commencement day came first. He attended, and willingly, or at least
patiently, sat through the various recitals and orations and
orchestrations, dreaming and remembering, no doubt, other high-school
commencements of more than half a century before, seeing in some of those
young people the boys and girls he had known in that vanished time. A
few friends of his youth were still there, but they were among the
audience now, and no longer fresh and looking into the future. Their
heads were white, and, like him, they were looking down the recorded
years. Laura Hawkins was there and Helen Kercheval (Mrs. Frazer and Mrs.
Garth now), and there were others, but they were few and scattering.
He was added to the program, and he made himself as one of the graduates,
and told them some things of the young people of that earlier time that
brought their laughter and their tears.
He was asked to distribute the diplomas, and he undertook the work in his
own way. He took an armful of them and said to the graduates:
"Take one. Pick out a good one. Don't take two, but be sure you get a
good one."
So each took one "unsight and unseen" aid made the more exact
distributions among themselves later.
Next morning it was Saturday--he visited the old home on Hill Street, and
stood in the doorway all dressed in white while a battalion of
photographers made pictures of "this return of the native" to the
threshold of his youth.
"It all seems so small to me," he said, as he looked through the house;
"a boy's home is a big place to him. I suppose if I should come back
again ten years from now it would be the size of a birdhouse."
He went through the rooms and up-stairs where he had slept and looked out
the window down in the back yard where, nearly sixty years before, Tom
Sawyer, Huck Finn, Joe Harper, and the rest--that is to say, Tom
Blankenship, John Briggs, Will Pitts, and the Bowen boys--set out on
their nightly escapades. Of that lightsome band Will Pitts and John
Briggs still remained, with half a dozen others--schoolmates of the less
adventurous sort. Buck Brown, who had been his rival in the spelling
contests, was still there, and John Robards, who had worn golden curls
and the medal for good conduct, and Ed Pierce. And while these were
assembled in a little group on the pavement outside the home a small old
man came up and put out his hand, and it was Jimmy MacDaniel, to whom so
long before, sitting on the river-bank and eating gingerbread, he had
first told the story of Jim Wolfe and the cats.
They put him into a carriage, drove him far and wide, and showed the
hills and resorts and rendezvous of Tom Sawyer and his marauding band.
He was entertained that evening by the Labinnah Club (whose name was
achieved by a backward spelling of Hannibal), where he found most of the
survivors of his youth. The news report of that occasion states that he
was introduced by Father McLoughlin, and that he "responded in a very
humorous and touchingly pathetic way, breaking down in tears at the
conclusion. Commenting on his boyhood days and referring to his mother
was too much for the great humorist. Before him as he spoke were sitting
seven of his boyhood friends."
On Sunday morning Col. John Robards escorted him to the various churches
and Sunday-schools. They were all new churches to Samuel Clemens, but he
pretended not to recognize this fact. In each one he was asked to speak
a few words, and he began by saying how good it was to be back in the old
home Sunday-school again, which as a boy he had always so loved, and he
would go on and point out the very place he had sat, and his escort
hardly knew whether or not to enjoy the proceedings. At one place he
told a moral story. He said:
Little boys and girls, I want to tell you a story which illustrates the
value of perseverance--of sticking to your work, as it were. It is a
story very proper for a Sunday-school. When I was a little boy in
Hannibal I used to play a good deal up here on Holliday's Hill, which of
course you all know. John Briggs and I played up there. I don't suppose
there are any little boys as good as we were then, but of course that is
not to be expected. Little boys in those days were 'most always good
little boys, because those were the good old times when everything was
better than it is now, but never mind that. Well, once upon a time, on
Holliday's Hill, they were blasting out rock, and a man was drilling for
a blast. He sat there and drilled and drilled and drilled perseveringly
until he had a hole down deep enough for the blast. Then he put in the
powder and tamped and tamped it down, but maybe he tamped it a little too
hard, for the blast went off and he went up into the air, and we watched
him. He went up higher and higher and got smaller and smaller. First he
looked as big as a child, then as big as a dog, then as big as a kitten,
then as big as a bird, and finally he went out of sight. John Briggs was
with me, and we watched the place where he went out of sight, and by and
by we saw him coming down first as big as a bird, then as big as a
kitten, then as big as a dog, then as big as a child, and then he was a
man again, and landed right in his seat and went to drilling just
persevering, you see, and sticking to his work. Little boys and girls,
that's the secret of success, just like that poor but honest workman on
Holliday's Hill. Of course you won't always be appreciated. He wasn't.
His employer was a hard man, and on Saturday night when he paid him he
docked him fifteen minutes for the time he was up in the air--but never
mind, he had his reward.
He told all this in his solemn, grave way, though the Sunday-school was
in a storm of enjoyment when he finished. There still remains a doubt in
Hannibal as to its perfect suitability, but there is no doubt as to its
acceptability.
That Sunday afternoon, with John Briggs, he walked over Holliday's Hill
--the Cardiff Hill of Tom Sawyer. It was jest such a Sunday as that one
when they had so nearly demolished the negro driver and had damaged a
cooper-shop. They calculated that nearly three thousand Sundays had
passed since then, and now here they were once more, two old men with the
hills still fresh and green, the river still sweeping by and rippling in
the sun. Standing there together and looking across to the low-lying
Illinois shore, and to the green islands where they had played, and to
Lover's Leap on the south, the man who had been Sam Clemens said:
"John, that is one of the loveliest sights I ever saw. Down there by the
island is the place we used to swim, and yonder is where a man was
drowned, and there's where the steamboat sank. Down there on Lover's
Leap is where the Millerites put on their robes one night to go to
heaven. None of them went that night, but I suppose most of them have
gone now."
John Briggs said:
"Sam, do you remember the day we stole the peaches from old man Price and
one of his bow-legged niggers came after us with the dogs, and how we
made up our minds that we'd catch that nigger and drown him?"
They came to the place where they had pried out the great rock that had
so nearly brought them to grief. Sam Clemens said:
"John, if we had killed that man we'd have had a dead nigger on our hands
without a cent to pay for him."
And so they talked on of this thing and that, and by and by they drove
along the river, and Sam Clemens pointed out the place where he swam it
and was taken with a cramp on the return swim, and believed for a while
that his career was about to close.
"Once, near the shore, I thought I would let down," he said, "but was
afraid to, knowing that if the water was deep I was a goner, but finally
my knees struck the sand and I crawled out. That was the closest call I
ever had."
They drove by the place where the haunted house had stood. They drank
from a well they had always known, and from the bucket as they had always
drunk, talking and always talking, fondling lovingly and lingeringly that
most beautiful of all our possessions, the past.
"Sam," said John, when they parted, "this is probably the last time we
shall meet on this earth. God bless you. Perhaps somewhere we shall
renew our friendship."
"John," was the answer, "this day has been worth thousands of dollars to
me. We were like brothers once, and I feel that we are the same now.
Good-by, John. I'll try to meet you--somewhere."
CCXXII
A PROPHET HONORED IN HIS COUNTRY
Clemens left next day for Columbia. Committees met him at Rensselaer,
Monroe City, Clapper, Stoutsville, Paris, Madison, Moberly--at every
station along the line of his travel. At each place crowds were gathered
when the train pulled in, to cheer and wave and to present him with
flowers. Sometimes he spoke a few words; but oftener his eyes were full
of tears--his voice would not come.
There is something essentially dramatic in official recognition by one's
native State--the return of the lad who has set out unknown to battle
with life, and who, having conquered, is invited back to be crowned. No
other honor, however great and spectacular, is quite like that, for there
is in it a pathos and a completeness that are elemental and stir emotions
as old as life itself.
It was on the 4th of June, 1902, that Mark Twain received his doctor of
laws degree from the State University at Columbia, Missouri. James
Wilson, Secretary of Agriculture, and Ethan Allen Hitchcock, Secretary of
the Interior, were among those similarly honored. Mark Twain was
naturally the chief attraction. Dressed in his Yale scholastic gown he
led the procession of graduating students, and, as in Hannibal, awarded
them their diplomas. The regular exercises were made purposely brief in
order that some time might be allowed for the conferring of the degrees.
This ceremony was a peculiarly impressive one. Gardner Lathrop read a
brief statement introducing "America's foremost author and best-loved
citizen, Samuel Langhorne Clemens--Mark Twain."
Clemens rose, stepped out to the center of the stage, and paused. He
seemed to be in doubt as to whether he should make a speech or simply
express his thanks and retire. Suddenly, and without a signal, the great
audience rose as one man and stood in silence at his feet. He bowed, but
he could not speak. Then that vast assembly began a peculiar chant,
spelling out slowly the word Missouri, with a pause between each letter.
It was dramatic; it was tremendous in its impressiveness. He had
recovered himself when they finished. He said he didn't know whether he
was expected to make a speech or not. They did not leave him in doubt.
They cheered and demanded a speech, a speech, and he made them one--one
of the speeches he could make best, full of quaint phrasing, happy humor,
gentle and dramatic pathos. He closed by telling the watermelon story
for its "moral effect."
He was the guest of E. W. Stevens in Columbia, and a dinner was given in
his honor. They would have liked to keep him longer, but he was due in
St. Louis again to join in the dedication of the grounds, where was to be
held a World's Fair, to celebrate the Louisiana Purchase. Another
ceremony he attended was the christening of the St. Louis harbor-boat, or
rather the rechristening, for it had been decided to change its name from
the St. Louis--[Originally the Elon G. Smith, built in 1873.]--to the
Mark Twain. A short trip was made on it for the ceremony. Governor
Francis and Mayor Wells were of the party, and Count and Countess
Rochambeau and Marquis de Lafayette, with the rest of the French group
that had come over for the dedication of the World's Fair grounds.
Mark Twain himself was invited to pilot the harbor boat, and so returned
for the last time to his old place at the wheel. They all collected in
the pilot-house behind him, feeling that it was a memorable occasion.
They were going along well enough when he saw a little ripple running out
from the shore across the bow. In the old days he could have told
whether it indicated a bar there or was only caused by the wind, but he
could not be sure any more. Turning to the pilot languidly, he said: "I
feel a little tired. I guess you had better take the wheel."
Luncheon was served aboard, and Mayor Wells made the christening speech;
then the Countess Rochambeau took a bottle of champagne from the hand of
Governor Francis and smashed it on the deck, saying, "I christen thee,
good boat, Mark Twain." So it was, the Mississippi joined in according
him honors. In his speech of reply he paid tribute to those illustrious
visitors from France and recounted something of the story of French
exploration along that great river.
"The name of La Salle will last as long as the river itself," he said;
"will last until commerce is dead. We have allowed the commerce of the
river to die, but it was to accommodate the railroads, and we must be
grateful."
Carriages were waiting for them when the boat landed in the afternoon,
and the party got in and were driven to a house which had been identified
as Eugene Field's birthplace. A bronze tablet recording this fact had
been installed, and this was to be the unveiling. The place was not in
an inviting quarter of the town. It stood in what is known as Walsh's
Row--was fashionable enough once, perhaps, but long since fallen into
disrepute. Ragged children played in the doorways, and thirsty lodgers
were making trips with tin pails to convenient bar-rooms. A curious
nondescript audience assembled around the little group of dedicators,
wondering what it was all about. The tablet was concealed by the
American flag, which could be easily pulled away by an attached cord.
Governor Francis spoke a few words, to the effect that they had gathered
here to unveil a tablet to an American poet, and that it was fitting that
Mark Twain should do this. They removed their hats, and Clemens, his
white hair blowing in the wind, said:
"My friends; we are here with reverence and respect to commemorate and
enshrine in memory the house where was born a man who, by his life, made
bright the lives of all who knew him, and by his literary efforts cheered
the thoughts of thousands who never knew him. I take pleasure in
unveiling the tablet of Eugene Field."
The flag fell and the bronze inscription was revealed. By this time the
crowd, generally, had recognized who it was that was speaking. A
working-man proposed three cheers for Mark Twain, and they were heartily
given. Then the little party drove away, while the neighborhood
collected to regard the old house with a new interest.
It was reported to Clemens later that there was some dispute as to the
identity of the Field birthplace. He said:
"Never mind. It is of no real consequence whether it is his birthplace
or not. A rose in any other garden will bloom as sweet."
CCXXIII
AT YORK HARBOR
They decided to spend the summer at York Harbor, Maine. They engaged a
cottage, there, and about the end of June Mr. Rogers brought his yacht
Kanawha to their water-front at Riverdale, and in perfect weather took
them to Maine by sea. They landed at York Harbor and took possession of
their cottage, The Pines, one of their many attractive summer lodges.
Howells, at Kittery Point, was not far away, and everything promised a
happy summer.
Mrs. Clemens wrote to Mrs. Crane:
We are in the midst of pines. They come up right about us, and the
house is so high and the roots of the trees are so far below the
veranda that we are right in the branches. We drove over to call on
Mr. and Mrs. Howells. The drive was most beautiful, and never in my
life have I seen such a variety of wild flowers in so short a space.
Howells tells us of the wide, low cottage in a pine grove overlooking
York River, and how he used to sit with Clemens that summer at a corner
of the veranda farthest away from Mrs. Clemens's window, where they could
read their manuscripts to each other, and tell their stories and laugh
their hearts out without disturbing her.
Clemens, as was his habit, had taken a work-room in a separate cottage
"in the house of a friend and neighbor, a fisherman and a boatman":
There was a table where he could write, and a bed where he could lie
down and read; and there, unless my memory has played me one of
those constructive tricks that people's memories indulge in, he read
me the first chapters of an admirable story. The scene was laid in
a Missouri town, and the characters such as he had known in boyhood;
but often as I tried to make him own it, he denied having written
any such story; it is possible that I dreamed it, but I hope the MS.
will yet be found.
Howells did not dream it; but in one way his memory misled him. The
story was one which Clemens had heard in Hannibal, and he doubtless
related it in his vivid way. Howells, writing at a later time, quite
naturally included it among the several manuscripts which Clemens read
aloud to him. Clemens may have intended to write the tale, may even have
begun it, though this is unlikely. The incidents were too well known and
too notorious in his old home for fiction.
Among the stories that Clemens did show, or read, to Howells that summer
was "The Belated Passport," a strong, intensely interesting story with
what Howells in a letter calls a "goat's tail ending," perhaps meaning
that it stopped with a brief and sudden shake--with a joke, in fact,
altogether unimportant, and on the whole disappointing to the reader. A
far more notable literary work of that summer grew out of a true incident
which Howells related to Clemens as they sat chatting together on the
veranda overlooking the river one summer afternoon. It was a pathetic
episode in the life of some former occupants of The Pines--the tale of a
double illness in the household, where a righteous deception was carried
on during several weeks for the benefit of a life that was about to slip
away. Out of this grew the story, "Was it Heaven? or Hell?" a
heartbreaking history which probes the very depths of the human soul.
Next to "Hadleyburg," it is Mark Twain's greatest fictional sermon.
Clemens that summer wrote, or rather finished, his most pretentious poem.
One day at Riverdale, when Mrs. Clemens had been with him on the lawn,
they had remembered together the time when their family of little folks
had filled their lives so full, conjuring up dream-like glimpses of them
in the years of play and short frocks and hair-plaits down their backs.
It was pathetic, heart-wringing fancying; and later in the day Clemens
conceived and began the poem which now he brought to conclusion. It was
built on the idea of a mother who imagines her dead child still living,
and describes to any listener the pictures of her fancy. It is an
impressive piece of work; but the author, for some reason, did not offer
it for publication.--[This poem was completed on the anniversary of
Susy's death and is of considerable length. Some selections from it will
be found under Appendix U, at the end of this work.]
Mrs. Clemens, whose health earlier in the year had been delicate, became
very seriously ill at York Harbor. Howells writes:
At first she had been about the house, and there was one gentle afternoon
when she made tea for us in the parlor, but that was the last time I
spoke with her. After that it was really a question of how soonest and
easiest she could be got back to Riverdale.
She had seemed to be in fairly good health and spirits for several weeks
after the arrival at York. Then, early in August, there came a great
celebration of some municipal anniversary, and for two or three days
there were processions, mass-meetings, and so on by day, with fireworks
at night. Mrs. Clemens, always young in spirit, was greatly interested.
She went about more than her strength warranted, seeing and hearing and
enjoying all that was going on. She was finally persuaded to forego the
remaining ceremonies and rest quietly on the pleasant veranda at home;
but she had overtaxed herself and a collapse was inevitable. Howells and
two friends called one afternoon, and a friend of the Queen of Rumania, a
Madame Hartwig, who had brought from that gracious sovereign a letter
which closed in this simple and modest fashion:
I beg your pardon for being a bore to one I so deeply love and
admire, to whom I owe days and days of forgetfulness of self and
troubles, and the intensest of all joys-hero-worship! People don't
always realize what a happiness that is! God bless you for every
beautiful thought you poured into my tired heart, and for every
smile on a weary way. CARMEN SYLVA.
This was the occasion mentioned by Howells when Mrs. Clemens made tea for
them in the parlor for the last time. Her social life may be said to
have ended that afternoon. Next morning the break came. Clemens, in his
notebook for that day, writes:
Tuesday, August 12, 1902. At 7 A.M. Livy taken violently ill.
Telephoned and Dr. Lambert was here in 1/2 hour. She could not
breathe-was likely to stifle. Also she had severe palpitation. She
believed she was dying. I also believed it.
Nurses were summoned, and Mrs. Crane and others came from Elmira. Clara
Clemens took charge of the household and matters generally, and the
patient was secluded and guarded from every disturbing influence. Clemens
slipped about with warnings of silence. A visitor found notices in Mark
Twain's writing pinned to the trees near Mrs. Clemens's window warning
the birds not to sing too loudly.
The patient rallied, but she remained very much debilitated. On
September 3d the note-book says:
Always Mr. Rogers keeps his yacht Kanawha in commission & ready to
fly here and take us to Riverdale on telegraphic notice.
But Mrs. Clemens was unable to return by sea. When it was decided at
last, in October, that she could be removed to Riverdale, Clemens and
Howells went to Boston and engaged an invalid car to make the journey
from York Harbor to Riverdale without change. Howells tells us that
Clemens gave his strictest personal attention to the arrangement of these
details, and that they absorbed him.
There was no particular of the business which he did not scrutinize
and master . . . . With the inertness that grows upon an aging
man he had been used to delegate more and more things, but of that
thing I perceived that he would not delegate the least detail.
They made the journey on the 16th, in nine and a half hours. With the
exception of the natural weariness due to such a trip, the invalid was
apparently no worse on their arrival. The stout English butler carried
her to her room. It would be many months before she would leave it
again. In one of his memoranda Clemens wrote:
Our dear prisoner is where she is through overwork-day & night
devotion to the children & me. We did not know how to value it. We
know now.
And in a notation, on a letter praising him for what he had done for the
world's enjoyment, and for his splendid triumph over debt, he said:
Livy never gets her share of these applauses, but it is because the
people do not know. Yet she is entitled to the lion's share.
He wrote Twichell at the end of October:
Livy drags along drearily. It must be hard times for that turbulent
spirit. It will be a long time before she is on her feet again. It
is a most pathetic case. I wish I could transfer it to myself.
Between ripping & raging & smoking & reading I could get a good deal
of holiday out of it. Clara runs the house smoothly & capitally.
Heavy as was the cloud of illness, he could not help pestering Twichell a
little about a recent mishap--a sprained shoulder:
I should like to know how & where it happened. In the pulpit, as
like as not, otherwise you would not be taking so much pains to
conceal it. This is not a malicious suggestion, & not a personally
invented one: you told me yourself once that you threw artificial
power & impressiveness in your sermons where needed by "banging the
Bible"--(your own words). You have reached a time of life when it
is not wise to take these risks. You would better jump around. We
all have to change our methods as the infirmities of age creep upon
us. Jumping around will be impressive now, whereas before you were
gray it would have excited remark.
Mrs. Clemens seemed to improve as the weeks passed, and they had great
hopes of her complete recovery. Clemens took up some work--a new Huck
Finn story, inspired by his trip to Hannibal. It was to have two parts
--Huck and Tom in youth, and then their return in old age. He did some
chapters quite in the old vein, and wrote to Howells of his plan. Howells
answered:
It is a great lay-out: what I shall enjoy most will be the return of
the old fellows to the scene and their tall lying. There is a
matchless chance there. I suppose you will put in plenty of pegs in
this prefatory part.
But the new story did not reach completion. Huck and Tom would not come
back, even to go over the old scenes.
CCXXIV
THE SIXTY-SEVENTH BIRTHDAY DINNER