Produced by David Widger
MARK TWAIN, A BIOGRAPHY
By Albert Bigelow Paine
VOLUME III, Part 1: 1900-1907
CCXII
THE RETURN OF THE CONQUEROR
It would be hard to exaggerate the stir which the newspapers and the
public generally made over the homecoming of Mark Twain. He had left
America, staggering under heavy obligation and set out on a pilgrimage of
redemption. At the moment when this Mecca, was in view a great sorrow
had befallen him and, stirred a world-wide and soul-deep tide of human
sympathy. Then there had followed such ovation as has seldom been
conferred upon a private citizen, and now approaching old age, still in
the fullness of his mental vigor, he had returned to his native soil with
the prestige of these honors upon him and the vast added glory of having
made his financial fight single-handed-and won.
He was heralded literally as a conquering hero. Every paper in the land
had an editorial telling the story of his debts, his sorrow, and his
triumphs.
"He had behaved like Walter Scott," says Howells, "as millions rejoiced
to know who had not known how Walter Scott had behaved till they knew it
was like Clemens."
Howells acknowledges that he had some doubts as to the permanency of the
vast acclaim of the American public, remembering, or perhaps assuming, a
national fickleness. Says Howells:
He had hitherto been more intelligently accepted or more largely
imagined in Europe, and I suppose it was my sense of this that
inspired the stupidity of my saying to him when we came to consider
"the state of polite learning" among us, "You mustn't expect people
to keep it up here as they do in England." But it appeared that his
countrymen were only wanting the chance, and they kept it up in
honor of him past all precedent.
Clemens went to the Earlington Hotel and began search for a furnished
house in New York. They would not return to Hartford--at least not yet.
The associations there were still too sad, and they immediately became
more so. Five days after Mark Twain's return to America, his old friend
and co-worker, Charles Dudley Warner, died. Clemens went to Hartford to
act as a pall-bearer and while there looked into the old home. To
Sylvester Baxter, of Boston, who had been present, he wrote a few days
later:
It was a great pleasure to me to renew the other days with you, &
there was a pathetic pleasure in seeing Hartford & the house again;
but I realized that if we ever enter the house again to live our
hearts will break. I am not sure that we shall ever be strong
enough to endure that strain.
Even if the surroundings had been less sorrowful it is not likely that
Clemens would have returned to Hartford at this time. He had become a
world-character, a dweller in capitals. Everywhere he moved a world
revolved about him. Such a figure in Germany would live naturally in
Berlin; in England London; in France, Paris; in Austria, Vienna; in
America his headquarters could only be New York.
Clemens empowered certain of his friends to find a home for him, and Mr.
Frank N. Doubleday discovered an attractive and handsomely furnished
residence at 14 West Tenth Street, which was promptly approved.
Doubleday, who was going to Boston, left orders with the agent to draw
the lease and take it up to the new tenant for signature. To Clemens he
said:
"The house is as good as yours. All you've got to do is to sign the
lease. You can consider it all settled."
When Doubleday returned from Boston a few days later the agent called on
him and complained that he couldn't find Mark Twain anywhere. It was
reported at his hotel that he had gone and left no address. Doubleday
was mystified; then, reflecting, he had an inspiration. He walked over
to 14 West Tenth Street and found what he had suspected--Mark Twain had
moved in. He had convinced the caretaker that everything was all right
and he was quite at home. Doubleday said:
"Why, you haven't executed the lease yet."
"No," said Clemens, "but you said the house was as good as mine," to
which Doubleday agreed, but suggested that they go up to the real-estate
office and give the agent notice that he was in possession of the
premises.
Doubleday's troubles were not quite over, however. Clemens began to find
defects in his new home and assumed to hold Doubleday responsible for
them. He sent a daily postal card complaining of the windows, furnace,
the range, the water-whatever he thought might lend interest to
Doubleday's life. As a matter of fact, he was pleased with the place. To
MacAlister he wrote:
We were very lucky to get this big house furnished. There was not
another one in town procurable that would answer us, but this one is
all right-space enough in it for several families, the rooms all
old-fashioned, great size.
The house at 14 West Tenth Street became suddenly one of the most
conspicuous residences in New York. The papers immediately made its
appearance familiar. Many people passed down that usually quiet street,
stopping to observe or point out where Mark Twain lived. There was a
constant procession of callers of every kind. Many were friends, old and
new, but there was a multitude of strangers. Hundreds came merely to
express their appreciation of his work, hoping for a personal word or a
hand-shake or an autograph; but there were other hundreds who came with
this thing and that thing--axes to grind--and there were newspaper
reporters to ask his opinion on politics, or polygamy, or woman's
suffrage; on heaven and hell and happiness; on the latest novel; on the
war in Africa, the troubles in China; on anything under the sun,
important or unimportant, interesting or inane, concerning which one
might possibly hold an opinion. He was unfailing "copy" if they could
but get a word with him. Anything that he might choose to say upon any
subject whatever was seized upon and magnified and printed with
head-lines. Sometimes opinions were invented for him. If he let fall a
few words they were multiplied into a column interview.
"That reporter worked a miracle equal to the loaves and fishes," he said
of one such performance.
Many men would have become annoyed and irritable as these things
continued; but Mark Twain was greater than that. Eventually he employed
a secretary to stand between him and the wash of the tide, as a sort of
breakwater; but he seldom lost his temper no matter what was the request
which was laid before him, for he recognized underneath it the great
tribute of a great nation.
Of course his literary valuation would be affected by the noise of the
general applause. Magazines and syndicates besought him for manuscripts.
He was offered fifty cents and even a dollar a word for whatever he might
give them. He felt a child-like gratification in these evidences of his
market advancement, but he was not demoralized by them. He confined his
work to a few magazines, and in November concluded an arrangement with
the new management of Harper & Brothers, by which that firm was to have
the exclusive serial privilege of whatever he might write at a fixed rate
of twenty cents per word--a rate increased to thirty cents by a later
contract, which also provided an increased royalty for the publication of
his books.
The United States, as a nation, does not confer any special honors upon
private citizens. We do not have decorations and titles, even though
there are times when it seems that such things might be not
inappropriately conferred. Certain of the newspapers, more lavish in
their enthusiasm than others, were inclined to propose, as one paper
phrased it, "Some peculiar recognition--something that should appeal to
Samuel L. Clemens, the man, rather than to Mark Twain, the literate.
Just what form this recognition should take is doubtful, for the case has
no exact precedent."
Perhaps the paper thought that Mark Twain was entitled--as he himself
once humorously suggested-to the "thanks of Congress" for having come
home alive and out of debt, but it is just as well that nothing of the
sort was ever seriously considered. The thanks of the public at large
contained more substance, and was a tribute much more to his mind. The
paper above quoted ended by suggesting a very large dinner and memorial
of welcome as being more in keeping with the republican idea and the
American expression of good-will.
But this was an unneeded suggestion. If he had eaten all the dinners
proposed he would not have lived to enjoy his public honors a month. As
it was, he accepted many more dinners than he could eat, and presently
fell into the habit of arriving when the banqueting was about over and
the after-dinner speaking about to begin. Even so the strain told on
him.
"His friends saw that he was wearing himself out," says Howells, and
perhaps this was true, for he grew thin and pale and contracted a hacking
cough. He did not spare himself as often as he should have done. Once
to Richard Watson Gilder he sent this line of regrets:
In bed with a chest cold and other company--Wednesday.
DEAR GILDER,--I can't. If I were a well man I could explain with
this pencil, but in the cir---ces I will leave it all to your
imagination.
Was it Grady who killed himself trying to do all the dining and
speeching?
No, old man, no, no! Ever yours, MARK.
He became again the guest of honor at the Lotos Club, which had dined him
so lavishly seven years before, just previous to his financial collapse.
That former dinner had been a distinguished occasion, but never before
had the Lotos Club been so brimming with eager hospitality as on the
second great occasion. In closing his introductory speech President
Frank Lawrence said, "We hail him as one who has borne great burdens with
manliness and courage, who has emerged from great struggles victorious,"
and the assembled diners roared out their applause. Clemens in his reply
said:
Your president has referred to certain burdens which I was weighted
with. I am glad he did, as it gives me an opportunity which I
wanted--to speak of those debts. You all knew what he meant when he
referred to it, & of the poor bankrupt firm of C. L. Webster & Co.
No one has said a word about those creditors. There were ninety-six
creditors in all, & not by a finger's weight did ninety-five out of
the ninety-six add to the burden of that time. They treated me
well; they treated me handsomely. I never knew I owed them
anything; not a sign came from them.
It was like him to make that public acknowledgment. He could not let an
unfair impression remain that any man or any set of men had laid an
unnecessary burden upon him-his sense of justice would not consent to it.
He also spoke on that occasion of certain national changes.
How many things have happened in the seven years I have been away
from home! We have fought a righteous war, and a righteous war is a
rare thing in history. We have turned aside from our own comfort
and seen to it that freedom should exist, not only within our own
gates, but in our own neighborhood. We have set Cuba free and
placed her among the galaxy of free nations of the world. We
started out to set those poor Filipinos free, but why that righteous
plan miscarried perhaps I shall never know. We have also been
making a creditable showing in China, and that is more than all the
other powers can say. The "Yellow Terror" is threatening the world,
but no matter what happens the United States says that it has had no
part in it.
Since I have been away we have been nursing free silver. We have
watched by its cradle, we have done our best to raise that child,
but every time it seemed to be getting along nicely along came some
pestiferous Republican and gave it the measles or something. I fear
we will never raise that child.
We've done more than that. We elected a President four years ago.
We've found fault and criticized him, and here a day or two ago we
go and elect him for another four years, with votes enough to spare
to do it over again.
One club followed another in honoring Mark Twain--the Aldine, the St.
Nicholas, the Press clubs, and other associations and societies. His old
friends were at these dinners--Howells, Aldrich, Depew, Rogers,
ex-Speaker Reed--and they praised him and gibed him to his and their
hearts' content.
It was a political year, and he generally had something to say on matters
municipal, national, or international; and he spoke out more and more
freely, as with each opportunity he warmed more righteously to his
subject.
At the dinner given to him by the St. Nicholas Club he said, with deep
irony:
Gentlemen, you have here the best municipal government in the world,
and the most fragrant and the purest. The very angels of heaven
envy you and wish they had a government like it up there. You got
it by your noble fidelity to civic duty; by the stern and ever
watchful exercise of the great powers lodged in you as lovers and
guardians of your city; by your manly refusal to sit inert when base
men would have invaded her high places and possessed them; by your
instant retaliation when any insult was offered you in her person,
or any assault was made upon her fair fame. It is you who have made
this government what it is, it is you who have made it the envy and
despair of the other capitals of the world--and God bless you for
it, gentlemen, God bless you! And when you get to heaven at last
they'll say with joy, "Oh, there they come, the representatives of
the perfectest citizenship in the universe show them the archangel's
box and turn on the limelight!"
Those hearers who in former years had been indifferent to Mark Twain's
more serious purpose began to realize that, whatever he may have been
formerly, he was by no means now a mere fun-maker, but a man of deep and
grave convictions, able to give them the fullest and most forcible
expression. He still might make them laugh, but he also made them think,
and he stirred them to a truer gospel of patriotism. He did not preach a
patriotism that meant a boisterous cheering of the Stars and Stripes
right or wrong, but a patriotism that proposed to keep the Stars and
Stripes clean and worth shouting for. In an article, perhaps it was a
speech, begun at this time he wrote:
We teach the boys to atrophy their independence. We teach them to
take their patriotism at second-hand; to shout with the largest
crowd without examining into the right or wrong of the matter
--exactly as boys under monarchies are taught and have always been
taught. We teach them to regard as traitors, and hold in aversion
and contempt, such as do not shout with the crowd, & so here in our
democracy we are cheering a thing which of all things is most
foreign to it & out of place--the delivery of our political
conscience into somebody else's keeping. This is patriotism on the
Russian plan.
Howells tells of discussing these vital matters with him in "an upper
room, looking south over a quiet, open space of back yards where," he
says, "we fought our battles in behalf of the Filipinos and Boers, and he
carried on his campaign against the missionaries in China."
Howells at the time expressed an amused fear that Mark Twain's
countrymen, who in former years had expected him to be merely a humorist,
should now, in the light of his wider acceptance abroad, demand that he
be mainly serious.
But the American people were quite ready to accept him in any of his
phases, fully realizing that whatever his philosophy or doctrine it would
have somewhat of the humorous form, and whatever his humor, there would
somewhere be wisdom in it. He had in reality changed little; for a
generation he had thought the sort of things which he now, with advanced
years and a different audience, felt warranted in uttering openly. The
man who in '64 had written against corruption in San Francisco, who a few
years later had defended the emigrant Chinese against persecution, who at
the meetings of the Monday Evening Club had denounced hypocrisy in
politics, morals, and national issues, did not need to change to be able
to speak out against similar abuses now. And a newer generation as
willing to herald Mark Twain as a sage as well as a humorist, and on
occasion to quite overlook the absence of the cap and bells.
CCXIII
MARK TWAIN--GENERAL SPOKESMAN
Clemens did not confine his speeches altogether to matters of reform. At
a dinner given by the Nineteenth Century Club in November, 1900, he spoke
on the "Disappearance of Literature," and at the close of the discussion
of that subject, referring to Milton and Scott, he said:
Professor Winchester also said something about there being no modern
epics like "Paradise Lost." I guess he's right. He talked as if he
was pretty familiar with that piece of literary work, and nobody
would suppose that he never had read it. I don't believe any of you
have ever read "Paradise Lost," and you don't want to. That's
something that you just want to take on trust. It's a classic, just
as Professor Winchester says, and it meets his definition of a
classic--something that everybody wants to have read and nobody
wants to read.
Professor Trent also had a good deal to say about the disappearance
of literature. He said that Scott would outlive all his critics.
I guess that's true. That fact of the business is you've got to be
one of two ages to appreciate Scott. When you're eighteen you can
read Ivanhoe, and you want to wait until you're ninety to read some
of the rest. It takes a pretty well-regulated abstemious critic to
live ninety years.
But a few days later he was back again in the forefront of reform,
preaching at the Berkeley Lyceum against foreign occupation in China. It
was there that he declared himself a Boxer.
Why should not China be free from the foreigners, who are only
making trouble on her soil? If they would only all go home what a
pleasant place China would be for the Chinese! We do not allow
Chinamen to come here, and I say, in all seriousness, that it would
be a graceful thing to let China decide who shall go there.
China never wanted foreigners any more than foreigners wanted
Chinamen, and on this question I am with the Boxers every time. The
Boxer is a patriot. He loves his country better than he does the
countries of other people. I wish him success. We drive the
Chinaman out of our country; the Boxer believes in driving us out of
his country. I am a Boxer, too, on those terms.
Introducing Winston Churchill, of England, at a dinner some weeks later,
he explained how generous England and America had been in not requiring
fancy rates for "extinguished missionaries" in China as Germany had done.
Germany had required territory and cash, he said, in payment for her
missionaries, while the United States and England had been willing to
settle for produce--firecrackers and tea.
The Churchill introduction would seem to have been his last speech for
the year 1900, and he expected it, with one exception, to be the last for
a long time. He realized that he was tired and that the strain upon him
made any other sort of work out of the question. Writing to MacAlister
at the end of the year, he said, "I seem to have made many speeches, but
it is not so. It is not more than ten, I think." Still, a respectable
number in the space of two months, considering that each was carefully
written and committed to memory, and all amid crushing social pressure.
Again to MacAlister:
I declined 7 banquets yesterday (which is double the daily average)
& answered 29 letters. I have slaved at my mail every day since we
arrived in mid-October, but Jean is learning to typewrite &
presently I'll dictate & thereby save some scraps of time.
He added that after January 4th he did not intend to speak again for a
year--that he would not speak then only that the matter concerned the
reform of city government.
The occasion of January 4, 1901, was a rather important one. It was a
meeting of the City Club, then engaged in the crusade for municipal
reform. Wheeler H. Peckham presided, and Bishop Potter made the opening
address. It all seems like ancient history now, and perhaps is not very
vital any more; but the movement was making a great stir then, and Mark
Twain's declaration that he believed forty-nine men out of fifty were
honest, and that the forty-nine only needed to organize to disqualify the
fiftieth man (always organized for crime), was quoted as a sort of slogan
for reform.
Clemens was not permitted to keep his resolution that he wouldn't speak
again that year. He had become a sort of general spokesman on public
matters, and demands were made upon him which could not be denied. He
declined a Yale alumni dinner, but he could not refuse to preside at the
Lincoln Birthday celebration at Carnegie Hall, February 11th, where he
must introduce Watterson as the speaker of the evening.
"Think of it!" he wrote Twichell. "Two old rebels functioning there: I
as president and Watterson as orator of the day! Things have changed
somewhat in these forty years, thank God!"
The Watterson introduction is one of the choicest of Mark Twain's
speeches--a pure and perfect example of simple eloquence, worthy of the
occasion which gave it utterance, worthy in spite of its playful
paragraphs (or even because of them, for Lincoln would have loved them),
to become the matrix of that imperishable Gettysburg phrase with which he
makes his climax. He opened by dwelling for a moment on Colonel
Watterson as a soldier, journalist, orator, statesman, and patriot; then
he said:
It is a curious circumstance that without collusion of any kind, but
merely in obedience to a strange and pleasant and dramatic freak of
destiny, he and I, kinsmen by blood--[Colonel Watterson's forebears
had intermarried with the Lamptons.]--for we are that--and one-time
rebels--for we were that--should be chosen out of a million
surviving quondam rebels to come here and bare our heads in
reverence and love of that noble soul whom 40 years ago we tried
with all our hearts and all our strength to defeat and dispossess
--Abraham Lincoln! Is the Rebellion ended and forgotten? Are the
Blue and the Gray one to-day? By authority of this sign we may
answer yes; there was a Rebellion--that incident is closed.
I was born and reared in a slave State, my father was a slaveowner;
and in the Civil War I was a second lieutenant in the Confederate
service. For a while. This second cousin of mine, Colonel
Watterson, the orator of this present occasion, was born and reared
in a slave State, was a colonel in the Confederate service, and
rendered me such assistance as he could in my self-appointed great
task of annihilating the Federal armies and breaking up the Union.
I laid my plans with wisdom and foresight, and if Colonel Watterson
had obeyed my orders I should have succeeded in my giant
undertaking. It was my intention to drive General Grant into the
Pacific--if I could get transportation--and I told Colonel Watterson
to surround the Eastern armies and wait till I came. But he was
insubordinate, and stood upon a punctilio of military etiquette; he
refused to take orders from a second lieutenant--and the Union was
saved. This is the first time that this secret has been revealed.
Until now no one outside the family has known the facts. But there
they stand: Watterson saved the Union. Yet to this day that man
gets no pension. Those were great days, splendid days. What an
uprising it was! For the hearts of the whole nation, North and
South, were in the war. We of the South were not ashamed; for, like
the men of the North, we were fighting for 'flags we loved; and when
men fight for these things, and under these convictions, with
nothing sordid to tarnish their cause, that cause is holy, the blood
spilt for it is sacred, the life that is laid down for it is
consecrated. To-day we no longer regret the result, to-day we are
glad it came out as it did, but we are not ashamed that we did our
endeavor; we did our bravest best, against despairing odds, for the
cause which was precious to us and which our consciences approved;
and we are proud--and you are proud--the kindred blood in your veins
answers when I say it--you are proud of the record we made in those
mighty collisions in the fields.
What an uprising it was! We did not have to supplicate for soldiers
on either side. "We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred
thousand strong!" That was the music North and South. The very
choicest young blood and brawn and brain rose up from Maine to the
Gulf and flocked to the standards--just as men always do when in
their eyes their cause is great and fine and their hearts are in it;
just as men flocked to the Crusades, sacrificing all they possessed
to the cause, and entering cheerfully upon hardships which we cannot
even imagine in this age, and upon toilsome and wasting journeys
which in our time would be the equivalent of circumnavigating the
globe five times over.
North and South we put our hearts into that colossal struggle, and
out of it came the blessed fulfilment of the prophecy of the
immortal Gettysburg speech which said: "We here highly resolve that
these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God,
shall have a new birth of freedom; and that a government of the
people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the
earth."
We are here to honor the birthday of the greatest citizen, and the
noblest and the best, after Washington, that this land or any other
has yet produced. The old wounds are healed, you and we are
brothers again; you testify it by honoring two of us, once soldiers
of the Lost Cause, and foes of your great and good leader--with the
privilege of assisting here; and we testify it by laying our honest
homage at the feet of Abraham Lincoln, and in forgetting that you of
the North and we of the South were ever enemies, and remembering
only that we are now indistinguishably fused together and nameable
by one common great name--Americans!
CCXIV
MARK TWAIN AND THE MISSIONARIES
Mark Twain had really begun his crusade for reform soon after his arrival
in America in a practical hand-to-hand manner. His housekeeper, Katie
Leary, one night employed a cabman to drive her from the Grand Central
Station to the house at 14 West Tenth Street. No contract had been made
as to price, and when she arrived there the cabman's extortionate charge
was refused. He persisted in it, and she sent into the house for her
employer. Of all men, Mark Twain was the last one to countenance an
extortion. He reasoned with the man kindly enough at first; when the
driver at last became abusive Clemens demanded his number, which was at
first refused. In the end he paid the legal fare, and in the morning
entered a formal complaint, something altogether unexpected, for the
American public is accustomed to suffering almost any sort of imposition
to avoid trouble and publicity.
In some notes which Clemens had made in London four years earlier he
wrote:
If you call a policeman to settle the dispute you can depend on one
thing--he will decide it against you every time. And so will the
New York policeman. In London if you carry your case into court the
man that is entitled to win it will win it. In New York--but no one
carries a cab case into court there. It is my impression that it is
now more than thirty years since any one has carried a cab case into
court there.
Nevertheless, he was promptly on hand when the case was called to sustain
the charge and to read the cabdrivers' union and the public in general a
lesson in good-citizenship. At the end of the hearing, to a
representative of the union he said:
"This is not a matter of sentiment, my dear sir. It is simply practical
business. You cannot imagine that I am making money wasting an hour or
two of my time prosecuting a case in which I can have no personal
interest whatever. I am doing this just as any citizen should do. He
has no choice. He has a distinct duty. He is a non-classified
policeman. Every citizen is, a policeman, and it is his duty to assist
the police and the magistracy in every way he can, and give his time, if
necessary, to do so. Here is a man who is a perfectly natural product of
an infamous system in this city--a charge upon the lax patriotism in this
city of New York that this thing can exist. You have encouraged him, in
every way you know how to overcharge. He is not the criminal here at
all. The criminal is the citizen of New York and the absence of
patriotism. I am not here to avenge myself on him. I have no quarrel
with him. My quarrel is with the citizens of New York, who have
encouraged him, and who created him by encouraging him to overcharge in
this way."
The driver's license was suspended. The case made a stir in the
newspapers, and it is not likely that any one incident ever contributed
more to cab-driving morals in New York City.
But Clemens had larger matters than this in prospect. His many speeches
on municipal and national abuses he felt were more or less ephemeral. He
proposed now to write himself down more substantially and for a wider
hearing. The human race was behaving very badly: unspeakable corruption
was rampant in the city; the Boers were being oppressed in South Africa;
the natives were being murdered in the Philippines; Leopold of Belgium
was massacring and mutilating the blacks in the Congo, and the allied
powers, in the cause of Christ, were slaughtering the Chinese. In his
letters he had more than once boiled over touching these matters, and for
New-Year's Eve, 1900, had written:
A GREETING FROM THE NINETEENTH TO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
I bring you the stately nation named Christendom, returning,
bedraggled, besmirched, and dishonored, from pirate raids in Kiao-
Chou, Manchuria, South Africa, and the Philippines, with her soul
full of meanness, her pocket full of boodle, and her mouth full of
pious hypocrisies. Give her soap and towel, but hide the looking-
glass.--[Prepared for Red Cross Society watch-meeting, which was
postponed until March. Clemens recalled his "Greeting" for that
reason and for one other, which he expressed thus: "The list of
greeters thus far issued by you contains only vague generalities and
one definite name--mine: 'Some kings and queens and Mark Twain.' Now
I am not enjoying this sparkling solitude and distinction. It makes
me feel like a circus-poster in a graveyard."]
This was a sort of preliminary. Then, restraining himself no longer, he
embodied his sentiments in an article for the North American Review
entitled, "To the Person Sitting in Darkness." There was crying need for
some one to speak the right word. He was about the only one who could do
it and be certain of a universal audience. He took as his text some
Christmas Eve clippings from the New York Tribune and Sun which he had
been saving for this purpose. The Tribune clipping said:
Christmas will dawn in the United States over a people full of hope
and aspiration and good cheer. Such a condition means contentment
and happiness. The carping grumbler who may here and there go forth
will find few to listen to him. The majority will wonder what is
the matter with him, and pass on.
A Sun clipping depicted the "terrible offenses against humanity committed
in the name of politics in some of the most notorious East Side districts
"--the unmissionaried, unpoliced darker New York. The Sun declared that
they could not be pictured even verbally. But it suggested enough to
make the reader shudder at the hideous depths of vice in the sections
named. Another clipping from the same paper reported the "Rev. Mr.
Ament, of the American Board of Foreign Missions," as having collected
indemnities for Boxer damages in China at the rate of three hundred taels
for each murder, "full payment for all destroyed property belonging to
Christians, and national fines amounting to thirteen times the
indemnity." It quoted Mr. Ament as saying that the money so obtained was
used for the propagation of the Gospel, and that the amount so collected
was moderate when compared with the amount secured by the Catholics, who
had demanded, in addition to money, life for life, that is to say, "head
for head"--in one district six hundred and eighty heads having been so
collected.
The despatch made Mr. Ament say a great deal more than this, but the gist
here is enough. Mark Twain, of course, was fiercely stirred. The
missionary idea had seldom appealed to him, and coupled with this
business of bloodshed, it was less attractive than usual. He printed the
clippings in full, one following the other; then he said:
By happy luck we get all these glad tidings on Christmas Eve--just
the time to enable us to celebrate the day with proper gaiety and
enthusiasm. Our spirits soar and we find we can even make jokes;
taels I win, heads you lose.
He went on to score Ament, to compare the missionary policy in China to
that of the Pawnee Indians, and to propose for him a monument
--subscriptions to be sent to the American Board. He denounced the
national policies in Africa, China, and the Philippines, and showed by
the reports and by the private letters of soldiers home, how cruel and
barbarous and fiendish had been the warfare made by those whose avowed
purpose was to carry the blessed light of civilization and Gospel "to the
benighted native"--how in very truth these priceless blessings had been
handed on the point of a bayonet to the "Person Sitting in Darkness."
Mark Twain never wrote anything more scorching, more penetrating in its
sarcasm, more fearful in its revelation of injustice and hypocrisy, than
his article "To the Person Sitting in Darkness." He put aquafortis on
all the raw places, and when it was finished he himself doubted the
wisdom of printing it. Howells, however, agreed that it should be
published, and "it ought to be illustrated by Dan Beard," he added, "with
such pictures as he made for the Yankee in King Arthur's Court, but you'd
better hang yourself afterward."
Meeting Beard a few days later, Clemens mentioned the matter and said:
"So if you make the pictures, you hang with me."
But pictures were not required. It was published in the North American
Review for February, 1901, as the opening article; after which the
cyclone. Two storms moving in opposite directions produce a cyclone, and
the storms immediately developed; one all for Mark Twain and his
principles, the other all against him. Every paper in England and
America commented on it editorially, with bitter denunciations or with
eager praise, according to their lights and convictions.
At 14 West Tenth Street letters, newspaper clippings, documents poured in
by the bushel--laudations, vituperations, denunciations, vindications; no
such tumult ever occurred in a peaceful literary home. It was really as
if he had thrown a great missile into the human hive, one-half of which
regarded it as a ball of honey and the remainder as a cobblestone.
Whatever other effect it may have had, it left no thinking person
unawakened.
Clemens reveled in it. W. A. Rogers, in Harper's Weekly, caricatured him
as Tom Sawyer in a snow fort, assailed by the shower of snowballs,
"having the time of his life." Another artist, Fred Lewis, pictured him
as Huck Finn with a gun.
The American Board was naturally disturbed. The Ament clipping which
Clemens had used had been public property for more than a month--its
authenticity never denied; but it was immediately denied now, and the
cable kept hot with inquiries.
The Rev. Judson Smith, one of the board, took up the defense of Dr.
Ament, declaring him to be one who had suffered for the cause, and asked
Mark Twain, whose "brilliant article," he said, "would produce an effect
quite beyond the reach of plain argument," not to do an innocent man an
injustice. Clemens in the same paper replied that such was not his
intent, that Mr. Ament in his report had simply arraigned himself.
Then it suddenly developed that the cable report had "grossly
exaggerated" the amount of Mr. Ament's collections. Instead of thirteen
times the indemnity it should have read "one and a third times" the
indemnity; whereupon, in another open letter, the board demanded
retraction and apology. Clemens would not fail to make the apology--at
least he would explain. It was precisely the kind of thing that would
appeal to him--the delicate moral difference between a demand thirteen
times as great as it should be and a demand that was only one and a third
times the correct amount. "To My Missionary Critics," in the North
American Review for April (1901), was his formal and somewhat lengthy
reply.
"I have no prejudice against apologies," he wrote. "I trust I shall
never withhold one when it is due."
He then proceeded to make out his case categorically. Touching the
exaggerated indemnity, he said:
To Dr. Smith the "thirteen-fold-extra" clearly stood for "theft and
extortion," and he was right, distinctly right, indisputably right. He
manifestly thinks that when it got scaled away down to a mere "one-third"
a little thing like that was some other than "theft and extortion." Why,
only the board knows!
I will try to explain this difficult problem so that the board can get an
idea of it. If a pauper owes me a dollar and I catch him unprotected and
make him pay me fourteen dollars thirteen of it is "theft and extortion."
If I make him pay only one dollar thirty-three and a third cents the
thirty-three and a third cents are "theft and extortion," just the same.
I will put it in another way still simpler. If a man owes me one dog
--any kind of a dog, the breed is of no consequence--and I--but let it
go; the board would never understand it. It can't understand these
involved and difficult things.
He offered some further illustrations, including the "Tale of a King and
His Treasure" and another tale entitled "The Watermelons."
I have it now. Many years ago, when I was studying for the gallows,
I had a dear comrade, a youth who was not in my line, but still a
scrupulously good fellow though devious. He was preparing to
qualify for a place on the board, for there was going to be a
vacancy by superannuation in about five years. This was down South,
in the slavery days. It was the nature of the negro then, as now,
to steal watermelons. They stole three of the melons of an adoptive
brother of mine, the only good ones he had. I suspected three of a
neighbor's negroes, but there was no proof, and, besides, the
watermelons in those negroes' private patches were all green and
small and not up to indemnity standard. But in the private patches
of three other negroes there was a number of competent melons. I
consulted with my comrade, the understudy of the board. He said
that if I would approve his arrangements he would arrange. I said,
"Consider me the board; I approve; arrange." So he took a gun and
went and collected three large melons for my brother-on-the-
halfshell, and one over. I was greatly pleased and asked:
"Who gets the extra one?"
"Widows and orphans."
"A good idea, too. Why didn't you take thirteen?"
"It would have been wrong; a crime, in fact-theft and extortion."
"What is the one-third extra--the odd melon--the same?"
It caused him to reflect. But there was no result.
The justice of the peace was a stern man. On the trial he found
fault with the scheme and required us to explain upon what we based
our strange conduct--as he called it. The understudy said:
"On the custom of the niggers. They all do it."--[The point had
been made by the board that it was the Chinese custom to make the
inhabitants of a village responsible for individual crimes; and
custom, likewise, to collect a third in excess of the damage, such
surplus having been applied to the support of widows and orphans of
the slain converts.]
The justice forgot his dignity and descended to sarcasm.
"Custom of the niggers! Are our morals so inadequate that we have
to borrow of niggers?"
Then he said to the jury: "Three melons were owing; they were
collected from persons not proven to owe them: this is theft; they
were collected by compulsion: this is extortion. A melon was added
for the widows and orphans. It was owed by no one. It is another
theft, another extortion. Return it whence it came, with the
others. It is not permissible here to apply to any purpose goods
dishonestly obtained; not even to the feeding of widows and orphans,
for this would be to put a shame upon charity and dishonor it."
He said it in open court, before everybody, and to me it did not
seem very kind.
It was in the midst of the tumult that Clemens, perhaps feeling the need
of sacred melody, wrote to Andrew Carnegie:
DEAR SIR & FRIEND,--You seem to be in prosperity. Could you lend an
admirer $1.50 to buy a hymn-book with? God will bless you. I feel it; I
know it.
N. B.--If there should be other applications, this one not to count.
Yours, MARK.
P. S.-Don't send the hymn-book; send the money; I want to make the
selection myself.
Carnegie answered:
Nothing less than a two-dollar & a half hymn-book gilt will do for
you. Your place in the choir (celestial) demands that & you shall
have it.
There's a new Gospel of Saint Mark in the North American which I
like better than anything I've read for many a day.
I am willing to borrow a thousand dollars to distribute that sacred
message in proper form, & if the author don't object may I send that
sum, when I can raise it, to the Anti-Imperialist League, Boston, to
which I am a contributor, the only missionary work I am responsible
for.
Just tell me you are willing & many thousands of the holy little
missals will go forth. This inimitable satire is to become a
classic. I count among my privileges in life that I know you, the
author.
Perhaps a few more of the letters invited by Mark Twain's criticism of
missionary work in China may still be of interest to the reader:
Frederick T. Cook, of the Hospital Saturday and Sunday Association,
wrote: "I hail you as the Voltaire of America. It is a noble
distinction. God bless you and see that you weary not in well-doing in
this noblest, sublimest of crusades."
Ministers were by no means all against him. The associate pastor of the
Every-day Church, in Boston, sent this line: "I want to thank you for
your matchless article in the current North American. It must make
converts of well-nigh all who read it."
But a Boston school-teacher was angry. "I have been reading the North
American," she wrote, "and I am filled with shame and remorse that I have
dreamed of asking you to come to Boston to talk to the teachers."
On the outside of the envelope Clemens made this pencil note:
"Now, I suppose I offended that young lady by having an opinion of my
own, instead of waiting and copying hers. I never thought. I suppose
she must be as much as twenty-five, and probably the only patriot in the
country."
A critic with a sense of humor asked: "Please excuse seeming
impertinence, but were you ever adjudged insane? Be honest. How much
money does the devil give you for arraigning Christianity and missionary
causes?"
But there were more of the better sort. Edward S. Martin, in a grateful
letter, said: "How gratifying it is to feel that we have a man among us
who understands the rarity of the plain truth, and who delights to utter
it, and has the gift of doing so without cant and with not too much
seriousness."
Sir Hiram Maxim wrote: "I give you my candid opinion that what you have
done is of very great value to the civilization of the world. There is
no man living whose words carry greater weight than your own, as no one's
writings are so eagerly sought after by all classes."
Clemens himself in his note-book set down this aphorism:
"Do right and you will be conspicuous."
CCXV
SUMMER AT "THE LAIR"
In June Clemens took the family to Saranac Lake, to Ampersand. They
occupied a log cabin which he called "The Lair," on the south shore, near
the water's edge, a remote and beautiful place where, as had happened
before, they were so comfortable and satisfied that they hoped to return
another summer. There were swimming and boating and long walks in the
woods; the worry and noise of the world were far away. They gave little
enough attention to the mails. They took only a weekly paper, and were
likely to allow it to lie in the postoffice uncalled for. Clemens,
especially, loved the place, and wrote to Twichell:
I am on the front porch (lower one-main deck) of our little bijou of
a dwelling-house. The lake edge (Lower Saranac) is so nearly under
me that I can't see the shore, but only the water, small-poxed with
rain splashes--for there is a heavy down pour. It is charmingly
like sitting snuggled up on a ship's deck with the stretching sea
all around but very much more satisfactory, for at sea a rainstorm
is depressing, while here of course the effect engendered is just a
deep sense of comfort & contentment. The heavy forest shuts us
solidly in on three sides--there are no neighbors. There are
beautiful little tan-colored impudent squirrels about. They take
tea 5 P.M. (not invited) at the table in the woods where Jean does
my typewriting, & one of them has been brave enough to sit upon
Jean's knee with his tail curved over his back & munch his food.
They come to dinner 7 P.M. on the front porch (not invited), but
Clara drives them away. It is an occupation which requires some
industry & attention to business. They all have the one name
--Blennerhasset, from Burr's friend--& none of them answers to it
except when hungry.
Clemens could work at "The Lair," often writing in shady seclusions along
the shore, and he finished there the two-part serial,--[ Published in
Harper's Magazine for January and February, 1902.]--"The Double-Barrelled
Detective Story," intended originally as a burlesque on Sherlock Holmes.
It did not altogether fulfil its purpose, and is hardly to be ranked as
one of Mark Twain's successes. It contains, however, one paragraph at
least by which it is likely to be remembered, a hoax--his last one--on
the reader. It runs as follows:
It was a crisp and spicy morning in early October. The lilacs and
laburnums, lit with the glory-fires of autumn, hung burning and
flashing in the upper air, a fairy bridge provided by kind nature
for the wingless wild things that have their home in the tree-tops
and would visit together; the larch and the pomegranate flung their
purple and yellow flames in brilliant broad splashes along the
slanting sweep of woodland, the sensuous fragrance of innumerable
deciduous flowers rose upon the swooning atmosphere, far in the
empty sky a solitary oesophagus slept upon motionless wing;
everywhere brooded stillness, serenity, and the peace of God.
The warm light and luxury of this paragraph are factitious. The careful
reader will, note that its various accessories are ridiculously
associated, and only the most careless reader will accept the oesophagus
as a bird. But it disturbed a great many admirers, and numerous letters
of inquiry came wanting to know what it was all about. Some suspected
the joke and taunted him with it; one such correspondent wrote:
MY DEAR MARK TWAIN,--Reading your "Double-Barrelled Detective Story"
in the January Harper's late one night I came to the paragraph where
you so beautifully describe "a crisp and spicy morning in early
October." I read along down the paragraph, conscious only of its
woozy sound, until I brought up with a start against your oesophagus
in the empty sky. Then I read the paragraph again. Oh, Mark Twain!
Mark Twain! How could you do it? Put a trap like that into the
midst of a tragical story? Do serenity and peace brood over you
after you have done such a thing?
Who lit the lilacs, and which end up do they hang? When did larches
begin to flame, and who set out the pomegranates in that canyon?
What are deciduous flowers, and do they always "bloom in the fall,
tra la"?
I have been making myself obnoxious to various people by demanding
their opinion of that paragraph without telling them the name of the
author. They say, "Very well done." "The alliteration is so
pretty." "What's an oesophagus, a bird?" "What's it all mean,
anyway?" I tell them it means Mark Twain, and that an oesophagus is
a kind of swallow. Am I right? Or is it a gull? Or a gullet?
Hereafter if you must write such things won't you please be so kind
as to label them?
Very sincerely yours,
ALLETTA F. DEAN.
Mark Twain to Miss Dean:
Don't you give that oesophagus away again or I'll never trust you
with another privacy!
So many wrote, that Clemens finally felt called upon to make public
confession, and as one searching letter had been mailed from Springfield,
Massachusetts, he made his reply through the Republican of that city.
After some opening comment he said: