for manifestly you can't
have reverence for a thing that doesn't command it. If you could do that
you could digest what you haven't eaten, and do other miracles and get a
reputation.”
He was not reading many books at this time--he was inclined rather to be
lazy, as he said, and to loaf during the afternoons; but I remember that
he read aloud 'After the Wedding' and 'The Mother'--those two beautiful
word-pictures by Howells--which he declared sounded the depths of
humanity with a deep-sea lead. Also he read a book by William Allen
White, 'In Our Town', a collection of tales that he found most
admirable. I think he took the trouble to send White a personal,
hand-written letter concerning them, although, with the habit of
dictation, he had begun, as he said, to “loathe the use of the pen.”
There were usually some sort of mild social affairs going on in the
neighborhood, luncheons and afternoon gatherings like those of the
previous year, though he seems to have attended fewer of them, for
he did not often leave the house. Once, at least, he assisted in an
afternoon entertainment at the Dublin Club, where he introduced his
invention of the art of making an impromptu speech, and was assisted in
its demonstration by George de Forest Brush and Joseph Lindon Smith,
to the very great amusement of a crowd of summer visitors. The “art”
consisted mainly of having on hand a few reliable anecdotes and a set
formula which would lead directly to them from any given subject.
Twice or more he collected the children of the neighborhood for charades
and rehearsed them, and took part in the performance, as in the Hartford
days. Sometimes he drove out or took an extended walk. But these things
were seldom.
Now and then during the summer he made a trip to New York of a
semi-business nature, usually going by the way of Fairhaven, where
he would visit for a few days, journeying the rest of the way in Mr.
Rogers's yacht. Once they made a cruise of considerable length to Bar
Harbor and elsewhere. Here is an amusing letter which he wrote to Mrs.
Rogers after such a visit:
DEAR MRS. ROGERS,--In packing my things in your house yesterday
morning I inadvertently put in some articles that was laying around,
I thinking about theology & not noticing, the way this family does
in similar circumstances like these. Two books, Mr. Rogers' brown
slippers, & a ham. I thought it was ourn, it looks like one we used
to have. I am very sorry it happened, but it sha'n't occur again &
don't you worry. He will temper the wind to the shorn lamb & I will
send some of the things back anyway if there is some that won't
keep.