“There’s our friend George in New York,” he said, “having more trouble
with that pesky French brother-in-law of his. The little Paris
fortune hunter has already cost his wife’s estate fifteen or twenty
million francs and--no returns outside of a few babies. Yet French
brother-in-law could make a tall income if he were put to ‘work right,’
as they say in the wild and woolly, for he has a most tremendous eye
for color effects, that chap. If he were my brother-in-law, I would
starve the cuss into becoming a man-milliner, the first of the world.
That’s what he could be, and ought to be with clever management.
“My word,” continued Mark, “you ought to see him drive in state in
the Bois de Boulogne. When I first clapped eyes on his flunkies and
outriders, in their liveries, rich yet soft in color effects, I almost
yearned to be one of them for the sake of their fine togs.”
Indeed, sensational clothes were always Mark’s hobby. Hence the white
suits he wore in his reclining days, and the sealskin coat, with the
fur outside, that adorned him in his days of youthful glory. I am quite
sure he would have gone to bed in his Oxford mantle and cap if he had
had more than one of each, and the passing of his red hair was a real
grievance to him, he told Gyp, the French novelist whom he called,
“warm, yet not torrid.”
MARK MEETS KING LEOPOLD--ALMOST
A man with a top hat, long gray whiskers and a rapid-looking young
woman on his arm came out of the Metropole Hotel in Paris as we passed.
“Poor seedy beggar,” said Mark, “I wonder whether he would object to a
five-sous piece?” And he put his hand in his pocket.
“Hold,” I said. “That’s King Leopold and Cleo de Merode.”
“Impossible, with that get-up,” objected Mark.
“Get-up?” I repeated. “Kings always wear frayed jeans when they travel
incog.”
“In that case, go and smash the old beast. You are younger than I, and
heavier, too.”
At the moment when Mark extended this thoughtful invitation, Swithins
of the “New York Herald” hailed us. “Look at that chap,” he said,
pointing to the person I had called his Belgian Majesty; “he is the
model who sat for L’Assiette au Beurre’s caricature of King Leopold as
Saint Anthony. Let’s go inside and get a copy.”
Mark bought a dozen or more to send to American friends. The caricature
by D’Ostoya, if I recollect rightly, was an excellent likeness of both
the King and of the beggar we had run across.
“Neither would take his hat off to Rothschild,” said Mark; “Leopold,
because his Congo savageries had made him enormously rich, the beggar
because he wouldn’t know the richest man from a mere million-pauper,
like me.”
D’Ostoya’s cartoon represented Leopold in monk’s habit, undergoing one
of the several temptations immortalized by Flaubert’s great novel. But
it wasn’t the Queen of Sheba who called--rather Mrs. Fat-and-Forty
minus furbelows and things. No wonder Leopold, being artistically
inclined, looks annoyed.
“Watch the virtuous indignation oozing out of the old rascal,” said
Mark. “The editor of the ‘Ladies’ Home Journal,’ asked to do an essay
on bruisers for the ‘Police Gazette,’ couldn’t be shocked any harder.”
When I told him about an article on Leopold I had done for the “New
York World,” which caused a Montreal editor, who stole it, to be jugged
for libel (“Six months,” said the judge of literature), Mark grew
enthusiastic.
“Was that yours?” he cried. “Good boy! Come along and I will buy you
dinner at one of those places where they are ashamed to put the price
of dishes à la carte because they hate to confess that they charge less
than 1,000 francs a pea.”
SIZING UP OF ARISTOCRACY BY MARK
At one of the many splendid dinner parties at the house of Minister
Walter Phelps, the strange case of Prince and Princess XXX of a
once sovereign family had come in for a lot of discussion. Their
highnesses stood convicted of hotel looting, yet on account of the
imaginary coronet that topped their escutcheon, they were expected to
go scot-free, “for everybody agreed that her ‘Grace’ was plainly a
kleptomaniac.”
“Don’t you think so, Mr. Clemens?” demanded an old countess, coquetting
with the last tooth in her mouth.
“I am no expert,” replied Mark. “All I know is that the disease attacks
only the high born, as you call them, and the well-to-do.”
As on this occasion all of Mr. Phelps’ native guests were more or less
“high born,” and impecunious, that remark of the Sage of a Hundred
Stories put the quietus on aristocracy-propaganda during the rest of
the dinner and later, in the smoking room, Mr. Phelps’ American guests
were left quite to themselves.
“I hope I wasn’t rude to that blue-blooded one,” said Mark, “but
excusing thievery because the thief happens to have a handle to his
or her name, gets my goat on the instant. Now” (looking at me) “give
us the real story of that looting business by High Lifers, so we can
discuss it intelligently. Its general gist I got from the German
papers, but lack details.”
I gave the latter as follows: The Prince XXX was a second son,
consequently always hard up. The Princess had no money of her own
either, but in place of that a soaring ambition. Food positively
disagreed with her every time she took it off mere china or stoneware.
She must have silver--
“Or bust--” said Mark. “I made out that much.”
Well, to get the plate and plenty of it, their highnesses engaged in a
coaching tour of the Fatherland, stopping nightly at a different hotel.
And at each hostelry her Grace swiped all the silver she could carry
off, milk jugs, souvenir spoons and forks and dish covers, napkin rings
and similar knicknacks.
“And these swipings she sent to her ancestral halls, Castle
Teufelsdroekh,” added Mark, “where, under the skillful stylus of an
engraver, the low hotel markings disappeared to make room for the
princely coat-of-arms. But here’s the pretty how-do-you-do about the
scapegoat:
“A servant caught her Grace at the game and gave information to the
police. The police promptly arrested the informant as a material
witness and submitted to their highnesses that, at some future date,
they might graciously deign to appear in court to answer the wretch’s
foul insinuations.”
Followed a lengthy discussion, embroidered with execrating reflections
on justice as handled in the Fatherland, Mark quite surpassing himself
in juicy invectives. After a while other subjects came up, and Clemens
retired to a desk in the corner and began writing furiously on the
backs of stray envelopes he fished from the wastebasket. He scribbled
and scratched for about ten minutes, then got up and read us the
following:
POETIC SUMMARY OF THE CASE OF THE PRINCE, THE PRINCESS AND THE WAITER
The Prince knew naught of wifey’s doings.
The Princess is a kleptománic;
But their accuser, waiter Muller,
To jail with that low brute satánic!
THE BALD-HEADED WOMAN
Mark called at the “New York Herald” office in London one day when a
cable came over the wire, describing the awful punishment visited by
the Czar (Alexander) on the mistress of one of the Grand Dukes. The
lady had been ambushed, carried off to a hairdressing establishment
during the dark hours of the night and there robbed of her abundant
locks. In fact, her head was shaved à la billiard ball.
“Very ingenious,” mused Mark, “for who would, or could, love a
bald-headed woman? They do things neatly in Russia, anyhow. I remember
a devilish joke the great Catharine played on a rival. She had her
yanked out of a quadrille, muzzled, and spirited into the basement.
There she was whipped good and hard with switches soaked twelve hours
in vinegar and salt. Then back to the ballroom and ‘dance, you hussy,
and smile, or you get another dose.’”
WHEN A PUBLISHER DINES AND WINES YOU
Mark, unlike many authors, was always on excellent terms with his
publishers. He always had a good word for the Harpers, particularly
“the scholarly Henry J.” (since dead), Chatto and Windus, George
Harvey, Baron Tauchnitz and the rest, but James R. Osgood of Boston
(later of London) he loved.
“You lucky dog,” he said to me during my first visit to the “sausage
room,” at the Hotel Royal, Berlin. “To pal up with Osgood is a stroke
of good luck that you hardly deserve. Why--” (speaking very slowly, as
if hunting for words), “Osgood is that rara avis among publishers who
will invite you to lunch or dinner or to a box at the Gaiety without
tampering in the least with your royalty accounts.
“It isn’t always thus in the ‘profesh,’ you know. Speaking of _the_
profesh in particular, there was Jimmy Powers in New York, a rising
comedian, indeed rising very rapidly. He had jumped from 200 a week
to 500, when a new managerial aspirant came along, and offered him a
tremendous raise, a sort of Chimborazo article, it was to be.
“Jimmy cottoned to the man’s palaver like a donkey scenting a barrel
full of nice, juicy thistles, a pincushion perfecto, each one, and
promised to go eating with him, a great concession on his part, for
Jimmy had lost his own appetite, found a boa constrictor’s, and was
ashamed of his big, lumbering appetite.
“Well, they rendezvoused at old Martin’s on Tenth Street and Fifth
Avenue, then the most _recherché_ meal joint in town. It happened, by
the way, at the period when the deadly table d’hote imposition was just
beginning to sprout.
“Jimmy had never faced that sort of jaw music and knew no more about
‘_entrees_,’ ‘_poisson_,’ ‘_legumes_,’ etc., than the average Irish
waiter’s wife. Up to then his dinner had consisted invariably of steak,
murphies and pie--the embarrassment of courses described in more or
less pigeon-French on the Martin menu, therefore, bewildered and
frightened him. When he heard the new manager say over the anchovies,
cold slaw and pickled sardines: ‘Well, Jimmy, how would a thousand
a week suit you?’ Powers had only strength to ejaculate: ‘The Lord
preserve us!’
“The fried ‘English’ sole de-Long-Branch with drawn butter and capers
on the side was so delicious, Jimmy didn’t perceive the slight
discrepancy in figures when the manager repeated the question in this
fashion: ‘How would you like to draw a cool nine hundred a week, Jimmy?’
“‘It’s done,’ said Jimmy, attacking his third tumbler of red ink. ‘I
can keep a hoss on that, can’t I?’
“‘And marry Lillian Russell--what a team you two would make,’ seconded
the manager.
“Well, to cut a long story short, that rascally manager did the boy
out of a hundred with every succeeding course, and when finally he
pulled a fountain pen on him, Jimmy signed his laughter-provoking
powers away for five hundred and twenty-five dollars a week. Subtract
five-twenty-five from a thousand and you will find that Jimmy’s one
dollar meal netted the manager exactly $24,700 per annum. Neat piece of
work, eh?”
Mark’s admiration for the fair-dealing Osgood was reflected in his own
treatment of General Grant. He not only paid Grant double the royalties
a rival publisher had offered, but actually wrote out to Grant the
largest check any author ever received from a publishing house up to
that time.
Yet in the numerous discussions of royalties, authorship and the
publishing business which he conducted in my hearing, he never
mentioned the generosity he had displayed towards the old boy. Poetry
was Mark’s weakness, or rather his ambition to dabble in poetry was; he
had no other small vices to shock his friends.
MARK IN POLITICS
The chief regret of Mark’s literary life was that “folks felt
disappointed unless tickled” by his writings. Joan of Arc was his
first serious attempt, but when he entered national and New York City
politics--against Blaine and Tammany respectively--he was so much in
earnest they had to hire Bob Davis to follow up his speeches with a few
funny remarks.
“Throwing acorns before the swine,” Mark called it. (“Acorn” was the
name of the anti-Tammany organization). “Bob had better can that stuff
and sell it to the Saturday Evening Post. They will fall for it, all
right.”
MARK ON “ROYAL HONORS”
Mark and I were walking down the Linden, Berlin, when a royal carriage,
easily distinguished for its well-known breed of horses and livery,
passed us. When it drew near the “Foot Guards,” a drum and fife corps
and half a hundred soldiers, under a lieutenant, rushed out, stood at
attention and made a frightful racket.
Mark remained glued to the spot at the first sound of the “royalist
propaganda”--his description--and eyed the spectacle with a mixture of
amazement and disgust written all over his genial face.
“That carriage was _empty_,” he observed, after a lot of staring and
pulling at his moustache.
“What’s the difference? If it were full of princes there would be a
void--somewhere,” I replied.
“Thanks awfully,” said Mark, impatiently. “_I_ was once greeted by
fife and drums and thought it the most tremendous honor ever paid to a
writing person. And now I see they do as much for an empty carriage,
when there is a coat of arms on the door.
“Yes, I got so inflated with the reverse of modesty when the boys in
red were tickling the veal-skin for me and worked their merry flutes,
I well nigh bust off the buttons of my Prince Albert. It happened in
Ottawa when I was visiting the Governor General, the Marquis of Lorne,
and come to think of it, I was riding in one of Lorne’s carriages. When
we neared the Government House, the guards tumbled out like mad, the
drummer boys worked like windmills in a gale and the fifes like steam
calliopes. Sure, I felt like a hundred and fifteen degrees in the shade
and I must have walked into the hall with the strut of Larry Barrett
playing the Ghost in Hamlet. It was the proudest moment of my life
then--and now I see it was all bosh and balderdash.”
Speaking of those Canadian days, Mark vehemently rebuked me when I
suggested that the Marquis of Lorne was “a prosy ass.”
“But I admit it’s embarrassing to visit in a family where the head of
the house is a mere Lord, while the wife is kowtowed to as her Royal
Highness. Mixes one up so, and I think that in my perplexity I once or
twice said a Lord too many, namely, ‘Oh Lord, Oh Lord.’ I never was
boss in my own house, but I like other men to be the he-brute for fair.
At Ottawa I recalled a hundred times Lola Montez, the girl who started
the revolution in Munich by wearing the breeches at the Palace.
“‘I am the master here,’ shouted King Louis, during one of their rows.
“‘And I am the _mistress_, don’t you forget that,’ replied Lola.
“Now, Lola was only a common baggage, strolling actor-folks’ bairn,”
added Mark. “Think of the advantages royal birth gives to a woman. Such
a one, even if born without legs, would wear the breeches and boss the
show.”
AMERICAN WOMEN THE PRETTIEST
In another place I have recorded Mark’s high opinion of the beauty of
the Vienna women and of the lack of beauty he encountered at the Berlin
court.
As we were walking home from a reception given by Mr. and Mrs. John
Jackson (John Jackson, of New Jersey, first secretary of the Berlin
Legation) Mark said: “It’s like looking up at the Horse Shoe in the
Metropolitan Opera House to see those pretty American girls, Mrs.
Jackson, Mrs. Bingham (wife of Captain, later General Bingham) and
Marion Phelps (daughter of Minister William Walter Phelps). Marion is
blonde and inclined to be statuesque, like the native women here, but
oh, the difference! As in the case of Mrs. Jackson and Mrs. Bingham,
one sees at a glance that Nature squandered more refinement on her than
on a thousand Berlin women, royal and otherwise.
“They say God made man in his effigy. I don’t know about that, but I’m
quite sure that he put a lot of divinity into the American girl.”
WHERE TAY PAY ISN’T TAY PAY
“Tay Pay’s Weekly,” said Mark, proffering sixpence at a Cork news stand.
The woman behind the counter looked at him inquiringly. “New paper,
Sir? Never heard of it.”
“Never heard of Tay Pay? How long have _you_ been in the business?”
asked Mark.
“Ever since I was thirteen, and I’m past sixty now.”
Mark shook his head and started to walk away, when he saw a copy of the
paper nailed up on the outside. “I knew you were mistaken,” he said to
the woman. “There is the paper I want. See the title: ‘Tay Pay,’ as
large as life.”
“Pardon me,” said the newswoman. “We call it Tee Pee’s Weekly here.”
“You do, do you?” cried Mark. “Damned if I ever again try to talk Irish
in Ireland.”
THE MAN WHO DIDN’T GET USED TO HANGING
At the Eccentric Club somebody said: “Man gets used to everything
except hanging,” when Mark interrupted him: “Hold,” he drawled. “When I
was last in London” (this was in 1907) “one of the ‘Savages’ related a
yarn to me which flatly contradicts your commonplace idea.
“The incident happened in the good old hanging days, when all London,
Glasgow, Brighton, or Edinburgh, etc., turned out before breakfast to
see some poor devil dance on air. Henry VIII had two hundred thousand
‘sturdy beggars’ put to death, besides his several wives; I don’t
remember now the London average per week or day, but while hanging
continued a public amusement it had long ceased being a ‘first-page
story’ as far as the metropolitan dailies were concerned.
“Indeed, the papers disdained to send their ‘own correspondents’
or reporters to such small-fry events as the taking of a man’s or,
perchance, a woman’s life in public, and entrusted that part of the
daily grind to a ‘flimsy man,’ who sent duplicate copies to all the
papers, morning and evening. The ‘flimsy man,’ of course, got so used
to the dope and to the eternal sameness of the thing, he could dictate
a first-rate hanging yarn without leaving his office, or using the
phone--beg pardon, there were no phones in those days.
“Well, one Monday morning, at sunrise, a certain ‘Knight of the Road’
was to die by a tight cravat in a town less than fifty miles from
London, and the ‘flimsy man’ thought it would hardly pay to go up (or
down) and impersonate the eyewitness. Besides, he knew the governor of
the jail personally; his Lordship was an obliging man and would gladly
assist at a fake.
“So Mr. Flimsy wrote out his story and held it ‘for release.’
“In the meantime, the doomed man went through the usual rigmarole:
prayers, whiskey, breakfast, more whiskey--march to the gallows. He
found an audience of prize-fight size awaiting him. The prison yard was
black with people, all the surrounding roofs, trees and telegraph poles
were alive with spectators, and many poor chaps who had stood all night
in line for their betters, now sold standing room at a premium.
“Officialdom, too, was well represented: the governor of the jail, his
aides and assistants, the chief of police in their Sunday-go-to-meeting
clothes, and lots of bobbies” (cops) “--every mother’s son and daughter
eager for the hanging, and secretly hoping that no reprieve would spoil
the day’s fun, for somehow the story had got abroad that the Home
Secretary had almost decided to commute the death sentence of this
particular party.
“Meanwhile, preparations proceeded at an encouraging rate: there was
the procession headed by the gentlemanly hangman, swinging a rope;
then bobbies, jailers, trusties. The doomed man walked rather jauntily
at the side of the parson, who was mumbling prayers and looking benign.
“Presently the procession stood under the gallows, all necks craned,
and a hush fell upon the expectant crowd as the hangman’s assistant
pulled the linen cap down over his victim’s face. As he got busy
adjusting the noose, shouts of ‘reprieve!’ ‘reprieve!’ went up.
The hangman looked at the governor and the governor turned towards
the gate, which had opened to admit a small messenger boy from the
telegraph office.
“The boy was waving a yellow envelope over his head, and the governor
signalled to the hangman to wait.
“At the same time the telegraph boy was hoisted over the shoulders of
the crowd until he reached the place where the governor stood. As the
governor received and opened the dispatch, there were more hoarse cries
of ‘reprieve!’ and they were not cries of relief or triumph either.
Sure, the crowd thought itself cheated. The men and women and children
(for there were plenty of children, as usual) thought that they had bet
on a horse that didn’t run--a dead horse that wasn’t dead enough, so to
speak!
“But, presto! another change. The governor, having glanced at the
message, made a wry face, then crumpled the paper up in his hand and
threw it on the ground, while he motioned the hangman to proceed.
“The wire was from the aforementioned fakir and it read: ‘Please wire
(prepaid) whether hanging has come off according to program--Jack.’
But that’s neither here nor there. The point is that the man about
to be put to the worst use one can possibly put a living person to,
was allowed to think for several minutes that the Home Secretary had
commuted his sentence of death, that he, the doomed one, was going to
live after all. I am told they actually stripped the cap off his face,
so he could breathe freely.
“Had that chap got used to hanging, or the hanging idea, by the time
when the cord was once more drawn tight? Did he think with the French
wag (or was it an Englishman?) ‘hang me, your Highness? No, that would
be the death of me.’
“So in our case; no, a thousand times no, for in the interval the
poor soul had got used to _living_ once more, and a thousand-and-one
murderous thoughts were in his heart while he was being swung off into
eternity.”
STRAY SAYINGS OF MARK
“I hate editors, for they make me abandon a lot of perfectly good
English words.”--_To Campbell-Bannerman at the Metropole Hotel, Vienna._
* * * * *
“There are no common people except in the highest spheres of
society.”--_After attending a court function in Berlin._
* * * * *
“Wit, by itself, is of little account. It becomes of moment only when
grounded on wisdom.”--_Talks at the Berlin Legation._
* * * * *
After paying off his creditors (in January, 1898) Mark Twain got, for a
while, very gay and wanted to buy everything in sight. He was actually
going around looking for “good things to plant money on.” Some friends
thought it their duty to warn him, but he shut them up with the remark:
“Don’t alarm your sweet self--no more typesetting and Webster business
for me. I never buy anything nowadays that I can’t afford to pay spot
cash for.”
* * * * *
“How much time do you suppose you have gained by writing ‘&’ for ‘and’,
papa?” asked Jean one afternoon at tea.
“Not enough to waste it on answers to foolish questions,” replied her
father severely.
Then he gave her a dollar, kissed her and sent her away rejoicing.
“That little blackmailer,” he said, “was impertinent only to make me
mad, knowing full well that later I would chastise myself for being a
brute--still with a dollar fine I got off cheap enough.”
* * * * *
“He was a King even in his undershirt and drawers.”--(A verse in one of
Grillparzer’s Tragedies--which caused the play to be put on the Index
by the censor.) This amused Mark hugely. But he had no sympathy with
the author, saying: “He ought to have put pajamas on the cuss.”
* * * * *
Mark Twain, when speaking of a king was fond of quoting Shakespeare’s:
“I have an humour to knock you indifferently well.” (Henry V.)
* * * * *
“I have been blowing the heads off frothing pots of porter.”--Mark
Twain after writing his Czar’s Soliloquy.
* * * * *
A Hamburg dealer in curiosities offered to sell Clemens two of
Bismarck’s hairs for a hundred marks a hair. Mark asked his secretary
to write back that, according to the most reliable statistics, Bismarck
had rejoiced in the possession of three hairs only and of that trinity
enough had been sold already to cover the pates of a whole row full of
bald heads on a first night in Broadway, New York.
EUGENE FIELD
EUGENE FIELD AND HIS TROUBLES IN CHICAGO
We had been fellow coffee-drinkers and fellow pie-eaters in Chicago
since the early eighties, at a time when beefsteak, fried potatoes,
apple pie and cheese constituted an American table d’hote and whiskey
was the beverage for Man. Women never touched it in those days, and
American wines were so little esteemed, that a bottle was given away
free, gratis and for nothing to each guest at Palmer House dinners.
Mike McDonald was king of Chicago, Luther Laflin Mills was State’s
Attorney and Carter Harrison was Mayor time and again. All the
newspaper men borrowed money from Mike and drank at the expense of
Luther Laflin when he ran for office.
Eugene Field, of course, was the Sharps and Flats man of the widely
circulated Daily News: I was a writer on foreign affairs for the
Chicago Times, the paper “that would set the town by the ears daily or
burst.” The Times office was diagonally across from the News office,
and from the News office we turned to the left into Randolph Street,
where the general hang-out, Henrici’s, was situated.