HANNIBAL AND MARK TWAIN
If black slaves are no longer bought and sold there, if the river
trade has dwindled, if the railroad and the factory have come,
bringing a larger population with them, if the town now has a
hundred-thousand-dollar city hall, a country club, and "fifty-six
passenger trains daily," it is, at all events, a pleasure to record the
fact that Hannibal, Missouri, retains to-day that look of soft and
shambling picturesqueness suitable to an old river town, and essential
to the "St. Petersburg" of fiction--the perpetual dwelling place of
those immortal boys, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.
Should this characterization of the town fail to meet with the approval
of the Hannibal Commercial Club, I regret it, for I honor the Commercial
Club because of its action toward the preservation of a thing so
uncommercial as the boyhood home of Mark Twain. But, after all, the club
must remember that, in its creditable effort to build up a newer and
finer Hannibal, a Hannibal of brick and granite, it is running counter
to the sentimental interests of innumerable persons who, though most of
them have never seen the old town and never will, yet think of it as
given to them by Mark Twain, with a peculiar tenderness, as though it
were a Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn among the cities--a ragged, happy boy of
a town, which ought never, never to grow up.
There is no more charming way of preserving the memory of an artist than
through the preservation of the house in which he lived, and that is
especially true where the artist was a literary man and where the house
has figured in his writings. What memorial to Thomas Bailey Aldrich, for
example, could equal the one in Portsmouth, N. H., where is preserved
the house in which the "Bad Boy" of the "Diary" used to live, even to
the furniture and the bedroom wall paper mentioned in the book? And what
monuments to Washington Irving could touch quite the note that is
touched by that old house in Tarrytown, N. Y., or that other old house
in Irving Place, in the city of New York, where the Authors' League of
America now has its headquarters?
With the exception of Stratford-on-Avon, I do not know of a community so
completely dominated by the memory of a great man of letters as is the
city of Hannibal by the memory of Mark Twain. There is, indeed, a
curious resemblance to be traced between the two towns. I don't mean a
physical resemblance, for no places could be less alike than the garden
town where Shakespeare lived and the pathetic wooden village of the
early west in which nine years of Mark Twain's boyhood were spent. The
resemblance is only in the majestic shadows cast over them by their
great men.
Thus, the hotel in Stratford is called The Shakespeare Hotel, while that
in Hannibal is The Mark Twain. Stratford has the house in which
Shakespeare was born; Hannibal the house in which Mark Twain lived--the
house of Tom Sawyer. Stratford has the cottage of Anne Hathaway;
Hannibal that of Becky Thatcher. And Hannibal has, furthermore, one
possession which lovers of the delightful Becky will hope may long be
spared to it--it possesses, in the person of Mrs. Laura Hawkins Frazer,
who is now matron of the Home for the Friendless, the original of Becky.
* * * * *
It is said that a memorial tablet, intended to mark the birthplace of
Eugene Field in St. Louis, was placed, not only upon the wrong house,
but upon a house in the wrong street. Mark Twain unveiled the tablet;
one can fancy the spirits of these two Missouri literary men meeting
somewhere and smiling together over that. But if the shade of Mark Twain
should undertake to chaff that of the poet upon the fact that mortals
had erred as to the location of his birthplace, the shade of Field would
not be able to retort in kind, for--thanks partly to the fact that Mark
Twain was known for a genius while he was yet alive, and partly to the
indefatigable labors of his biographer, Albert Bigelow Paine--a vast
fund of accurate information has been preserved, covering the life of
the great Missourian, from the time of his birth in the little hamlet of
Florida, Mo., to his death in Reading, Conn. No; if the shade of Field
should wish to return the jest, it would probably call the humorist's
attention to a certain memorial tablet in the Mark Twain house in
Hannibal. But of that presently.
I have said that the Commercial Club honored Mark Twain's memory. That
is true. But the Commercial Club would not be a Commercial Club if it
did not also wish the visitor to take into consideration certain other
matters. In effect it says to him: "Yes, indeed, Mark Twain spent the
most important part of his boyhood here. But we wish you to understand
that Hannibal is a busy, growing town. We have the cheapest electric
power in the Mississippi Valley. We offer free factory sites. We--"
"Yes," you say, "but where is the Mark Twain house?"
"Oh--" says Hannibal, catching its breath. "Go right on up Main to Hill
Street; you'll find it just around the corner. Any one will point it out
to you. There's a bronze tablet in the wall. But put this little
pamphlet in your pocket. It tells all about our city. You can read it at
your leisure."
You take the pamphlet and move along up Main Street. And if there is a
sympathetic native with you he will stop you at the corner of Main and
Bird--they call it Wildcat Corner--and point out a little wooden shanty
adjoining a nearby alley, where, it is said, Mark Twain's father, John
Marshall Clemens, had his office when he was Justice of the Peace--the
same office in which Samuel Clemens in his boyhood saw the corpse lying
on the floor, by moonlight, as recounted in "The Innocents Abroad."
[Illustration: We came upon the "Mark Twain House".... And to think
that, wretched as this place was, the Clemens family were forced to
leave it for a time because they were too poor to live there!]
It was at Wildcat Corner, too, that the boys conducted that famous piece
of high finance: trading off the green watermelon, which they had
stolen, for a ripe one, on the allegation that the former had been
purchased.
Also near the corner stands the building in which Joseph Ament had the
office of his newspaper, the "Missouri Courier," where young Sam Clemens
first went to work as an apprentice, doing errands and learning to set
type; and there are many other old buildings having some bearing on the
history of the Clemens family, including one at the corner of Main and
Hill Streets, in the upper story of which the family lived for a time, a
building somewhat after the Greek pattern so prevalent throughout the
south in the early days. Once, when he revisited Hannibal after he had
become famous, Mark Twain stopped before that building and told Mr.
George A. Mahan that he remembered when it was erected, and that at the
time the fluted pilasters on the front of it constituted his idea of
reckless extravagance--that, indeed, the ostentation of them startled
the whole town.
Turning into Bird Street and passing the old Pavey Hotel, we came upon
the "Mark Twain House," a tiny box of a cottage, its sagging front so
taken up with five windows and a door that there is barely room for the
little bronze plaque which marks the place. At one side is an alley
running back to the house of Huckleberry Finn, on the next street (Huck,
as Paine tells us, was really a boy named Tom Blankenship), and in that
alley stood the historic fence which young Sam Clemens cajoled the other
boys into whitewashing for him, as related in "Tom Sawyer."
Inside the house there is little to be seen. It is occupied now by a
custodian who sells souvenir post cards, and has but few Mark Twain
relics to show--some photographs and autographs; nothing of importance.
But, despite that, I got a real sensation as I stood in the little
parlor, hardly larger than a good-sized closet, and realized that in
that miserable shanty grew up the wild, barefoot boy who has since been
called "the greatest Missourian" and "America's greatest literary man,"
and that in and about that place he gathered the impressions and had the
adventures which, at the time, he himself never dreamed would be made by
him into books--much less books that would be known as classics.
In the front room of the cottage a memorial tablet is to be seen. It is
a curious thing. At the top is the following inscription:
THIS BUILDING PRESENTED TO THE
CITY OF HANNIBAL,
MAY 7, 1912,
BY
MR. AND MRS. GEORGE A. MAHAN
AS A MEMORIAL TO
MARK TWAIN
Beneath the legend is a portrait bust of the author in bas relief. At
the bottom of the tablet is another inscription. From across the room I
saw that it was set off in quotation marks, and assuming, of course,
that it was some particularly suitable extract from the works of the
most quotable of all Americans, I stepped across and read it. This is
what it said:
"MARK TWAIN'S LIFE TEACHES THAT POVERTY IS AN INCENTIVE RATHER THAN
A BAR: AND THAT ANY BOY, HOWEVER HUMBLE HIS BIRTH AND SURROUNDINGS,
MAY BY HONESTY AND INDUSTRY ACCOMPLISH GREAT THINGS."
--GEORGE A. MAHAN.
That inscription made me think of many things. It made me think of
Napoleon's inscription on the statue of Henri IV, and of Judge
Thatcher's talk with Tom Sawyer, in the Sunday school, and of Mr.
Walters, the Sunday school superintendent, in the same book, and of
certain moral lessons drawn by Andrew Carnegie. And not the least thing
of which it made me think was the mischievous, shiftless, troublesome,
sandy-haired young rascal who hated school and Sunday school and yet
became the more than honest, more than industrious man, commemorated
there.
If I did not feel the inspiration of that place while considering the
tablet, the back yard gave me real delight. There were the old
outhouses, the old back stair, the old back fence, and the little window
looking down on them--the window of Tom Sawyer, beneath which, in the
gloaming, Huckleberry Finn made catcalls to summon forth his fellow
bucaneer. And here, below the window, was the place where Pamela
Clemens, Sam's sister, the original of Cousin Mary in "Tom Sawyer," had
her candy pull on that evening when a boy, in his undershirt, came
tumbling from above.
And to think that, wretched as this place was, the Clemens family were
forced to leave it for a time because they were too poor to live there!
Of a certainty Mark Twain's early life was as squalid as his later life
was rich. However, it was always colorful--he saw to that, straight
through from the barefoot days to those of the white suits, the Oxford
gown, and the European courts.
Not far back of the house rises the "Cardiff Hill" of the stories; in
reality, Holliday's Hill, so called because long ago there lived, up at
the top, old Mrs. Holliday, who burned a lamp in her window every night
as a mark for river pilots to run by. It was down that hill that the
boys rolled the stones which startled churchgoers, and that final,
enormous rock which, by a fortunate freak of chance, hurdled a negro and
his wagon instead of striking and destroying them. Ah, how rich in racy
memories are those streets! Somewhere among them, in that part of town
which has come to be called "Mark-Twainville," is the very spot,
unmarked and unknown, where young Sam Clemens picked up a scrap of
newspaper upon which was printed a portion of the tale of Joan of
Arc--a scrap of paper which, Paine says, gave him his first literary
stimulus. And somewhere else, not far from the house, is the place where
Orion Clemens, Sam's elder brother, ran the ill-starred newspaper on
which Sam worked, setting type and doing his first writing. It was,
indeed, in Orion's paper that Sam's famous verse, "To Mary in Hannibal,"
was published--the title condensed, because of the narrow column, to
read: "To Mary in H--l."
[Illustration: At one side is an alley running back to the house of
Huckleberry Finn, and in that alley stood the historic fence which young
Sam Clemens cajoled the other boys into whitewashing for him]
Along the crest of the bluffs, overlooking the river, the city of
Hannibal has made for itself a charming park, and at the highest point
in this park there is to be unveiled, in a short time, a statue of
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, which, from its position, will command a view
of many leagues of mile-wide Mississippi. It is peculiarly fitting that
the memorial should be stationed in that place. Mark Twain loved the
river. Even though it almost "got" him in his boyhood (he had "nine
narrow escapes from drowning") he adored it; later, when his youthful
ambition to become a river pilot was attained, he still adored it; and
finally he wrote his love of it into that masterpiece, "Life on the
Mississippi," of which Arnold Bennett has said: "I would sacrifice for
it the entire works of Thackeray and George Eliot."
Looking up the river from the spot where the statue will be placed, one
may see Turtle Island, where Tom and Huck used to go and feast on
turtle's eggs--rowing there in that boat which, after they had so
"honestly and industriously" stolen it, they painted red, that its
former proprietor might not recognize it. Below is Glascox Island, where
Nigger Jim hid. Glascox Island is often called Tom Sawyer's Island, or
Mark Twain's Island, now. Not far below the island is the "scar on the
hill-side" which marks the famous cave.
"For Sam Clemens," says Paine in his biography, "the cave had a
fascination that never faded. Other localities and diversions might
pall, but any mention of the cave found him always eager and ready for
the three-mile walk or pull that brought them to the mystic door."
I suggested to my companion that, for the sake of sentiment, we, too,
approach the cave by rowing down the river. And, having suggested the
plan, I offered to take upon myself the heaviest responsibility
connected with it--that of piloting the boat in these unfamiliar waters.
All I required of him was the mere manual act of working the oars. To my
amazement he refused. I fear that he not only lacks sentiment, but that
he is becoming lazy.
We drove out to the cave in a Ford car.
Do you remember when Tom Sawyer took the boys to the cave at night, in
"Huckleberry Finn"?
"We went to a clump of bushes," says Huck, "and Tom made everybody swear
to keep the secret, and then showed them a hole in the hill, right in
the thickest part of the bushes. Then we lit candles and crawled in on
our hands and knees. We went about two hundred yards, and then the cave
opened up. Tom poked about among the passages, and pretty soon ducked
under a wall where you wouldn't 'a' noticed there was a hole. We went
along a narrow place and got into a kind of room, all damp and sweaty
and cold, and there we stopped. Tom says: 'Now we'll start this band of
robbers and call it Tom Sawyer's Gang. Everybody that wants to join has
got to take an oath and write his name in blood.'"
That is the sort of cave it is--a wonderful, mysterious place, black as
India ink; a maze of passage-ways and vaulted rooms, eaten by the waters
of long ago through the limestone cliffs; a seemingly endless cavern
full of stalactites and stalagmites, looking like great conical masses
of candle grease; a damp, oppressive labyrinth of eerie rock formations,
to kindle the most bloodcurdling imaginings.
As we moved in, away from the daylight, illuminating our way, feebly,
with such matches as we happened to have with us, and with newspaper
torches, the man who had driven us out there told us about the cave.
"They ain't no one ever explored it," he said. "'S too big. Why, they's
a lake in here--quite a big lake, with fish in it. And they's an arm of
the cave that goes away down underneath the river. They say they's
wells, too--holes with no bottoms to 'em. Prob'ly that's where them
people went to that's got lost in the cave."
"Have people gotten lost in here?" I asked.
"Oh, yes," he said cheerfully. "They say there's some that's gone in and
never come out again. She's quite a cave."
I began to walk more gingerly into the blackness.
"I suppose," I said to him presently, "there are toads and snakes and
such things here?"
He hastened to set my mind at rest on that.
"Oh, Lord bless you, yes!" he declared. "Bats, too."
"And I suppose some of those holes you speak of are full of snakes?"
"Most likely." His voice reverberated in the darkness. "But I can't be
sure. Nobody that's ever been in them holes ain't lived to tell the
tale."
By this time we had reached a point at which no glimmer of light from
the mouth of the cave was visible. We were feeling our way along,
running our hands over the damp rocks and putting our feet before us
with the utmost caution. I knew, of course, that it would add a good
deal to my story if one of our party fell into a hole and was never
again heard from, but the more I thought about it the more advisable it
seemed to me that I should not be that one. I had an engagement for
dinner that evening, and besides, if I fell in, who would write the
story? Certainly the driver of the auto-hack, for all his good will,
could hardly do it justice; whereas, if he fell in I could at a pinch
drive the little Ford back to the city.
I dropped behind. But when I did that he stopped.
"I just stopped for breath," I said. "You can keep on and I'll follow in
a minute."
"No," he answered, "I'll wait for you. I'm out of breath, too. Besides,
I don't want you to get lost in here."
At this juncture my companion, who had moved a little way off, gave a
frightful yell, which echoed horribly through the cavern.
I could not see him. I did not know what was the matter. Never mind! My
one thought was of him. Perhaps he had been attacked by a wildcat or a
serpent. Well, he was my fellow traveler, and I would stand by him! Even
the chauffeur of the hack seemed to feel the same way. Together we
turned and ran toward the place whence we thought the voice might have
come--that is to say, toward the mouth of the cave. But when we reached
it he wasn't there.
"He must be back in the cave, after all," I said to the driver.
"Yes," he agreed.
"Now, I tell you," I said. "We mustn't both go in after him. One of us
ought to stay here and call to the others to guide them out. I'll do
that. I have a good strong voice. And you go in and find out what's the
matter. You know the cave better than I do."
"Oh, no I don't," said the man.
"Why certainly you do!" I said.
"I wasn't never into the cave before," he said. "Leastways not nowhere
near as far as we was this time."
"But you live right here in Hannibal," I insisted. "You _must_ know more
about it than I do. I live in New York. What could I know about a cave
away out here in Missouri?"
"Well, you know just as much as I do, anyhow," he returned doggedly.
"Look here!" I said sharply. "I hope you aren't a coward? The idea! A
great big fellow like you, too!"
However, at that juncture, our argument was stopped by the appearance of
the missing man. He strolled into the light in leisurely fashion.
"What happened?" I cried.
"Happened?" he repeated. "Nothing happened. Why?"
"You yelled, didn't you?"
"Yes," he said, "I wanted to hear the echoes."
* * * * *
Before leaving Hannibal that afternoon, we had the pleasure of meeting
an old school friend of Samuel Clemens's, Colonel John L. RoBards--the
same John RoBards of whom it is recorded in Paine's work that "he wore
almost continually the medal for amiability, while Samuel Clemens had a
mortgage on the medal for spelling."
Colonel RoBards is still amiable. He took us to his office, showed us a
scrap-book containing clippings in which he was mentioned in connection
with Mark Twain, and told us of old days in the log schoolhouse.
Seeing that I was making notes, the Colonel called my attention politely
to the spelling of his name, requesting that I get it right. Then he
explained to me the reason for the capital B, beginning the second
syllable.
"I may say, sir," he explained in his fine Southern manner, "that I
inserted that capital B myself. At least I converted the small B into a
capital. I am a Kentuckian, sir, and in Kentucky my family name stands
for something. It is a name that I am proud to bear, and I do not like
to be called out of it. But up here I was continually annoyed by the
errors of careless persons. Frequently they would fail to give the
accent on the final syllable, where it should be placed, sir--Ro_Bards_;
that is the way it should be pronounced--but even worse, it happened now
and then that some one called me by the plebeian appellation, Roberts.
That was most distasteful to me, sir. _Most_ distasteful. For that
reason I use the capital B for emphasis."
I was glad to assure the Colonel that in these pages his name would be
correctly spelled, and I call him to witness that I spoke the truth. I
repeat, the name is RoBards. And it is borne by a most amiable
gentleman.
* * * * *
Mr. F. W. Hixson of St. Louis has in his possession an autograph book
which belonged to his mother when she was a young girl (Ann Virginia
Ruffner), residing in Hannibal. In this book, Sam Clemens wrote a verse
at the time when he was preparing to leave the town where he had spent
his youth. I reproduce that boyish bit of doggerel here, solely for the
value of one word which it contains:
Good-by, good-by,
I bid you now, my friend;
And though 'tis hard to say the word,
To destiny I bend.
Never, in his most perfect passages, did Samuel Clemens hit more
certainly upon the one right word than when in this verse he wrote the
second word in the last line.
And what a destiny it was!
[Illustration: Never outside of Brittany and Normandy have I seen roads
so full of animals as those of Pike County]