It was at the beginning of 1906--a little more than a month after the
seventieth-birthday dinner--that the writer of these chapters became
personally associated with Mark Twain. I had met him before, and from
time to time he had returned a kindly word about some book I had written
and inconsiderately sent him, for he had been my literary hero from
childhood. Once, indeed, he had allowed me to use some of his letters in
a biography I was writing of Thomas Nast; he had been always an admirer
of the great cartoonist, and the permission was kindness itself. Before
the seating at the birthday dinner I happened to find myself for a moment
alone with Mark Twain and remembered to thank him in person for the use
of the letters; a day or two later I sent him a copy of the book. I did
not expect to hear from it again.
It was a little while after this that I was asked to join in a small
private dinner to be given to Mark Twain at the Players, in celebration
of his being made an honorary member of that club--there being at the
time only one other member of this class, Sir Henry Irving. I was in the
Players a day or two before the event, and David Munro, of "The North
American Review," a man whose gentle and kindly nature made him "David"
to all who knew him, greeted me joyfully, his face full of something he
knew I would wish to hear.
He had been chosen, he said, to propose the Players' dinner to Mark
Twain, and had found him propped up in bed, and beside him a copy of the
Nast book. I suspect now that David's generous heart prompted Mark Twain
to speak of the book, and that his comment had lost nothing in David's
eager retelling. But I was too proud and happy to question any feature
of the precious compliment, and Munro--always most happy in making others
happy--found opportunity to repeat it, and even to improve upon it
--usually in the presence of others--several times during the evening.
The Players' dinner to Mark Twain was given on the evening of January 3,
19066, and the picture of it still remains clear to me. The guests,
assembled around a single table in the private dining-room, did not
exceed twenty-five in number. Brander Matthews presided, and the
knightly Frank Millet, who would one day go down on the "Titanic," was
there, and Gilder and Munro and David Bispham and Robert Reid, and others
of their kind. It so happened that my seat was nearly facing the guest
of the evening, who by a custom of the Players is placed at the side and
not at the distant end of the long table. Regarding him at leisure, I
saw that he seemed to be in full health. He had an alert, rested look;
his complexion had the tints of a miniature painting. Lit by the soft
glow of the shaded candles, outlined against the richness of the shadowed
walls, he made a figure of striking beauty. I could not take my eyes
from it, for it stirred in me the farthest memories. I saw the interior
of a farm-house sitting-room in the Middle West where I had first heard
the name of Mark Twain, and where night after night a group had gathered
around the evening lamp to hear read aloud the story of the Innocents on
their Holy Land pilgrimage, which to a boy of eight had seemed only a
wonderful poem and fairy-tale. To Charles Harvey Genung, who sat next to
me, I whispered something of this, and how during the thirty-six years
since then no one had meant to me quite what Mark Twain had meant--in
literature and, indeed, in life. Now here he was just across the table.
It was a fairy-tale come true.