pet had to hold it up with the long broom while the man was a-pushing
of it. But I will say, she has improved her rooms in moving.
“But it didn’t look at all like a man of _his_ standing, the governor
of a coal cart. And you can imagine what the neighbors said, seeing the
moving on the barrow and my pretty pet holding of it up.
“But I _must_ say she got blinds, they are those Verinkers (Venetians)
you ’eard of. Sure he is a beast, my pretty pet’s man. He wouldn’t even
put up the indecent lights for her, and she had to pay a man tuppence
to do it for her while she was still a-trembling from holding up the
barrow and that after paying tuppence halfpenny for the indecent
lights.”
Jealousy in Lowland
(Overheard near Billingsgate Market.)
“Hullo, how you gettin’ on and how’s your old man?”
“See ’ere, you remembers ’ow I looked atter ’im when he was that damn’
ill and all the nourishments I got ’im. Well ’e got that strong again
but ’e wouldn’t go to work. So I says to ’im yesterday mornin’ w’en ’e
was a-sittin’ over the fire smokin’ his dirty pipe, ‘Ain’t you _ever_
to go work no more?’
“What d’you think ’e says?
“‘Ere,’ he says, ‘I ’ave bin a-thinkin’. Where did you get all dese
’ere nourishments from while I was sick? I _do_ believe you had a boy.
’Ho is the man? I’ll knock ’is damn’ block off.’
“Now remember, maid, ’e never said a word while ’e was gettin’ the
nourishment down ’is gut, the beast, but afterwards ’e says dis ’ere to
me. ’Ere’s a beast for yer, girl.”
_Lady No. 2_--“’Ere ’e’s a-comin’ along the corner. Let’s scoot,
maidie. ’E doesn’t look good-natured at all, at all, this mornin’.”
The Troubles of Liz
Liz, the maid-of-all-work, has overstayed her furlough, and is very
emphatic, putting the blame on Kate.
“Oh, I won’t go out with that there Kate no more, m’am. That Kate
do know a lot of fast chaps. She interdooced me to one and he kept
a-cuddlin’ of me round the neck and near pushed my hat off, you see
it’s all awry. And he kept a-pinching of me about and arsked if it was
all my own figger. But he did say _Dear_ to me.”
Liz’s next place was with a butcher’s, but there they “were real rude”
to her, and she left, of course. This is her report of what happened:
“‘Here, Liz,’ said one of the helpers to me, ‘there’s two kidneys for
my tea. Take a care, you got two like that.’ Oh, I can’t stay in a
place where they talk as fast as that, just as if I had kidneys like a
cow.
“And the other chap comes and brings me a bit of liver to cook for
_his_ tea, and he says: ‘Liz, you know you’ve got a liver just like
that?’ I just ran upstairs and told the missus. And in the evening one
brings me a pig’s head with a squint in his eye and he says, ‘Liz, this
is what you do to the boys--give ’em the glad eye.’ No, I won’t stop,
as true as there is Gowds in ’eaven.”
Her next place was with a benevolent old spinster. Liz left her
service, saying: “I had no wages, and what do you think she did? Why,
she has locked up the tarts. And the other day I was making myself a
bit of toast and margarine and the old cat caught me at it and she
said, ‘Isn’t dripping not good enough for you, Liz?’”
THE FRENCH MADAME
One night in his dressing-room, Sir Herbert Tree introduced us to
another promising story-teller, namely, the French madame who looked
after “the ladies of the chorus, who raise a shapely leg before us.”
(That was a popular sing-song then and Mark heartily enjoyed it.) She
told Clemens of a stroke of good luck that had befallen her and he
declared himself tickled to death with her French-English, which, he
said, was every bit as good as his own English-French. Tree kindly lent
us “Basil,” his stenographer and “memory,” to jot down the yarn.
“Louisa, Be Brave”
At Madame Raymond’s house.
“Ah, Madame, how do you? Will you have a drink or are you too proud
already?”
“_Mais non_, Madame, we will have ze leedle drink as usual. And how
have you been getting on, Madame?”
“Ah, no at all well, I have been worried, _ma chère_, for my ’usband he
did join ze Lib’ral Club.
“Ah, after I tell you my leedle experience, _mon Dieu!_ you won’t let
Alphonse join ze damn Lib’ral Club.
“Listen. As M. Raymond stayed till 1, 3, 4th o’clock in the morning at
the Lib’ral Club, I was told one or two or three leedle things about
him, but of course I did not think or believe at ze time. But ze three
time he did not come at ze 4th in the morning, I get up and dress
myself and go arounds to ze Lib’ral Club and does bash bangs at zat
door.
“And presently a head comes out of ze window upstairs and he says:
‘What you want down there at this hour of ze evening, Madame?’
“‘I want M. Raymond, my ’usband.’
“‘He is not ’ere, Madame. Ze Club always closes at eleven ze clock.’
“‘I thank you, Monsieur, sorry to trouble you.’ So I put zese leedle
things together that I had been told and I jus’ go rounds ze corner and
I listen down ze aria and hear sounds of reverie.
“A policeman he stood at ze corner. I says to ze policeman: ‘Here is
two shillings, you go rounds ze corner and you sees notings. Ze madame
here has decoys my ’usband to dance with the girls.’
“And ze policeman is off and sees notings.
“Then I goes close to ze door and bash bangs at ze door. And a
Frenchwoman like myself comes up and she says, ‘What you want, Madame?’
“I said, ‘I want my ’usband, M. Raymond. Zat is all.’
“She says, ‘Your ’usband not ’ere, Madame.’
“I says, ‘Yes, I ’ear ’im downstairs.’
“Then quick she calls me lair and I gives her a bash bang down into ze
passage. She cried and up comes ze madame’s ’usband.
“He says, ‘What you do to my wife, you bad madame?’
“I says, ‘She will not give me my ’usband.’
“He says, ‘You are a bad madame. I turn you out of my ’ouse. Your
’usband not ’ere.’
“Then just comes up M. Raymond.
“‘Ah,’ says I, ‘this is all I jus’ want. So you come along wiz me.’
“Ah, my dear, we _did_ ’ave a leedle words on ze road ’ome and M.
Raymond says, ‘A pretty ting you done for yourself; you will be
sermonized for knocking that madame down.’
“But I patted me on the chest and I said to me, ‘Louisa, be brave.’
“A day or two after dis, a sermon came from the South Western Police
Court. Ah, _mon Dieu_, I was jus’ a leedle frightened, but I said to
me: ‘Louisa, you have been ze brave woman and you mus’ be brave all ze
time.’
“_Eh bien_, you remember ze _chapeau_ I bought in ze leedle Soho shop
and also that pretty gown in ze Chapelle Blanche--_très chic_?
“_Eh bien_, I put on ze _chapeau_ and ze pretty dress and ze nice
gloves that come to ze elbows, and I had a cab with four wheels and I
did go to ze police court.
“Ah, _ma chère_, when I get to ze police court, dere was a very fine
tall handsome Inspector and he jus’ hands me out of ze cab and I jus’
go into ze court and ze case was called.
“And ze judge he was dere and I bows to ze judge and ze judge bows to
me. And ze people, _ma chère_, zey were _ze big cowards_. Dey did not
turn up.
“So when I tells ze judge my leedle story, he does dismiss ze case.
“I goes outside and sees ze fine tall handsome Inspector. Ze Inspector,
he says: ‘You ’ave got off very well to-day, but ze excitement! You
mus’ come wiz me and ’ave a leedle someting.’
“Well, my dear, I did go and ze Inspector he give me the winner of a
’orse and I jus’ win forty pounds, _ma chère_.
“And ze people w’ere my ’usband was dancing came to me in ze evening
and apologized, and he says: ‘I’m very sorr’, madame, we did not say
your ’usband was zere. He did no ’arm. I bring you a leedle present. I
am chef at ze ---- Hotel and ’ere is a big basin of drippin’ for you,
Madame.’
“He was a very good chef, that monsieur, and so was the dripping.”
THE GREAT DISAPPOINTMENT
This story was told by Clemens at the American Embassy, Vienna.[B]
“She was the littlest, the sweetest maiden of about ten I have ever
seen, and she came dancing up to me with a smile and wink that was
simply bewitching. I was going home to 27 Fifth Avenue after a tiresome
dinner where I had to make a speech (_had_ to--God bless the organizer
of the dinner, for I won’t), and I was as tired as two dogs and as
grumpy as seven bears, when this vision suddenly burst upon me. I saw
at once that the little one was as happy as a lark, and naturally I
beamed on her, for I love children.
“As she was tripping along just as if I had been her grandpa--trusting
me with little confidences and petting my arm, she prattled about the
moon that would soon come up and the bogies and the bats and about the
fright they gave her, and I said:
“‘Little maid, hadn’t you better go home? Your mother may be anxious
about you.’
“‘Oh, no,’ she said; ‘mamma knows I am out and she is at the window
watching. She knows that I am walking with you, for I wanted to a lot
of times.’
“Well, I felt as proud as Pierpont Morgan on discovering a Fifteenth
Century missal and buying it for five dollars. And in my mind I patted
myself on the back, and said: ‘Mark, old boy, they _do_ love you, all
of them.’ Really, I felt tickled all over, and I don’t know how many
thousands of words at fifty cents ‘per’ that kid wheedled out of me by
way of answers to her questions and by way of compliments. She was a
princess kid, I tell you. When we arrived at No. 27, I insisted upon
taking her back to her home and there formally saying good-by to her.
Indeed I would have liked to kiss that little lady, but as her mother
was at the window I didn’t dare. And that kid kept on talking. If her
words had been buns, single handed she could have beaten Fleischman
with all his hundreds of bakers. But what puzzled me was that she was
forever talking about selling tickets and how nice it must be to take
so much cash for tickets. I thought, of course, she was referring to
tickets at church festivals and, to increase my credit with her, I said
that I bought lots of them and that people took chances on my books
and sometimes I took chances myself and got burdened with some to cart
home.”
“‘Oh, you write books, too?’ she said.
“‘Oh, yes,’ I said. ‘I am a sort of bookworm, and here is your home and
now you must go in, for it is getting late and the bats and the bogies
are coming. Good-night, little lady, and sleep well, and when you are a
big girl and have a husband and a house and a motor car, then you can
tell your friends that once you walked with Mark Twain----”
“‘Mark Train! I never heard of him.’
“As I looked at my adoring and adorable little friend her lip began to
quiver. It quivered still more, her blue eyes filled--could not hold
the tears--they dropped down on her face and on my flattered hand.
“‘Oh, sir,’ she sobbed, drawing away from me (I thought she was
broken-hearted because she had to leave me)--‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I thought
you were Buffalo Bill.’”
FOOTNOTES:
[B] Miss Lucy Cleveland, the author, heard Mr. Clemens tell the same
story at a dinner party in New York.
RHEUMATISM AND PRODDING
Some of the biographers of Mark Twain have made a lot of his sufferings
by rheumatism while in Berlin. I saw him almost daily, except when he
was down with bronchitis, and I heard very few complaints from him
_re_ rheumatism. Occasionally he said, “My damned arm has done some
howling in the night.” But when out of bed, it never “howled” badly
enough to prevent him from writing or holding a book. He was scribbling
most of the time, when not talking or riding, or walking, and when I
saw him in his “Mattress Mausoleum” (as he called his bed), he handled
pipe, papers, knife and books freely. I honestly believe much of that
rheumatism scare was put on. For Mark liked leisure above all things.
When he did not feel like writing, he told Livy he “had it bad,” and
escaped a scolding. “Livy” was an excellent wife to him, but she
had the commercial spirit that Mark lacked--and God knows he needed
prodding once in a while.
ON LITERARY FRIENDSHIPS
Mark Twain always liked to talk about “La Mouche, Heine’s
girl-friend-to-the-death.” One morning, at the British Museum, he made
me hunt through dozens of books, French, German and Italian, for her
real name: Camille Seldon.
“So she wasn’t German,” he said. “I thought so, for a German girl, by
her innate heaviness, might have spoiled that nimbleness of language
we admire in Heine. Goethe’s girls, as their portraits show, were all
beefy things--no, not all, I except Gretchen--hence Goethe’s Olympian
periods, his ponderous style. It’s wrong, I think, to credit Camille
with mere physical influence on Heine. Her limpid French conversation,
I take it, aided in imparting to his French verse that airy, fairy
lightness which a foreigner rarely commands.”
Some one reminded Clemens that Camille also had been the friend of
Taine.
“A lucky girl! The most poesy-saturated of poets and the Father of
English literature! I call him the Father,” he added, “because he
made so many people read serious books which without his advice and
encouragement they would never have tackled.”
BAYARD TAYLOR’S GERMAN
“No, I haven’t got an ounce of envy in me. I once tried hard to get
envious, but happily my wife interfered. I had to forget about it and
turn my mind into other, cleaner channels. That was on our first trip
to Europe, in 1878. On the ship we met Bayard Taylor, the poet, bound
for Berlin, as ambassador to Bismarck. That, I believe, states the case
more correctly than the official ‘ambassador to the Court of Berlin.’
“Well, Bayard made me feel pretty cheap by his display of German. That
fellow was forever talking, thinking and writing German. Compared
with his, my own miserable German vocabulary was an ant-hill facing
Chimborazo. And when I heard him recite whole acts of his metric
translation of Faust, I wished myself in his shoes, for I certainly did
envy the man his Teuton knowledge. However, when I told Livy about it,
she warned me and made me promise to suppress the nasty habit. Well
done, for Bayard Taylor died within five or six months, at the age of
fifty-three.”
GENIUS IN EXTREMIS
When we were about to pass the French Embassy in Berlin one afternoon,
Mark dragged me across the street, saying:
“See those horses? That Kaiser is in there, making love to the
Ambassador’s wife. I don’t want to meet him as he comes out or when he
is thrown out, as he ought to be.”
At that moment a very distinguished English-looking gentleman passed us
in a cab, raising his hat to Mark.
“Do you know him?” asked Mark.
“I have seen him in Fleet Street, I believe, but I don’t know where to
put him. As you know, my eyes don’t travel far these days.”
“Why,” said Mark, “this is ‘Labby’ (Labouchère) of London ‘Truth,’
the Baron-maker. I call him that because he actually put hundreds of
barons into the world, if not into the peerage--namely, when he acted
as Secretary of the British Embassy in Paris and had the issuing of
passports in hand. Suppose John Smith and Mary Smith, British subjects,
toddled in and asked for their papers. Labby would look them over
carefully and if their persons and address lent itself to the scheme,
would make out the paper for ‘Sir John’ and ‘Lady Mary.’ Of course the
people stuck to the title, acquired under the government seal, for
the rest of their lives. Indeed, most of the Labby-created nobles
by and by gained popular recognition as the real thing--baronets and
baronesses. On Labby’s part it was all fun--burlesque pure and simple.
Himself a noble by birth, he thought the nobility a stupid and useless
institution these days, and if the prime minister--a commoner--could
make dukes and princes, why could not he, Labby, at least make Sirs and
Ladies? But of course when the government got wise to it, Labby got the
sack. Just the same, he’s the smartest Englishman I’ve met. By Jingo,
I would like to hear his last words on this planet of ours even as I
would like to have heard Heine’s grand: ‘Never mind my sins, God will
forgive them. Forgiving is his business.’”
Of the pair of geniuses, Mark died first (April 21, 1910), and both
left characteristic utterances. Mark said to his physician:
“Good-by. _If_ we meet----”
Labouchère, shortly before his end, had been lectured by a sister or
brother on the godless life he had led and had been assured that, if
God didn’t take pity on him, he would certainly go to a hot place. An
hour or so after listening to these comforting remarks, Labouchère had
what Twain called on another occasion a “fair wind for Paradise,” _i.
e._, he was dying and knew it. Now it happened that during the last
half-minute of his life a spirit lamp in the next room exploded with a
loud bang. Labouchère raised his head a bit and said feebly:
“What--_already_?”
One more gasp and he was dead. How Mark would have enjoyed Labby’s:
“What, already?”
WHAT MAY HAPPEN TO YOU AFTER YOU ARE DEAD
With Richard Harding Davis I had covered the coronation of the Czar
in Moscow and Mark could never get enough of that trip, asking me
a thousand questions about the country and people. But what most
interested him was the fact that they had taken Carlyle’s Cromwell away
from me at the frontier. “You can have it back when you return,” said
the Russian customs people, but they stuck to my book just the same.
“Maybe they will start a revolution on the strength of Carlyle,” said
Mark. “I hope they will.”
“Talking of Cromwell--I am glad they have no Westminster Abbey in the
States. And here is why. This man Cromwell was alternately an anarchist
and an autocrat. More powerful than any king, he refused the crown, yet
made Parliament accept his imbecile son as his successor. They buried
him in Westminster Abbey with all the honors due a king and after two
years dragged his body out and beheaded the poor carcass, then stuck
the head on a pike, mounted on Parliament House. You say even if we had
a Westminster Abbey in America and I was buried there, yet the things
that happened to Cromwell could never happen to me. But I don’t know
about that. When I was in Paris last, somebody offered me a tooth
out of the head of Turenne, who had been buried two hundred years
or more. How did he get that tooth? Why, during the revolution the
Jacobins--ancestors of our present-day anarchists--smashed the royal
graves at Saint Denis and flung the royal bones to the winds. Turenne
happened to have been buried among his peers at the feet of Louis XIV.
That is the reason why he was dispossessed. Now comes a commercially
inclined Frenchman who had read that Turenne had been blessed with
exceptionally fine molars. So he breaks all the teeth out of the dead
man’s jaws and sells them to the highest bidder. I was told there
was only one left and I could have it for 100 francs. But I was more
interested in my own teeth than in Turenne’s and refused to do business
with the antiquarian. However, to have my little joke I said to him,
‘If you had the “Henri Quatre” of the 4th Henry I might buy.’
“‘The Jacobins plucked that out, too,’ he replied, ‘but there isn’t
a hair left for sale nowadays. However, I may locate one or more by
diligent hunting and I’ll let you know if I succeed.’
“Think of it! Henri Quatre’s Henri Quatre torn out by the roots and
sold at so much per hair! That mustache and goatee that was next to
so many sweet lips--the sweetest in France. I have seen the originals
of some of his letters in the Musée de Cluny, Paris, and had some of
those little masterpieces of grace translated for me.”
Mark took out his Paris notebook and read:
“‘My true heart,’ he wrote at one time to Diane de Poitiers, ‘you have
lied. I shall not see you for ten days. It is enough to kill me. I will
not tell you how much I care, it would make you too vain, and I think
you love me, so with a happy heart I finish.’
“In answer Diane wrote back, ‘If I die, have me opened and you will
find your image engraved on my heart.’”
KINGS IN THEIR BIRTHDAY SUITS
Two things Mark Twain was especially concerned about--the success
of his “Joan of Arc,” which he considered his best work, and the
possibility of getting King Leopold hanged.
Leopold and the Czar were his special bêtes noires. “I’d like to see
these two fellows face their people naked except for their whiskers.
Let them face public opinion in their birthday suits and see what will
happen to them.”
MARK ON LINCOLN’S HUMANITY
When Ida M. Tarbell’s “Life of Lincoln” was running in McClure’s
during the late nineties, Mark said at luncheon at the Cafe Ronacher,
Vienna, one afternoon: “That woman is writing a wonderfully good and
accurate, intimate and comprehensive book and I _do_ hope that, in the
end, she will give the same prominence to Lincoln’s correspondence on
pardons as to other state papers of his. When you come to think of it,
a lot of nonentities have got credit for able state papers, but it
takes humanity to commute a sentence of death and Lincoln has commuted
thousands. The only one he didn’t and couldn’t commute was one imposed
by our friend, Ward Hill Lamon.
“Lamon, then Marshal of the District of Columbia, had seen Lincoln
safely home and then made his usual rounds of the White House grounds.
All seemed well, no cause for suspicion, Ward told me, and he was about
to retire, when he thought he saw some movement amid a clump of green
foliage. It looked as if a body was rising from the ground.
“‘I reached the spot by three leaps, faced a dark figure and, without
ado, dealt him a blow square between the eyes, knocking him down,’ said
the Marshal.
“Well,” continued Mark, “you know Lamon as he looks now, still a
commanding figure, though worried and weakened by diabetes. In the
early sixties he was a giant, a John L. Sullivan as a hitter. That blow
of his killed the stranger in the White House grounds and when the body
was carried to the Secret Service offices and searched, they found it
to be that of a Southern gentleman of distinguished family. He had
two pistols and two heinous looking knives on him--undoubtedly Ward
had stopped short the career of one of the forerunners of John Wilkes
Booth, postponing the great tragedy several months--I have forgotten
the date. Wait, it happened during the night when Lamon brought the
President back from the Soldiers’ Home, outside of Washington.
“Lincoln’s visit to the Soldiers’ Home was not on the schedule, Lamon
told me, and he was surprised and angered when, calling at the White
House, he heard of his riding away all by himself, for it was just such
opportunities as would-be assassins were looking for.
“At the stables Lamon learned that the President came there in person,
ordered ‘Old Abe,’ his favorite army mule, saddled and, half an hour
ago, rode away as carelessly as any private citizen might do. There was
a grain of comfort in the character of the mount selected, for ‘Old
Abe’ wouldn’t go faster than a dogtrot if you beat him to death. So
Lamon selected the fastest horse he could borrow and in a twinkling was
en route for the Soldiers’ Home. As calculated, he met the President
half-way down the road and Lincoln, far from suspecting that the
Marshal was on his trail, invited him to come along and have some fun.
Well, the President had a jolly time at the Soldiers’ Home, swapping
stories with veterans and boys, listening to the singing, declaiming
poetry and forgetting the care of his exalted office.
“And he kept up the fun on the way home, talking to his mule and
explaining to ‘Old Abe’ what a ‘Misery’ Hill was. (He always used to
call Lamon by his second name.) Hill, the President told his namesake,
was always looking for danger, always suspecting somebody, never
content with the troubles one couldn’t escape, etc., etc. But while
Lamon laughed at the President’s sallies and encouraged his carefree
humor, he kept both eyes open and if anything or anybody had stirred
in front, back or at the sides of the road, his revolver was ready for
emergency.”
AN ENGLISH LOVER OF KINGS AND A HATER
“Look at those fools going to pieces over old Doc Johnson--call
themselves Americans and lick-spittle the toady who grabbed a pension
from the German King of England that hated Americans, tried to flog us
into obedience and called George Washington traitor and scoundrel.”
Thus spoke Mark Twain in the Doctor Johnson room of the Cheshire
Cheese, the Strand, where the old thoroughfare becomes “the Street of
Ink” or Newspaper Row, and while we were enjoying the famous meat pie
served there on certain days of the week.
“You are pleased to occupy Miss Evelyn’s seat,” whispered James the
waiter, looking at Mark.
“Miss Evelyn--what?” demanded our friend.
James blushed. “Miss Evelyn, why--Miss Evelyn, the beautiful young
American lady who came with the millionaire, Mr. Harry Thaw. While she
was in London I always had to keep for her the seat under the Doctor’s
portrait on pie-day.”