ABROAD WITH
MARK TWAIN
and EUGENE FIELD
_Tales They Told to a Fellow Correspondent_
By
HENRY W. FISHER
[Illustration]
NICHOLAS L. BROWN
NEW YORK MCMXXII
COPYRIGHT, 1922
_by_
NICHOLAS L. BROWN
To
MARIAN PHELPS
(_Mrs. Phelps-Peters_)
whose youth, beauty and cleverness delighted Mark Twain in his troubled
Berlin days.
_EDITOR’S NOTE_
_Along in 1909, Fisher and I were working for the same newspaper,
Fisher as a special writer and I in the art department. We both
subsequently escaped, but that is another story. Just then I happened
to be working on the_ BIBLIOGRAPHY OF MARK TWAIN _(Harper, 1910).
Fisher told me that he was going to do some magazine stories on Mark
and promised to let me have proofs, but a week or two later he went
away on one of his periodical trips to Europe, and I lost track of him
for several years._
_Some time in 1921, I met him on Broadway, New York. “Hello, Fisher,”
says I, “where have you been, what are you doing, and where are those
flowing whiskers you used to sport?”_
_“Hello, Johnson,” replied Fisher, peering at me through his thick
glasses, “I am just back from London, the air raids scared off my
whiskers, and my eyesight has become so bad, I am only fit to be a
‘dictator’ now.”_
_“Well,” says I, continuing our conversation of many years ago, “where
are those Mark Twain yarns you promised me?”_
_“In my head,” he said; “never had time to put them on paper.” “You
know,” he added, “old Mark and I spent many weeks and months together
in Berlin and Vienna and frequently met in London and Paris, not to
mention more out-of-the-way places, and if I really put my mind to
it, I can remember reams of Mark Twain’s sayings, while others are
available in notebooks, diaries and such I kept off and on. And come to
think of it, I can tell you about Eugene Field over there as well. I
happened to occupy an editorial position in London, while Gene tried to
set the Thames afire and--failed, poor chap.”_
_“Then,” says I, “come up to the studio any day, to-morrow if you like.
I will have a stenographer there and you can start dictating your
stories and we shall set the world laughing, putting them in a book.”_
_Fisher did, and here’s the book._
* * * * *
_Twain and Field did not expatriate themselves to the extent of
other gifted Americans--Henry James, Bret Harte, Whistler, Abbey and
Sargent--yet Twain settled down for months, and even years, in various
European countries, while Field tried, during a hundred days or more,
to make a go of it in London, before capitulating to climate and
home-hunger._
_Previous glimpses of these two great American humorists during their
several sojourns in Europe have come to us almost wholly through their
letters to friends at home. Of course, a man reveals himself to a great
extent in his private correspondence and diaries, but, even so, the
picture is never complete; he cannot quite see himself as others see
him. How Twain and Field appeared to another American in their strange
environment is here set down for the first time._
_Fisher was in a unique position for contact with these men, both of
whom he had met previously in the United States. He was one of the
most widely known American correspondents in foreign parts; he had
written for the Dalziel News Company (then a sort of United Press,
dealing with the European continent) letters from Paris, Berlin, St.
Petersburg, Copenhagen, Belgrade, Vienna, Budapest, etc., that were
telegraphed all over the world. He had acted as correspondent for the
New York Telegram, the New York World, the New York Sun, the London
Evening News, the Paris Messenger and the St. James Gazette; he had
written special articles for Harper’s Weekly, printed alongside of Mark
Twain’s contributions. He knew, or at least had a smattering knowledge
of, all European languages; he knew every European capital or resort by
eyesight and insight; he had met the great personages of Europe. So it
was quite in the nature of things that Mark and Field ran across Fisher
at the common meeting places in foreign parts, the U. S. Embassies and
Legations; likewise that these American writers accepted his guidance
in the strange world they found themselves in._
_Paine, Twain’s great biographer, speaks of Fisher’s contact with the
famous author (vol. II, p. 935, “Mark Twain: A Biography”). Fisher’s
memory, trained by years of interviewing, when no notes could be taken
in the presence of the interviewed, has retained the substance and the
manner, if not always the exact language, used and exchanged._
_Some writers reveal themselves only in their written, carefully edited
works, but Twain’s unique personality was as eminent, as inspiring and
as lasting in his daily walks and talks as in his books and lectures.
In so far as Fisher reproduces the meaning of Twain’s observations on
persons and things abroad, these anecdotes are of value to all friends
and admirers of the great humorist. The same applies to Eugene Field,
though, of course, in a more limited degree._
_MERLE JOHNSON._
_New York,
January, 1922._
CONTENTS
PAGE
Editor’s Note vii
Author’s Preface xv
How Mark Would Safeguard England 25
Mark Philosophized on Willie 33
Mark--Regicide 34
The Funniest Speech Mark Ever Heard 36
Monarchical Atavism 42
Democratic Mark and the Austrian Aristocracy 43
Phil Sheridan’s Friend 45
“Elizabeth Was a He,” Said Mark 47
Mark, the Sleight-of-hand Man 55
Mark and the Imperial Mistress 57
Mark on Lynch Law 59
Recollections of King Charles and Grant 62
Mark Missed Gallows-land 64
Think of Her Sorrows 66
Breaking the News Gently 67
Dukes and Unborn Car Horses 69
“Pa Used to Be a Terrible Man” 70
Mark on the Berlin Cops 71
The Sausage Room 74
Mark’s Glimpse of Schopenhauer 77
“Murderer” Blucher in Oxford 86
Mark’s Human Side 88
An Australian Surprise 90
Mark in France and Italy 92
Why Mark Wouldn’t Like to Die Abroad 93
The Left Hand Didn’t Know 95
American Humorists 96
Telepathy or Suggestion 97
Trying to Be Serious Didn’t Work 99
Assorted Beauties 100
Mark’s Children Knew Him 101
Mark, Dogs, Dagoes, and Cats 102
The Tragedy of Genius 103
Kilties and the Lassie 105
A Wise Provision of Providence 107
The Awful German Language 108
Artist or Photographer 110
Mark Interviewed the Barber about Harry Thaw 112
His Portrait--a Mirror 115
Mark, Bismarck, Lincoln, and Darwin 116
Mark at the Stock Exchange, Vienna 120
Mark and the Prussian Lieutenant 121
Mark Studies the Costermonger Language 123
That _Beautiful_ Funeral 125
Ada’s Beast of a Man 126
Jealousy in Lowland 127
The Troubles of Liz 128
The French Madame 130
The Great Disappointment 134
Rheumatism and Prodding 137
On Literary Friendships 138
Bayard Taylor’s German 139
Genius in Extremis 140
What May Happen to You after You Are Dead 143
Kings in Their Birthday Suits 146
Mark on Lincoln’s Humanity 147
An English Lover of Kings and a Hater 150
Mark Got Arrested in Berlin 154
Books that Weren’t Written 157
Mark Enjoyed Other Humorists 160
Mark and the English Hack-writer 162
Mark Thought Joan of Arc Was Slandered 164
Running Amuck--Almost 166
Mark’s Idiomatic Gems 167
Mark and the Girls that Love a Lord 168
Mark’s Martyrdom 173
Slang Not in Mark’s Dictionary 175
Mark “No Gentleman” 177
Mark, Poetry, and Art 178
Mark Sheds Light on English History 179
Mark Explains Dean Swift 183
Mark in Tragedy and Comedy 185
“Ambition Is a Jade that More Than One Man Can Ride” 190
Mark as a Translator 192
Mark in England 194
Why Mark Was Uncomfortable in the King of Sweden’s Presence 196
Mark’s Idea of High Art 197
Mark Meets King Leopold--Almost 199
Sizing Up of Aristocracy by Mark 201
The Bald-headed Woman 204
When a Publisher Dines and Wines You 205
Mark in Politics 208
Mark on “Royal Honors” 209
American Women the Prettiest 212
Where Tay Pay Isn’t Tay Pay 213
The Man Who Didn’t Get Used to Hanging 214
Stray Sayings of Mark 218
Eugene Field and His Troubles in Chicago 223
More of Eugene Field’s Trials in London 227
Gene, a “Success of Curiosity” 230
Dire Consequences of American Horseplay 233
Field’s Library of Humor 240
Those German Professors 241
Eugene Field and Northern Lore 243
Little Boy Blue 246
PREFACE
To begin with, of course, I don’t claim that _all_ these stories are
absolutely first hand. I sometimes jotted down what I heard Mark say,
or stored his talk in some compartment of memory, only to hear him
repeat the yarn, after a space, in quite different fashion.
“You remind me of Charles II,” I said to him once, referring to that
confusing habit of his, and was going to “substantiate” when he
interrupted.
“I can guess what you mean, but never mind, for all you know I may be
Charlie’s reincarnation. Charles, you wanted to say, had only three
stories up his sleeve and these he told over and over again for new
ones to Nell and the rest of the bunch. And varied them so cleverly and
disguised them so well, that his audience never got on to the fact that
His Majesty had been chestnutting. As for me, I can only hope that I
will succeed as well as Charlie did.”
In Berlin I once heard Susie Clemens--ill-fated, talented girl, who
died so young--say to her father: “Grouchy again! They _do_ say that
you can be funny when company is around--too bad that you don’t
consider Henry Fisher company.”
“Out of the mouth of sucklings,” quoth Clemens and gave Susie the
twenty marks she was after, and he kissed her: “Good-by, little
blackmailer, and don’t tell your mamma how you worked that fool papa of
yours.”
Indeed, Mark was not always the humorist the public mind pictures him.
Very often, for long hours at a time, in our intercourse extending
over thirty years, he was decidedly serious, while at other times he
grumbled at everything and everybody. His initial object in choosing
me for his “bear-leader” was to add to his stock of knowledge on
foreign affairs and to correct erroneous ideas he might have acquired
from books. Since I had resided many years on the Continent, and had
command of the languages he lacked, he asked me to pilot him around
Berlin, Paris, and Vienna, and on such occasions his talk was more
often deep and learned than laughter-provoking. In an afternoon or
morning’s work--getting atmosphere, _i. e._, “the hang of things”
German or Austrian, as Mark called it--he sometimes dropped two or
three memorable witticisms, but familiar intercourse in the long
run left no doubt of the fact that a very serious vein bordering on
melancholy underlay his mask of bonhomie. On the other hand a closer or
more intelligent student of life never lived. He was as conscientious,
as true, and as simple as Washington Irving.
Those occasional lapses into dejection notwithstanding, it struck
me that Mark extracted his humor out of the bounty and abundance of
his own nature. Hence his tinkling grotesquerie, unconventionality,
whimsicality, play of satire, and shrieking irony, between touches of
deep seriousness.
Really much of Mark’s wisdom began and ended in humor and vice versa.
There was originality and penetration in everything he said. Howells
has said of Mark: “If a trust of his own was betrayed--Clemens was
ruthlessly, implacably resentful.” For my part, in thirty years, I
never heard him speak ill of any living person, except one or two
self-appointed editors.
I first met him in Chicago during the Grant celebration, November,
1879, when I heard him give the toast on babies, but I do not remember
a word of his speech, for while it lasted I was sitting next to Grant
and Grant kept me busy watching and attending his immutable and
eloquent silence.
When Mark and I were fellow correspondents in Berlin, I met his wife
and family frequently at their home, at the Hotel Royal, and on public
occasions. The three girls, Jean, Susie, and Clara, were in their
teens, and both lovely and lively. At that time the late William Walter
Phelps of New Jersey was American minister in Berlin. We had been
friends in America and Phelps had also known Mr. Clemens in the States
socially. Like everybody else, he delighted in Mark’s stimulating
company. Among other distinguished Americans in Berlin, in 1891, was
Ward Hill Lamon, Abraham Lincoln’s Springfield law partner, later
his private secretary, and Marshal of the District of Columbia during
Lincoln’s administration. Lamon was the author of “The Life of Abraham
Lincoln” and “Recollections of Abraham Lincoln.” These books the
Lincoln family did not enjoy.
When the Clemenses went to live in Vienna, six years later, I happened
to be correspondent at the Austrian capital for Dalziel’s News, London,
and Galignani’s Messenger, Paris, and as Mark, used to the Berlin
dialect, found it difficult “to acclimatize his German, making it chime
in with the Vienna variety” (his own description), I was again much in
demand as interpreter, pathfinder, and general cicerone.
In later years I met Mark repeatedly during his several London seasons,
for, liking his society, I called at Brown’s or his apartment whenever
he came to England, myself being engaged in literary work there. We
were never on terms of particular intimacy--hail-fellows-well-met, yes!
“Hello, Mark”--“Hello Henry W.--you here again?” We stuck verbally to
the formula of the old Chicago days, and I was glad to be of use to him
when it suited his fancy. Moreover, I was vastly interested in Mark’s
books, short stories, and essays, but found him rarely inclined to talk
shop unless it was the other fellow’s.
Rudyard Kipling he used to designate “the militant spokesman of the
Anglo-Saxon races,” and he sometimes spoke with near-admiration of
Bernard Shaw, “whose plays are popular from London to St. Petersburg,
from Christiania to Madrid, from Havre to Frisco, and from Frisco to
the Antipodes, while mine are nowhere.”
After I visited Tolstoy at Yasnaya Polyana he said to me: “Lucky
dog, you have broken bread with the man who commands, and almost
monopolizes, the thought of the world.”
That the universality of his humor and its humanity made him the peer
of these great writers, of all his contemporaries in fact, seemed to
be far from his thoughts. His verbal humor, like his fancy, was as
simple in form and as direct in application as were the army orders
of the great Napoleon. He liked to hear me say that, for he knew that
some of my forbears had been individually attached to the person of the
Emperor. But the most he ever said concerning his authorship and other
writers in his own line was this:
“I pity the fellow who has to create a dialect or paraphrase the
dictionary to get laughs. Like you and Susie” (referring to his oldest
daughter) “I can’t spell, but I have never stooped to spell cat with a
‘k’ to get at your funny bone. I love a drink, but I never encouraged
drunkenness by harping on its alleged funny side.”
One more of his sayings: At the unveiling of a bronze tablet to Eugene
Field, Mark uttered these words:
“By his life he made bright the lives of all who knew him and by his
books he cheered the thoughts of thousands who didn’t know him.”
Substitute “millions” for thousands and you have Mark Twain the Man and
Mark Twain the Writer.
***
One afternoon, having laughed our fill with the “Belle of New York”
and rejoiced in the London success of the piece (Mark, who while alive
enjoyed scant luck as a playwright, yet loved to see others “win out”),
our friend and the present writer happened to cross Bedford Square.
Seeing the name at a street corner, Mark pulled out his notebook.
“Eugene Field lived somewhere around here in 1889,” he said. I showed
him the house, No. 20 Alfred Street.
“A dark and dismal hole,” said Mark, ruefully shaking his head; “no
wonder he couldn’t find his ‘righteous stomach’ there, even in the
absence of Chicago pies.”
“And _coffee_,” I interpolated. “Yours truly, too, would have died of
dyspepsia if he had stayed in Chicago and continued at Henrici’s coffee
and pie counter, as Gene did.”
Mark remained silent for a block or two. “I’ve got it,” he said at
last, “God gave Gene a good enough stomach, and English hospitality
completely paralyzed what was left of his digestive powers after the
Cook County coffee and pie diet. Did you see much of Gene while he was
in London?”
I told Mark all I knew about Field’s social and literary doings.
“Bennett was right when he refused him a job on the London Herald,”
said Clemens. “For one thing, the Herald didn’t last long, and the
English climate would have cut poor Gene’s life still shorter by two or
three winters and falls.”
Just the same, the desire for a London success, then
common among American writers and artists, killed Eugene
Field, the genial and lovable poet of childhood and
man-about-literature’s-highways-and-byways.
HENRY W. FISHER.
In the last days of
December, 1921.
ABROAD WITH MARK TWAIN
HOW MARK WOULD SAFEGUARD ENGLAND.[A]
“Not on your life,” said Mark Twain, in pajamas and dressing gown,
lolling in his big armchair at Brown’s (“the only subdued and homelike
inn left in London,” he used to call it)--“not if you bring the Bath
Club (and tub) right into this suite so I don’t have to shock my good
English friends by painting the town blue skipping across Dover Street
in my dressing gown. By the way,” he added, winking an eye at Bram
Stoker, “my daughter Clara bought me this--” (he held up the skirts
of his bathrobe with both hands) “a most refined girl! If she wasn’t,
would she have sent me a wire like this?
“‘Much worried by newspapers. Remember proprieties.’”
“And what did you answer?” asked Bram.
“None of your business! You are getting as fresh as a reporter,”
snapped Twain, with mock severity, while looking at me.
In the meanwhile I consulted my notebook. “It’s sixteen years since the
Kaiser--” I reopened the case--
“Oh, I have a notebook too. Wait a minute,” interrupted Twain. He gave
his secretary directions, and presently read from an old, much worn
diary, sustaining my date-line as it were--
“... since this democratic lamb and the Imperial lion laid down
together, a little General providing grub--”
“Sixteen years is a long time, and if the Kaiser imposed silence
upon you then and there, the lid is certainly off now,” I insisted.
“Besides, at present, he’s got Nietzsche on the brain.”
“I don’t care whether Annie Besant and William Jennings Bryan occupy
lofts in his upper story,” said Twain. “I had promised Von Versen” (the
General and Mark’s relation) “not to talk about that jamboree, and the
worms, if interested, will have to turn burglars and jimmy my brain
cells, where memories of the banquet are stored, for I swear I’ll leave
no skeleton key.”
“Pshaw! You are still sore because Willie wouldn’t let you get in a
word edgewise,” said Stoker.
“Man alive!” cried Twain, “his talk was selling books for me. I was in
rotten bad shape then financially, doing syndicate work for ‘The Sun’
and ‘McClure’s’. Could I afford to say, ‘Can your talk, Willie’?--like
poverty, they have you with them always--but I am here for a short time
only--my turn to stir up the animals.”
We agreed that if an emperor climbs the dizzy heights of bookmongerdom
he ought to have all the rope he wants.
“And did you like the British better than the Berlin brand of king?”
was asked.
“They let me do a lot of talking at Windsor,” evaded honest Mark. “I
like these folks immensely. Ed is a manly fellow, despite his Hoboken
accent--no wonder he fought with his ma, who wore the pants while
Albert was alive, and tried to impose her German policies on her
successor-to-be. Ed recalled an indigestion which we both entertained
at Homburg, at the Elizabeth Spa there, which is more kinds of pure
salt than Kissingen even. The blonde Fräulein who had sold us the
liquid caviar advised walking it off, and as stomachache inclines to
democracy the same as toothache, I didn’t mind tramping with Ed, though
I fancied that I would hear more about royal inner works than was
decent for a minister’s son.”
“Did you tell the King any yarns?”
“Well, he referred to my giving out that interview about the news of
my death being greatly exaggerated, and was pleased to call it funny.
When I said that everybody more or less was given to overstatement,
Ed commented, dryly, ‘Especially my nephew of Germany.’ So I told the
story of the Russian Jew who claimed to have been chased by 47 wolves.
“‘You probably were so frightened you saw double,’ suggested the
magistrate.
“‘There were 12 at least,’ insisted Isaac.
“‘Won’t half a dozen do?’
“‘As I live, there were seven.’
“‘Now tell the truth, Isaac. There was one wolf--one is enough to
frighten a little Israelite like you.’
“Isaac, glad of saving one out of 47, nodded.
“‘But maybe the creature wasn’t a wolf at all!’
“‘No wolf!’ cried Isaac, ‘what else could he be? Didn’t he have four
legs, and didn’t he wag his tail?’
“After that Ed turned me over to the Queen and a tribe of Princes and
Princesses, who all seemed much relieved when I solemnly informed them
that I had no intention of buying Windsor Castle this trip. Then we
talked commonplaces until Alexandra commanded me to put on my hat lest
I catch cold, which gave me a chance to tell about Will Penn. Penn,
you’ll remember, insisted on wearing his hat everywhere. When he saw
King Charles, the second of his name, doff his chapeau at a court
function, the future Philadelphian inquired:
“‘Friend Charles, why dost thou take off thy lid?’
“‘Because,’ answered Charles, ‘it is customary at court that only one
may remain covered in the King’s presence.’
“I was ashamed, cracking that chestnut,” said Mark, “but Alexandra and
the youngsters seemed to think it a real side-splitter to judge by the
noise they made.”
“Nice people,” said Bram.
“You bet,” spoke Mark emphatically, “and that’s why I’ll have a word
or two with the War Office of this here realm before I quit. I have
been thinking, you know. When we got through with the grub at General
Versen’s and retired to the smoking room, that Kaiser, in the meantime
reinforced by a lot of his officers that came in for beer, pretzels
and cigars--that Kaiser worked himself up into a fine frenzy about his
U-boats. His Germania Shipyards at Kiel (they were really Krupps, but
he was the principal stockholder) would turn out better and bigger
U-boats, he said, than the French and English could ever hope to build.
And when he had enough of them, with all the improvements science and
technique could provide--then beware, proud Albion!
“Invasion was the least he threatened unless England helped him
exterminate France.
“‘It was the easiest thing in the world,’ boasted William, ‘a hundred
U-boats operating against England, Scotland and Ireland simultaneously
could pull off the trick in a day or two.’”
Mark lit a fresh cigar, tilted his feet as high as the chiffonier
allowed and developed what he was pleased to call his “strategy.”
“You see,” he said, “the waters ’round these islands are charted to
the last half pint. The British Admiralty knows the bottom as well as
the surface and the coast. Now suppose Willie or any other divinely
Appointed One (I don’t think, though, there is another as foolish and
reckless as he) should attempt to carry out that invasion threat. Mind,
its possibilities are not denied by British strategists; I have made
inquiries. Now, to meet invasion in the old orthodox way would cost a
million lives, a thousand millions in treasure, and, after all, the
result would be problematical.
“To make defeat of the invasion plans certain, we must forestall
execution. And the only way to do that is to stew those U-boats in
their own electric fat--juice, I mean. See my point?”
Bram and I said we did, “but--” and Twain, knowing that we were lying
like thieves, explained:
“In time of peace, et cetera.... In this case (I will have the device
patented, of course) we will build a steel fence all around the three
kingdoms, height to be determined by local conditions. In all cases it
will be so graduated as to allow the biggest ocean liner to pass over,
yet high enough to bar the biggest and the smallest U-boat pirate. Are
you on?” asked Mark.
Bram said he was, but I couldn’t tell another lie before luncheon.
“Well, it’s this way, you duffer,” said Mark, “somewhere, everywhere
on the English, Scottish and Irish coasts, immense dynamos will be
established--these with no fancy brushes, mark you--to connect with
certain points of my steel fence by naked cables.
“The British Admiralty will know, of course, when the U-boat armada
sets out, and will turn on the current when and where it will do the
most harm. Now the moment a U-boat touches my fence, out of business it
goes, goes for good, but at the same time its agony will start. For my
fence will be magnetized as well as electrified, and though the U-boat
is momentarily repulsed, it is held, at the same time, captive by a
giant magnet.
“Think of the fine time the enemy crew will have,” chuckled Twain,
“with ten thousands of volts pumped into their vessel at the bottom of
the sea, the magnet preventing its getaway.
“Boys,” he continued, “I would like to sit on top of Big Ben” (in the
tower of Parliament House, London) “and direct the electric strokes
myself.”
“And this epoch-making invention of yours, will you present it to Great
Britain as a free gift?”
“Not I,” said Twain. “I have a family to look after. I intend to get
a round million sterling from the War Office here. And if the British
refuse to pay, why, when you come to think of it, we have quite a long
coast line in the United States--”
While Mark was speaking, Sir Thomas Lipton came in with a newspaper
poster, four days old, that read:
MARK TWAIN ARRIVES ASCOT CUP STOLEN
And that turned the conversation into other channels.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] London, June 24th or 25th, 1907, a few days after the famous Royal
Garden Party at Windsor, where Mark had been lionized. Persons present,
Mark Twain and secretary, Bram Stoker, and author.
MARK PHILOSOPHIZED ON WILLIE
Mark had attended a masked ball at the Berlin Palace and was asked what
he thought of William Hohenzollern dressed up as Frederick the Great.
“He reminded me of the little speech addressed by a Cossack Chief to
Orloff, the lover of Catharine of Russia. Orloff visited the chief
wearing a French court costume. The Cossack began to laugh.
“‘What is there to laugh at?’ demanded Orloff in a rage.
“‘I laugh because you shaved your face to look young and put flour
in your hair to look old--both things at the same time,’ replied the
Barbarian.
“As to William, he reminded me of still another thing; namely, the
thigh-bone of a Saint I was introduced to in Italy and which, they
said, belonged to a famous preacher of old. I turned the bone, which
was encased in glass, gold and precious stones, over and over, yet
could get no notion of the quality of its original owner’s sermons.”
MARK--REGICIDE
“I have been reading up on the laws dealing with regicide,” I heard
Mark Twain tell Minister Phelps one morning in dead seriousness, “and
do you know what they are going to do with me? Three or four things.
“First, they will cut my right hand off, and then hit me on the mouth
with it, by way of reproof, I suppose. Second, they’ll hari-kari me
and build a little fire to do my insides brown--all the time keeping
me alive for the rest of the show. That will take some stimulants, I
reckon.
“Third, they’ll hang me by the neck until I am stone dead. Whether I
will get my inards and my hand back before they send me to wormland, I
don’t know.”
“What _are_ you talking about?” queried Mr. Phelps.
“Why, you made me admit yesterday to Count Seckendorff that the judge
who sent Charles the First to the block was a near relative of mine.
Now, as soon as Willie hears about that, he will have my hands, my
inards or anything else he craves of my anatomy.”
Of course, everybody roared, and Mr. Phelps had to explain that at
dinner the night before, one of the guests, the nobleman mentioned,
who was the favorite of the Empress Frederick, had boasted a lot of
his ancestry; grandfathers and uncles of his had been present at every
great battle the world over and had, of course, always fought on the
winning side. Later, when the company was looking at some engravings,
Mr. Phelps, in a joke, pointed to the figure of a Puritan, saying, with
a merry twinkle in his eye:
“Ancestor of mine.”
The picture happened to illustrate the trial of Charles the First of
England. Now, not to be outdone, Twain pointed to the Lord Judge on the
woolsack, and matched Phelps’ lie.
“_My_ ancestor, if you please.” He made the statement at the very
moment when Count Seckendorff looked at the picture. Hence, Mark’s
awful apprehensions.
“Regicide,” he told us, “is never outlawed by the lapse of time. When
Charles the First’s son was restored to the throne, hundreds of dead
regicides were pulled out of their graves by the ears and hanged and
quartered. As to the living, they were treated as I described, and I
am afraid that if Seckendorff reports me (Willie being half English) I
will be punished just as if I had made Charles a head shorter myself,
yesterday afternoon.”
THE FUNNIEST SPEECH MARK EVER HEARD
“The funniest thing I ever heard was chirped right here in this
neighborhood,” said Mark Twain, snuggling down in his big armchair
before the fire, which wasn’t blazing, and “didn’t mean to--without
kerosene” (he told the maid, warning her not to let the “Missus” know).
The “neighborhood” was Tedworth Square, London, “quite the other side
of Mayfair,” and leading to some queer streetlets and lanes.
“London’s Fifth Avenues,” mused Mark, “remind me of a sable coat (such
as Pauline Bonaparte used to wear) edged with cat-skin: There are
always Hell-kitchens within hailing distance.
“Well, at that time my girls had a friend living in Clapham, and
nightly she walked me ten or more blocks to her bus through one of
those Hell-kitchens lined with fried-fish shops and other ill-smelling
emporiums for acquisitioning lucre.”
He turned to an English friend:
“Maybe ‘lined’ isn’t correct, for the fish shops were all on one side
of the lane, and naturally I ambled along the other. I thought I was
safe there, but of course I wasn’t, for the smells zigzagged across the
pavement and followed me like a rotten conscience. My haven of safety,
or comparative safety, from the rancid oil compost was an undertaker’s
shop at the lane’s extreme end. When I got there, I used to hoist up
my coat-tails and skip across the street right into the Public ’Ouse
opposite for a Scotch. Naturally I took more or less interest in that
cemetery-correspondence school. From a notice posted, I learned that
it was under ‘new management’--I call that an ingenious appeal for
corpses, don’t you?
“Well, it wasn’t merely an office, the carpentry was right at the tail
of the roll topper; there, night after night, an old, sad-faced man
sat, looking for customers. Now, the English metropolis is reputed
the healthiest city in the world, which proves that the legend about
cleanliness being nearest to godliness is blooming rot, for London is
ten times dirtier than Berlin, seven and a half times dirtier than
New York and six times dirtier than the best parts of Paris. Anyhow,
that man-hyena, hungry for worm-food, didn’t enjoy the low rate of
mortality one single bit. I could see that every time I eyed him, and
I lamped him regularly before I waltzed into the gin-mill to drown the
fried-fish smell.”
“And did _one_ Scotch suffice for the operation?” asked Mr. Bell.
Mark looked at Mrs. Clemens and lied brazenly: “Yes, of course.” But as
she had risen to go out and was walking toward the door, he added in
an undertone: “One Scotch was like taking a bottle of perfume from the
ten-cent store into a glue factory to paralyze the Cologne smell of a
four-acre establishment of that sort.”
“To resume,” resumed Mark, “seeing each other nightly for a week or a
week and a half, that undertaker chap and this here yellow journalist
of literature got on famously, and our acquaintance, though by eyesight
only, gradually blossomed into real brotherhood. Whenever I clapped
eyes on the poor devil, I used to think: ‘I _do_ wish some one would
have the heart to die. Why don’t the Gloomy Dean or His Grace of
Canterbury oblige the poor shark?’
“And no doubt, observing my gray locks and general decrepitude, he
calculated: ‘Time for him to kick the bucket--hope his wife will give
me a chance to measure him for a ten-guinea wooden coat--yes, he looks
good for ten guineas.’
“Anyhow,” said Mark, “I felt in my heart of hearts that I was worth
more dead than alive to this person--rotten grammar, I know, but don’t
let that muss up your tempers, gents--and while the idea of suicide was
repugnant (I was making big money then, that is, I expected to rake in
$100.00 or more next week) still I cudgeled my brain for ways and means
to improve his business. It’s easy enough to promote a grocer’s or
butcher’s trade; all you have to do is to get rid of your sour stomach
at some Appetite Cure Factory, and pitch in anew with dill pickles
and strong coffee and frankfurters and sweetbreads and deep-dish
pies. But an undertaker’s! Really, I had no desire to pose for Madame
Toussaud’s dead-uns. At the same time, no doggone friend of mine would
die, giving me the chance to bury him at my expense. Running away from
that fried-fish smell, I always felt like Henry the Eighth, when one of
his half-dozen queens wouldn’t be introduced to the axe-man. Indeed, if
that starving undertaker had been my own best enemy, I couldn’t have
felt more sorry for him. But lo!--the silver lining to the cloud! One
evening, as I approached the carcassery, my startled ears were assailed
by that quaint ditty:
For we are the drunkenest lot
Of the drunken Irish crew--
and, leaping forward like oiled lightning, I saw the undertaker at work
in the rear of the shop.
“‘Bless me, if the ban isn’t broke,’ I thought, ‘and with this dent in
the armor, Fate will waltz up plenty more diseased ones. It’s always
thus.’
“Suiting my action to the classic monologue--‘thus’ is a beautiful
word, isn’t it?--I peered through the side window, expecting the
janitor of tenements-of-clay to be at work on a nine-foot coffin or
thereabout--”
All the merriment fled from Mark Twain’s face and manner when he added:
“Damme, if that God-forsaken corpse-slinger was not planing a _baby
coffin_!
“That night I took three Scotch, and” (looking around) “I don’t care if
Livy knows.”
“I thought you were going to tell a _funny_ one,” said one of us, after
a while. Clemens had got rid of his emotion by that time. “Correct,”
he drawled, “It happened a few days later, when I was working the
fried-fish side of the lane. The street was quite deserted on account
of the lateness of the hour and owing to the burial of herrings and
crab-meat in innumerable stomachs, big and little. As I put on extra
steam to reach the gin-mill before closing time, this pretty legend
wafted across the moonbeams:
“‘I say, my little female doggie’ (as a matter of fact, the shorter and
uglier word was used, but it isn’t good form, though one may mention
‘bull pups’ at Mrs. Van Astorbilt’s tea) ‘I say, my little female
doggie, tell Mother if she has another litter by that crossing sweeper
of hers, to take care to drown ’em before they grow up as big as you.’
“The lady speaking, or rather shrieking, repeated this admonition three
or four times, and followed it up with a succession of oaths that I
frankly envied her. Yes, indeed, her ‘female doggie,’ her ‘crossing
sweeper,’ her ‘litter,’ and her brand of blasphemy filled me with
obscene delight, and I chuckled over them for a week.”
After the laughter had subsided, Richard Harding Davis asked: “And what
is a crossing sweeper, pray?”
“A compound of rags and dirt, fitted with a face and feet and a broom,
who mops up the dirty pavement to save your spats, and curses you for a
curmudgeon if you give him less than a ha’penny for his trouble.”
MONARCHICAL ATAVISM
One day in Berlin, speaking of General Grant, Mark said, “I did not
admire him so much for winning the war as for _ending_ the war.
Peace--happiness--brotherhood--that is what we want in this world.”
“Here comes the Kaiser,” he continued, “and sends me tickets for his
September review. Of course I will go. But I don’t care for military
spectacles, or for militarism. Tolstoy was right in calling army
life ‘a school for murder.’ In Germany to-day there are ten million
men drilled to look upon the Kaiser as a god. And if the Kaiser says
‘kill’--they kill. And if he says ‘die for me’--they go out and get
themselves shot. The blame and shame rest with the big and little war
lords. As to the German people, mere subjects, they have eighteen or
twenty centuries of monarchical atavism in their blood.”
DEMOCRATIC MARK AND THE AUSTRIAN ARISTOCRACY
Mark Twain was essentially a democrat, and the nobles he met in Berlin
and other parts of Germany never cured him of that fine habit. But in
Vienna he grew less exclusive and in the end actually liked to mix
with high aristocrats. “The Prussian noble,” he once explained at the
Metropole, “walks and acts as if he had swallowed the stick they used
to beat him with when a youngster--I stole the simile somewhere, but
never mind--however, the Vienna brand of aristocrat is different. Maybe
Austrian nobles are just as stuck-up on account of their ancestry,
but they have the good sense not to let their pride be seen. They all
treat me cordially, talk agreeably and seem to possess at least a
stock of superficial information. The Princess Pauline Metternich, in
particular, is a bully old girl. If she were to write her memoirs, the
world would gain a book as bright as Mme. de Sévigné’s Letters. For one
thing I would like to have seen her husband’s face when he learned that
she made him sign his own death warrant.
“Prince Metternich, as Austrian ambassador in Paris, used to sign any
and every paper his secretaries put before him, as he was much too
indolent to read them. To cure him of this habit, Pauline one fine
day laid a document on his desk, ordering that he, the Prince, be
taken out and shot at sunrise. Metternich promptly put his name to it
without reading a line. Next morning at five, several male friends of
His Highness rang the bell at the Palace and demanded to be taken up
to the bedroom. They wore Austrian uniforms and made an awful racket
with their swords. Metternich stormed from his bed to see what the row
was and then and there the death warrant was read to him. He fainted.
Indeed they had a big time snatching him from the brink of the grave,
for he was near frightened to death.
“Some jocular wife, eh?” chuckled Mark.
PHIL SHERIDAN’S FRIEND
“Jenny Stubel,” mused Mark over the “Berliner Tageblatt” at the Cafe
Bauer, “Jenny Stu--, there is a yarn about that girl in the back of my
head, but what it is I cannot for the life of me make out.”
“What has she done now?” I queried. “Marriage or divorce, set a theatre
afire, or made away with one of those stupid archdukes flourishing in
Vienna?”
“Half-correct,” said Twain, “an archduke abducted Jenny. But how did
you come so near guessing it?”
“I was Jenny’s manager in the early eighties when she and her sister
Lori headed the Vienna operetta company. In fact, I introduced her to
Grover Cleveland--”
“And Phil Sheridan?” demanded Twain.
“Sheridan, Joaquin Miller, Henry Watterson and the rest.”
“We’ll get this story pat first,” said Mark, shoving the paper over to
me. “Chances are I have it upside down. Let me have the facts and keep
the trimmings for some other day.”
The “facts” told the now well-nigh forgotten story that (some time in
October, 1891) the archduke John Salvator of Austria had renounced
his title and dignities, had assumed the name of John Orth, bought a
four-masted schooner and, as her captain, went sailing the Atlantic and
Pacific in company with Jenny Stubel, the operetta star.
“‘Tall, yellow-haired, lots of quicksilver in her system,’ that’s how
Sheridan sized up Jenny. Right, you say? Well, then, her archduke
wasn’t so very foolish, after all, particularly as she was a sweet
singer, a nimble dancer and all that. Did you say you introduced her to
Grover Cleveland?”
“Sure, at one of the public afternoon receptions, when everybody went
to shake hands with the President.”
“General Sheridan was quite taken with Jenny,” continued Twain. “He
told me he went to the show night after night and didn’t care how
much he applauded her young beauty and fascinating voice. Yes, Phil
was really smitten with Jenny. And now the admired of the most famous
General of Horse defies the world to become an acknowledged royal
mistress, and her sprig of royalty the black sheep of a crowned family
by no means lily-white at that. She reminds me of old Field Marshal
Prince de Ligne, making love to a very young girl and succeeding, or
nearly succeeding, before he had time to reflect.
“‘A million,’ cried the Field Marshal, ‘if I was a lieutenant now.’”
“ELIZABETH WAS A HE,” SAID MARK
“Mark my word, Elizabeth was a _he_,” said Clemens, when I was starting
for London the end of June, 1894, leaving the Clemenses at the
Normandie, Paris, “and when you have a little time in England, I wish
you would look up all that pesky question for me.”
“Not in Westminster Abbey?” I cried in alarm.
“Now, don’t _you_ try to be gay,” said Mark. “It’s bad enough if
_I_ got that reputation when I want to be taken seriously. I know
they haven’t got through ascertaining for the ’teenth time whether
Charles I really lost his head when his overbearing noddle dropped
into the basket on the scaffold opposite the Horse-Guards--you showed
me the spot yourself. I don’t want any ghoulish work done. Just go
to the British Museum and every other library and nose up everything
appertaining to Queen Elizabeth’s manly character. You get the
authorities (for a consideration, of course) and I’ll do the rest.
Then you go down Surrey-way and find a place or castle or summer house
called Overcourt, or something. That’s where Elizabeth lived in her
teens, and metamorphosed into a boy.”
“But the editor will never allow you to write on such a subject. Better
let me do it.”
“Not on your life,” said Mark. “It’s _my_ discovery, and I’m paying
you for the work you do, just as the New York ‘World’ and the ‘Sun’
do. When you come down to hard tacks you will find that there are no
questionable proceedings whatever, just an exchange of babies, as in
the old-time operas, Troubadour and the rest. The Editor will have no
kick coming.”
“The Editor,” of course, was Mrs. Clemens, who as a rule censored
Mark’s manuscript--“tooth-combed it,” as he called it, cutting out such
gems as “the affairs of the Cat who had a family in every Port.”
Mark told me that when he got through with “Joan of Arc” he would
tackle “this here Elizabeth proposition”--“a person full of placid
egotism and obsessed with self-importance,” he called her. “If I do
Elizabeth half as well as I intend to do ‘Joan’ and did ‘The Prince and
Pauper,’ I will have three serious books to my credit, and after that I
will be damned--‘thrice damned,’ Elizabeth would have said--if I allow
anybody to take me for a mere funmaker.”
He gave me some more instructions, talking at random mostly, and paid
me in advance for the work I was to do. Twenty-four hours later I
landed at Victoria Station, London, for, having business in Antwerp, I
had travelled via Holland.
* * * * *
A foreign correspondent (that was my trade then) is shifted merrily
from one place to another; so it happened that I went back to France
after a fortnight in England, or even sooner. The Clemenses were
packing, and I had Mark all to myself for an hour or so.
“What made you first doubt the Virgin Queen’s sex?” I asked.
“Never mind--her gorgeous swearing maybe. What did you find out in
Surrey?”
I duly reported that I had gone to Overcourt with a friend, had
explored the Queen Elizabeth chambers, the woods and countryside, and
had interviewed a lot of old and some young gossips, with this result:
Elizabeth, I was told, came to Overcourt when a child of four or five,
and a young person supposed to be Elizabeth--that is, the daughter
of Ann Boleyn and Henry the Eighth--left there some ten years later.
When the Princess was seven or eight, King Henry, who was attending
Parliament, had promised to come and see his little girl two weeks
hence (Overcourt is within easy riding distance of London). But even
as they were preparing to give Hal--(“Ought to be Hell,” interpolated
Mark)--a rousing reception; to feed the brute in particular, Elizabeth
was suddenly attacked by malignant fever and died. There was only one
“in the know,” her Grace’s governess--I gave her name to Mark, but
have quite forgotten it. I remember, though, that she remained in the
royal service for some forty years afterwards, in fact, that she and
“Elizabeth” never separated while both lived.
“I can imagine how that poor woman felt,” commented Mark--“went through
all the horrors of having her hair bobbed behind, and her neck
shaved--what else was there in store for her but a beheading party if
Hal found his daughter dead? And when, in your mind’s eye, you see
the executioner try the edge of his axe on his thumb nail, life’s
delicatessen--considerations for truth, politics, and common everyday
decency--lose their appeal. The axe-man was coming and that governess
didn’t want to be the chicken.”
“That’s what the gossips told me, and they had it from their
great-great-great-grandmothers, a blessed heritage.”
“Go on,” said Mark.
“Well, that governess knew that her life depended upon finding a
substitute for Elizabeth, and the substitute couldn’t materialize
quickly enough. Briefly, it did materialize in the person of the
late Princess’ boy playmate--here are his name and affiliations, as
Overcourt neighborhood has it.”
“Fine,” said Mark, “the rest I know or can imagine. She dressed up that
kid in Elizabeth’s petticoats and togs and frightened the life out of
him not to betray her or himself with the King or any one else.”
“Quite right,” mused Mark, “for the eighth Henry was an ogre--the very
unborn children of England knew it. Besides, reading up the official
history of Elizabeth, I find that Hal hadn’t seen his daughter for
three or four years previous to his visit in Overcourt. The deception,
then, worked easily enough. _I_ could have done it at a pinch.”
* * * * *
Mark next went into the life history of the great Queen, or supposed
Queen. “She was a male character all over--a thousand acts of hers
prove it,” he insisted. “Now tell me what were the conspicuous Tudor
traits--”
“But you said she wasn’t a Tudor,” I interrupted.
“Precisely, but she had to copy the Tudors as our stage impersonators
imitate Bernhardt and Henry Dixie. Now what were those Tudor traits:
remorselessness, cunning, lying till the cows come home, murder,
robbery, despoliation! All of them Elizabeth, or the man who
impersonated the Queen, practiced to the dotlet on the _i_. Think of
the letters she wrote to Francis Drake, the inventor of fried potatoes,
and to the second Philip of Spain. Wasn’t that a man’s game? Could
woman ever get up anything so misleading and contraband?
“And the way she fooled her English, Spanish, Austrian, German and
French admirers, setting each against the other, never neglecting to
threaten Spain’s flank, and, at the last, throwing them the head of
Mary of Scots as a gage of battle--regular male strumpet’s chicanery, I
tell you.”