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.