times of Frederick the Great and of course they were in French, since
Frederick neither read nor wrote German intelligently. There was in
particular a volume of verse by Voltaire addressed to Frederick, with
original illustrations by some French artist, but the poetry was too
grossly indecent to have interest for persons outside of a psychopathic
ward.
I translated some of the verses to Mark, who said: “Too much is
enough. I would blush to remember any of these stanzas except to tell
Krafft-Ebing about them when I get to Vienna.”
I copied one verse for him, and as he put it in his pocket he said:
“Livy is so busy mispronouncing German these days she can’t even
attempt to get at this.”
After some rummaging, Mark pulled out a manuscript that seemed to be of
more recent date.
“German or Chinese laundry tickets?” he asked.
“It’s German,” I said, glancing at it.
There were about ten pages of copy, neatly written and headed “Mein
Briefkasten” (My letterbox). On the line below was the title:
“Tetragamy by Schopenhauer.”
Mark was at once interested.
“Schopenhauer, the arch-misogynist,” he mused, “let me see, physically
he might have been the grandfather of queer Strindberg of the land
where the matches come from. Ever read any of his books or dramas?”
he asked, and before I could deny the implication, he was off talking
again: “I have studied Strindberg’s womankind, hard-faced, sullen,
cold-blooded, cheeky, grasping, vindictive, hell-raising, unvirtuous,
unkind vixens, all of them--a dead give-away on the author’s part, for
a writer who sees no good in women confesses that he was found out by
the sex he wars on and that the female of the species pronounced him n.
g. before he had time to out-Ibsen the Norwegian. If I ever turn over
a new leaf and beat Livy, bet your life I will have naught but honeyed
words and sweet metaphor for the ladies. This fellow Strindberg’s women
are all compounds of vile ingredients--hideous hags with or without
angel-faces--wife-beater Strindberg whipping dead mares. Well, to
return to Schopenhauer (to me as incomprehensible as mutton) what’s
this?” (pointing to the word Tetragamy), “Hebrew or merely Yiddish?”
“Literally it means marrying a fourth wife.” I examined the first page
of the manuscript. “Seems to deal with conditions due to monogamy.”
“Good,” exclaimed Mark, “I have always wanted to reform monogamy, when
my wife isn’t looking. Now let’s have the medicine straight.”
“But,” I said, “I can’t do this long MS. justice here. The librarian
will come in presently and you heard what he told us.”
“Well,” said Mark, “you sit down and copy the German while I cover you
with my broad back. Should the librarian intrude, I will knock on the
floor.”
Accordingly, I copied those several pages, and afterwards made the
translation Mark wanted.
But for several days Mark didn’t show up at his usual haunts, and
even Mr. Phelps, the American Minister in Berlin, didn’t know what
had become of him. The telephone was but sparingly used then in the
legation offices. However, on the third or fourth day, Mr. Phelps
learned that Mark was down with bronchitis at his hotel, the Royal, and
that when he wasn’t sneezing or coughing, _ennui_ plagued him sadly.
“Well,” I said, “I have got something to liven him up,” and showed Mr.
Phelps the manuscript. He advised me to send it at once to the Royal,
but when I called on Mark Twain a week later and inquired _sotto voce_
whether he had received the manuscript, he said:
“Of course not. The wife got it and you know she won’t let me read
anything but tracts. I suppose she burnt our MS.”
“Well,” I said, “I have got a carbon and I will let you have that by
and by.”
“Not while I’m at home,” he said, “for now she is on the scent, she
will watch out. She is dreadfully afraid that some one may corrupt me.”
Mark remained indoors for over a month, the thing was forgotten, and
later, when he asked for the manuscript, I couldn’t find it. Other
interests came up and Schopenhauer was shelved, though at the time
we made the find, Mark speculated on getting a book out of it by
amplifying it with other writings of the philosopher, particularly his
“Fragments of Philosophy” and his “Pandectes et Spicilegia”; the latter
are still in manuscript or, at least, were in manuscript in the early
nineties.
If Mark were alive to-day, how happy he would be at the discovery I
made quite recently in an old chest of drawers. I had seen a movie
play, showing the extravagant amounts of money one can earn by selling
old manuscripts--including the rejection slips--and I started cleaning
up an old piece of furniture wanted for less ideal purposes. And there
I found the long lost Schopenhauer MS. According to the notes, this
manuscript belonged to a parcel of handwritten essays willed by the
philosopher to the Royal Library at Berlin and dealing with themes and
matters that Schopenhauer hoped to work out and improve upon by and by.
But death overtook him before he could exploit the problem in hand.
Here follows the MS. Mark was not allowed to see:
_Schopenhauer’s Tetragamy._
_The Philosopher’s Attempt to reform social conditions due to
Monogamy._
Neither woman’s frailty nor man’s egoism should be held responsible
for those frequent miscarriages of domestic happiness encountered in
married life. Nature itself is to blame. If the state of monogamy, as
some of the philosophers will have it, is the natural one, then nature
disarranged its own scheme beforehand by making woman’s sexual life
twenty or thirty or even forty years shorter than man’s.
At the present time males and females in the civilized world are about
equal in number. This, too, is taken for proof that nature favored
monogamy. It is a fact, on the other hand, observable in practical
life as well as by medical investigation, that a woman is well able
physically to be the wife of two men at the same time.
There are no healthier and more beautiful women, of their kind, than
the Tedas of Asia who marry besides their chief-husband all his
brothers, no matter how many he has got.
We do not go so far as to advocate polyandry. Polyandry is a condition
based on a low state of civilization. But basing our proposition on
physical grounds, we venture to assert that tetragamy, reorganized and
protected by law, would be a married state doing away with most of the
evils of monogamy from the man’s standpoint, while contributing to
woman’s happiness.
We propose the introduction of a new form of marriage on the following
lines. Instead of one man marrying one woman for better or worse, we
propose that two men, friends of course, marry one woman, always a
young and healthy person, with this understanding:
After the woman has reached a certain age, the two friends shall be
at liberty to marry another young woman, but without divorcing or
abandoning the first.
The second woman shall provide the men, if she lives, with a capable
and loving mate for the rest of their lives.
Such a state of things would result in the happiness of two women, both
would be taken care of for life and there would be no rivalry either.
As far as the men are concerned, tetragamy would do away with a passion
leading to so many fatalities: jealousy.
Now let us look at tetragamy, as defined, from an economic standpoint.
At the present time, the average young couple enters into the marriage
state when the man’s capacity as a provider is unequal to the demands
of the average pleasure-loving woman. His meagre resources do not allow
him to supply her with the luxuries she craves, nor has he as much
money for himself as before marriage. It would be a waste of words to
point out that these conditions are responsible for much unhappiness
among married folks.
Take a case of poverty. Many a man who can hardly support himself
tries to support a wife, and not only a wife, but children, numbers of
them! What is the result? The woman, driven by want, for the love of
her children, becomes a breadwinner on her own account. The time she
ought to devote to her little ones, born or unborn, she spends in the
factory, at the washboard or sewing machine.
Is that natural? If nature favored such a state of affairs, nature
would be illogical, and who dare assert so monstrous a thing?
In the state of tetragamy, man has to bear but one-half of the
household’s expenses. This gives him a chance to save money and to do
something for his education, while the children, being supported by two
men, have better clothes, better food, more love, and a better home.
Tetragamy would make for morality, because it would make it easier for
men to get married. It would make for morality because woman, having
two husbands, would not be longing for an affinity. And when old, she
would not suffer from the thought, or from the actual knowledge, that
her husband betrays her.
Things are different to-day. The man who marries young sees the fire of
love extinguished in the woman at his side after a certain number of
years.
As to the average woman, in the state of monogamy, she is only too
often compelled to marry a man physically inferior to her. If she
escapes that fate, then, in the course of time, she must needs come to
the conclusion that she is too old for her husband.
But I am not unaware that there are serious objections.
As to the children, their identity would be determined by their looks.
As to possible differences--they will not be greater than in marriage
as it is to-day. If people are inclined to fight, they will do so under
any conditions, good, bad or indifferent. For my own part I am inclined
to think that there will be less fighting, since jealousy will be
eliminated beforehand.
What about financial affairs? There should be no communism, of course.
Each man could contribute his share and the woman should be allowed
free disposal of her savings.
Of course, the state must take the first woman under its protection.
She can never be abandoned and can be divorced for cause only.
Under the sway of monogamy duties and nature are forever in conflict.
Woman is tempted when young, is abandoned morally or physically or both
when old.
If this be natural, then nature should be reformed and tetragamy
substituted for monogamy.
“MURDERER” BLUCHER IN OXFORD
“Oxford, though you might not think so, has a traffic cop, the same
as Forty-Second Street and Fifth Avenue,” said Mark in the Savoy
Lounge across the teacups after the excitement over his triumph in the
British University metropolis had cooled down a bit. “He is a smart
guy--actually remembers Holmes’ visit and asked me about the old man.
He spoke of him as ‘Ome’s, Sweet Ome’s.’ When you come to think of it,
it’s a good name, after all.
“Among other interesting things, not connected with the University,
was a public house sign I lit upon at a corner not far from our inn.
It showed a great warrior on a fierce charger. ‘General Blucher’ was
written across the bottom. It gave me quite a start when I learned that
on this spot, in 1816 or 1817, Blucher hollered for a drink and got it
when on his way to the University.”
“What did he want with the University?” I queried.
“He was crowned a doctor there after Waterloo.
“I tell you, that took me down a peg, or rather a whole row of pegs.
Blucher a doctor like myself! I knew him as a foul-mouthed, cruel,
pestiferous, and thieving scoundrel--occasionally lucky in the field.
But now I wanted to know more about him and I have haunted the British
Museum for additional facts. What do you think I learned? Blucher, who
was dirty and slouchy by nature, dressed up on the eve of battle:--best
tunic, fancy sword, gilt lace, feathered hat and what-not! And he had
himself bathed, rouged and powdered, manicured and curry-combed.
“‘I feel like a girl going to her first ball,’ he used to say.
“And people like that, who delight in murder and rapine, receive
honorary degrees!”
MARK’S HUMAN SIDE
Susan, Jean, and Clara Clemens, papa Mark, and myself were having lots
of fun at the famous Salamonski Circus in Berlin--Mark and I laughing
with the children when there was nothing else to interest us. There
was a girl of 16 or 17 doing a stunt on a horse. Mark said: “The poor
child looks as if she had never had a square meal in her life--isn’t
that professional smile of hers too sad for words?” While she was doing
a salto mortale, a clown ran in and dived between the horse’s legs.
The horse got frightened and threw the rider. Of course, the children
thought this part of the program, and laughed heartily. But the girl
didn’t attempt to get up, and when the riding master tried to raise
her, she cried and moaned, and one of her legs hung down lifeless,
while the blood spurted through her white tights.
“Keep still, children,” said Mark. “Don’t you see the poor girl is
hurt?”
A stretcher came and carried off the moaning girl and the performance
proceeded as if nothing had happened. But though the children begged
hard, Mark would not stay.
“Another time, not now,” he insisted.
Just then a gypsy-looking, elderly woman came running from behind the
scenes, looking about wildly. When her eye located the clown, she
rushed up to him and hit him a terrible blow in the face. “You have
ruined my girl. She will never be able to ride again,” she cried.
“Served him right,” said Mark. “I do hope the manager gets a clout on
the jaw, too. For he really is the responsible guy. The clown has to
get laughs, the girl has to risk her limbs, so that the manager may
coin money. What a world this is, what a world! And you and I, too! I
never thought of kicking myself for laughing when that poor girl broke
her leg--nor did you, I bet.”
AN AUSTRALIAN SURPRISE
At the time when Mark was living quietly at Ledworth Square, London,
writing “Around the World,” we met a party of Australians at the
Metropole one afternoon. It was after poor Susie’s death, and the
heartbroken father hadn’t made anyone laugh for months. But those
“Aussies kind of woke me up,” he admitted. “Jolly guys, out there at
the Antipodes,” he said after the first round; “too bad I didn’t know
that when I struck Sydney. As I prepared to step upon the platform
there, I wondered, with some fear and trepidation, whether your people
would take kindly to my brand of humor. If they refused to be tickled
by my first lecture--God have mercy upon my creditors! Of course I
had my story pat. Still, as I climbed those steps, I debated in my
mind whether or not I had better substitute such or such a yarn for
the opening lines planned. I had half decided to risk a change, when
I faced the audience and--the pleasantest, the most overwhelming
surprise of my life! I met a sea, a whole Atlantic, of guffawing heads,
of swaying bodies and shoulders. There wasn’t a titter or a snicker;
there wasn’t any smirking or grinning; all eyes were in flood with
genuine laughter; men, women, and children were crowing and chuckling
aloud, were shouting and hurraying, everybody was convulsed--really I
must have looked the white kangaroo for which I was named. The Sydney
audience laughing at me before I opened my mouth clinched my success at
the Antipodes.”
MARK IN FRANCE AND ITALY
From Paris Mark Twain usually returned disgruntled. His stories did not
go in France, and there was that “Dreyfus affair” that made him sick of
the “frog-eaters forever and a day.” Nor was Mark appreciated in Italy.
“The Dagoes,” he used to say, “like their humor colored with politics,
of which I know nothing, or flavored with risqué stories, which my wife
won’t let me write--there you are. As to France--one critical Madame
gave me to understand that I am ‘lacking in the stupendous task of
interpreting the great tableaux of real American life.’ See? When a wet
blanket of that kind is clapped on to you, what is the use of further
efforts? I am a dead one, according to Madame, and Mark Twain is too
humane to whip a dead horse. I will tell you what is really the matter
with France,” concluded Twain. “Every Frenchman who can read and write
has in his closet a frock coat embroidered with the lilies (or whatever
flower it may be) of the _Académie Française_--hoping against hope that
he may be elected to the Institute like Molière or Zola. Hence Monsieur
is very critical and pronounces everything he doesn’t understand
‘bosh!’ A joke in Chicago, you know, is a riddle in Paris, and, as one
Frenchman put it, ‘I get guffaws out of people by thumping them on the
ribs.’ I would never dare thump a Frenchman, of course--I might bust
him.”
WHY MARK WOULDN’T LIKE TO DIE ABROAD
Mark Twain cracked so many jokes, I thought I would entertain him a bit
myself, and told him about an aunt of mine who, while dying, heard that
she was going to lie in state in the green room.
“Not in the green room,” said auntie. “I always hated that wall paper.
Besides, it’s unhealthy.”
Twain admitted that was good fun, and regretted not having thought of
the green paper himself.
“She must have been a fine old girl,” he said, “to stand up for her
rights even ‘in extremis,’ as the doctors call it.”
“By the way,” he continued, “every time I paddle the Atlantic I say to
myself, ‘Mark, old boy, don’t die on this trip.’ For, of course, folks
have a foolish notion that one’s bones must rest at home. Accordingly,
if I died as United States consul in the Kingdom of Sheba--if there be
such a place--Washington would have to send a warship to fetch my bones
back to America. Again, if I died a plain citizen in London, I would be
shipped back in an ordinary liner. But think of it. Before shipping my
body, it would have to go into an undertaker’s vault, and undertakers’
cellars are dark and mildewed, and nasty smelling. By George, I
wouldn’t like to be in a cellar for a week or two. And afterwards they
would place the casket in the hold of the ship with other boxes, and
the rats come gnawing about, and perhaps the ocean looks in too and
gives you a swim. No, it isn’t pleasant to die abroad. I want to die at
home, in bed and in comfort.”
At another time Mark returned to the theme, saying:
“Remember my story about the body in the morgue? They couldn’t make out
whether the person was dead or merely shamming death, and so they put
a bell-rope in the man’s hand, and later, when the man awoke from his
deathlike sleep and rang the bell, the watchers got so frightened they
ran away, and, it being freezing cold, the man died a real death. When
they next looked upon him, he was as dead as a doornail. No, as I said
before, I want to die at home, without any bell-ropes, or undertakers’
cellars, or rats, or bilge water.”
THE LEFT HAND DIDN’T KNOW
“I saw your protégé in Paris--he is getting along finely with his
painting,” I told Mark, meeting him in the Strand, London.
“I do not know what you mean by protégé,” he said evasively, “but I
am glad to hear that the boy is progressing. Do you know,” he added
quickly, “I hold with that famous English letter-writer, whose name I
forget, that an artist has brush and pencil and that the public will
reward him as it sees fit.”
Of course, Mark didn’t “hold” anything of the sort. He had then
supported that bright American boy in Paris for three years, giving him
the best of teachers and advancing his chances in every way possible,
but he resented my touching upon the subject. I suppose he would have
cut me dead the next time we met, if I had reminded him of the colored
boy whom he was seeing through college in the States.
AMERICAN HUMORISTS
They were talking about humorists in Mr. Jackson’s office. Jackson was
the first secretary of legation, blessed with a very beautiful wife and
money. After a lot of talk, Twain was asked for his opinion.
“Well,” he said, “the greatest American humorist I know of is Mr.
Fox of the ‘Police Gazette’--the fellow who put full evening dress
on sluggers. John L. Sullivan and some of the hard-boiled boys he
licked were, of course, familiar to the American eye in trunks and
undershirts. Reflect on the giant mind that conceived the original idea
of making them look like Kyrle Bellew or Augustin Daly. Fox with that
picture beat us Knights of the Quill easily.”
TELEPATHY OR SUGGESTION
In the nineties Mark had asked me to translate his yarn on telepathy
for the “Berlin Boersen Courier.” The story had caught on, and the
editor kept bothering for more of that sort. Mark had promised again
and again, but nothing came of it. When I asked him for the tenth or
fifteenth time, he said, “Pshaw, telepathy is out of date. I saw some
mental suggestion done at Professor Glossen’s in Zurich that knocked
spots out of telepathy.” He asked the rest of the company to listen,
and continued:
“That there be no room for deception of any kind, the professor asked
me to go to any drug store in town and buy a bottle of distilled water.
We scraped the label off, swathed the bottle in linen, and then buried
it carefully in a box--a sort of fireless cooker arrangement. This was
done before the students began to arrive. When the lecture room was
good and full, the Professor addressed the boys to the effect that he
was on the track of a new chemical, but that his discovery was still
far from complete. The chemical, he continued, had a peculiar odor,
heretofore not classified, and this morning he was anxious to study the
rapidity with which that odor would diffuse itself through the air.
Hence he asked the students to give the utmost attention to what he was
doing. Each student was to raise his hand the moment he perceived the
strange odor.
“The Professor unburied and opened the bottle, turning his head away
so as not to be overcome by the odor, while I watched the proceedings
by a stop-watch. The boys were all ears--nose, I mean. After fifteen
seconds, most of the students in the first row were holding up a hand.
In 40 seconds the odor, which did not exist, had traveled to the
rear benches, and when we counted noses, seventy-five percent of the
students acknowledged perception of the odor and some even went so far
as to be nauseated by it.”
TRYING TO BE SERIOUS DIDN’T WORK
At Brown’s, in London, somebody spoke in glowing terms of Raymond’s
portrayal of Colonel Sellers.
“You needn’t praise him for _my_ sake,” said Mark. “I did not write the
part for an actor like him at all. I wrote it for Edwin Booth. That
is, I had Edwin Booth in mind when I did the play. But Raymond was the
superior money-maker. He had the masses with him--and I was pressed for
funds.
“As a matter of fact, my Colonel Sellers is a portrait study--a
take-off on a fine old Southern gentleman, Colonel Mulberry Sellers,
whom I knew in life. He had some funny traits about him, but these
never counted with me. It was the pathos in his life that got me. And
the pathos, relieved by a few funny things, I intended to put upon the
stage. Raymond caricatured the part, and I often felt like taking it
away from him.”
ASSORTED BEAUTIES
Of the Vienna women Mark Twain used to say that they were so “cussed
pretty a man walking out with his wife feels relieved when he meets a
plain one.”
He was reminded of his visit to the Berlin court and was asked what he
thought of the ladies he met there.
“They were so loaded down with tiaras, necklaces, and sets of jewelry,
my eyes were too dazzled to get a good view of their faces. I am
sure, though, that most of the old ones had enormous backs. And that
recalls a story that I heard at an embassy here, which I must not
name. The ambassadors were talking of the beauty of the women of their
own country, and they all looked with pity on the Korean consular
representative, wondering what he would say, but he was a spunky chap,
and when his turn came, blurted out: ‘Well, gentlemen, as to the fair
sex, there isn’t much to boast of in my country, but I _will_ admit
that the ladies of our court at home are no less ill-favored than
the women of the Berlin Schloss, and they are dirtier, too.’ That
postscript,” said Mark, “was the funniest thing I heard in a long time.
He said it in a right hearty and well-meaning way, too. He evidently
meant it and was proud of it.”
MARK’S CHILDREN KNEW HIM
I congratulated Mark Twain on the fact that he had been mistaken for
the great Mommsen, and, throwing out his chest, he said: