may have been in his thoughts and recorded in his note-books during
the rest of the year. It is his time of completing work begun, and
of putting into definite shape what have been suggestions and
possibilities. It is not his literary habit, however, to carry one
line of work through from beginning to end before taking up the next.
Instead of that, he has always a number of schemes and projects going
along at the same time, and he follows first one and then another,
according as his mood inclines him. Nor do his productions come before
the public always as soon as they are completed. He has been known
to keep a book on hand for five years, after it was finished. But
while the life at Elmira is in the main seclusive and systematically
industrious, that at Hartford, to which he returns in September, is
full of variety and entertainment. His time is then less restricted,
and he gives himself freely to the enjoyment of social life. He
entertains many friends, and his hospitable house, seldom without a
guest, is one of the literary centers of the city. Mr. Howells is
a frequent visitor, as Bayard Taylor used to be. Cable, Aldrich,
Henry Irving, Stanley, and many others of wide reputation, have been
entertained there. The next house to Mr. Clemens’s on the south is
Charles Dudley Warner’s home, and the next on the east is Mrs. Stowe’s,
so that the most famous three writers in Hartford live within a stone’s
throw of each other.
At Hartford Mr. Clemens’s hours of occupation are less systematized,
but he is no idler there. At some times he shuts himself in his
working-room and declines to be interrupted on any account, though
there are not wanting some among his expert billiard-playing friends
to insist that this seclusion is merely to practice uninterruptedly
while they are otherwise engaged. Certainly he is a skillful player.
He keeps a pair of horses, and rides more or less in his carriage, but
does not drive, or ride on horseback. He is, however, an adept upon
the bicycle. He has made its conquest a study, and has taken, and also
experienced, great pains with the work. On his bicycle he travels a
great deal, and he is also an indefatigable pedestrian, taking long
walks across country, frequently in the company of his friend the Rev.
Joseph H. Twichell, at whose church (Congregational) he is a pew-holder
and regular attendant. For years past he has been an industrious and
extensive reader and student in the broad field of general culture. He
has a large library and a real familiarity with it, extending beyond
our own language into the literatures of Germany and France. He seems
to have been fully conscious of the obligations which the successful
opening of his literary career laid upon him, and to have lived up to
its opportunities by a conscientious and continuous course of reading
and study which supplements the large knowledge of human nature that
the vicissitudes of his early life brought with them. His resources
are not of the exhaustible sort. He is a member of (among other social
organizations) the Monday Evening Club of Hartford, that was founded
nearly twenty years ago by the Rev. Dr. Bushnell, Dr. Henry, and Dr.
J. Hammond Trumbull, and others, with a membership limited to twenty.
The club meets on alternate Monday evenings from October to May in
the houses of the members. One person reads a paper and the others
then discuss it; and Mr. Clemens’s talks there, as well as his daily
conversation among friends, amply demonstrate the spontaneity and
naturalness of his irrepressible humor.
His inventions are not to be overlooked in any attempt to outline his
life and its activities. “Mark Twain’s Scrap-Book” must be pretty well
known by this time, for something like 100,000 copies of it have been
sold yearly for ten years or more. As he wanted a scrap-book, and could
not find what he wanted, he made one himself, which naturally proved to
be just what other people wanted. Similarly, he invented a note-book.
It is his habit to record at the moment they occur to him such scenes
and ideas as he wishes to preserve. All note-books that he could buy
had the vicious habit of opening at the wrong place and distracting
attention in that way. So, by a simple contrivance, he arranged one
that always opens at the right place; that is, of course, at the page
last written upon. Other simple inventions by Mark Twain include a vest
which enables the wearer to dispense with suspenders; a shirt, with
collars and cuffs attached, which requires neither buttons nor studs;
a perpetual-calendar watch-charm, which gives the day of the week and
of the month; and a game whereby people may play historical dates and
events upon a board, somewhat after the manner of cribbage, being a
game whose office is twofold--to furnish the dates and events, and to
impress them permanently upon the memory.
In 1885 Mark Twain and George W. Cable made a general tour of the
country, each giving readings from his own works: and they had crowded
houses and most cordial receptions. It was not a new sort of occupation
for Mark Twain. Back in the early days, before his first book appeared,
he delivered lectures in the Pacific States. His powers of elocution
are remarkable, and he has long been considered by his friends one of
the most satisfactory and enjoyable readers of their acquaintance. His
parlor-reading of Shakspeare and Browning is described as a masterly
performance. He has hitherto refused to undertake any general course of
public reading, though very strong inducements have been offered to him
to go to the distant English colonies, even as far as Australia.
CHARLES HOPKINS CLARK.
[After the failure of the firm of Charles L. Webster & Co., of which
he was a member, Mr. Clemens accomplished the Herculean task of
discharging debts not legally his, by a lecture tour in this country
and in Australia. On his return home, he was met in England by the
sad news of the sudden death of his eldest daughter. After four more
years in Europe, for the most part in Vienna, he came back to this
country. The Hartford home was left unoccupied, partly on account of
sad associations, and the family spent the winter in New York. They
then leased a house at Riverdale on the Hudson, from where they will
move to the new home at Tarrytown which Mr. Clemens has recently
bought.--EDITORS.]
[Illustration]
GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS
GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS
AT WEST NEW BRIGHTON
It is not noticed that the most determined fighters, both in battle and
on the field of public affairs, are often the gentlest, most peaceable
men in private converse and at home. The public was for a long time
accustomed to regard Mr. Curtis as a combatant; but many who know of
him in that character would have been surprised could they have met him
in the quiet study on Staten Island, where his work was done.
A calm, solid figure, of fine height and impressive carriage, a
moderately ruddy complexion, with snowy side-whiskers, and gray
hair parted at the crown, gave him somewhat the appearance that we
conventionally ascribe to English country gentlemen. There was an air
of repose about the surroundings and the occupant of the room where he
worked. Over the door hung a mellowed and rarely excellent copy of the
Stratford portrait of Shakspeare; shelves filled with books--the dumb
yet resistless artillery of literature--were placed in all the spaces
between the three windows; and other books and pamphlets--the small
arms and equipments--covered a part of the ample table. A soft-coal
fire in the grate threw out intermittently its broad, genial flame, as
if inspired to illumination by the gaze of Emerson, or Daniel Webster,
or the presence of blind Homer, whose busts were in an opposite corner.
Altogether, the spot seemed very remote from all loud conflicts of
the time. There was none of that confusion, that tempestuous disarray
of newspapers, common in the workshops of editors. Yet an examination
of the new books and documents which lay before him would show that
Mr. Curtis established here a sluice-way through which was drawn a
current of our chief literature and politics; and some of the lines
in his massive lower face indicated the resoluteness which underlay
his natural urbanity and kindness. Although his father came from
Massachusetts and he himself was born in Providence, Mr. Curtis was
identified with New York. In 1839, at the age of fifteen, he moved
with his father to this city. Three years later he enlisted with the
Brook Farm enthusiasts, but in 1844 withdrew to Concord, as Hawthorne
had done. There, with his brother, he worked at farming, and continued
to study until 1846, when he came back to New York, still bent upon
preparing himself for a literary life, though he chose not to go to
college. He went, instead, to Europe, remaining there and in the East
for four years, six months of which he spent as a student at the
University of Berlin.
Bringing home copious materials for the work, he wrote the “Nile Notes
of a Howadji,” which the Harpers promptly accepted and published in
1851, the author being then twenty-seven. It is interesting to observe
that he never went through that period of struggle to which most young
writers must submit; a fact presaging the almost unbroken success of
his later career. His other two books of travel appeared the next year,
and at the same time he began to divide with Donald G. Mitchell the
writing of the “Easy Chair” in _Harper’s Monthly_, which he afterward
took wholly upon himself and continued until his death. His connection
with _Harper’s Weekly_ began in 1857, and for six years he supplied a
series of papers entitled “The Lounger” to that periodical. In 1863 he
became its political editor. Meanwhile he had published “The Potiphar
Papers,” the one successful satire on social New York since Irving’s
“Salmagundi”; also “Prue and I,” and “Trumps,” his only attempt at a
novel. This, too, treats of New York life. Finally he married, in 1856,
and settled on Staten Island, where he lived until he died in 1892, in
a house only a few rods distant from that in which he was married.
Yet, New Yorker as he was by long association, residence and interest,
he had a close relationship with Massachusetts; partly through his
marriage into a Massachusetts family of note--the Shaws; partly,
perhaps, through the ties formed in those idyllic days at Brook Farm
and Concord. And in Massachusetts he had another home, at Ashfield,
to which he repaired every summer. It is an old farm-house on the
outskirts of the village, which lies among beautiful maple-clad
hills, between the Berkshire valley and the picturesque neighborhood
of the Deerfields and Northampton. A number of years ago, with his
friend Charles Eliot Norton, Mr. Curtis aided in founding a library
for Ashfield, and he was so much of a favorite with his neighbors
there, that they were anxious to make him their representative in
Congress. He, however, seemed to prefer their friendship, and the
glorious colors of their autumn woods, to their votes. Throughout the
greater part of the fierce presidential campaign of 1884 Mr. Curtis
conducted his voluminous work as editor and as independent chieftain
in this quiet retreat. In 1875 it was to him that Concord turned when
seeking an orator for the centenary of her famous “Fight”; and it was
he again whom Boston, in the spring of 1883, invited to pronounce the
eulogy upon Wendell Phillips. These are rather striking instances of
Massachusetts dependence on a New York author and orator, discrepant
from a theory which makes the dependence all the other way.
But Mr. Curtis long since gained national reputation as a lecturer.
His first venture in that line was “Contemporary Art in Europe,” in
1851; then he fairly got under way with “The Age of Steam,” and soon
became one of that remarkable group, including Starr King, Phillips
and Beecher, who built up the lyceum into an important institution,
and went all over the country lecturing. Mr. Curtis gave lectures
every winter until 1872. I remember his saying, some time before
that, “I have to write and deliver at least one sermon a year”; and
indeed they _were_ sermons, of the most eloquent kind, rife with noble
incitements to duty, patriotism, lofty thought, ideal conduct. In
1859, at Philadelphia, having long before engaged to speak on “The
Present State of the Anti-Slavery Question,” he was told that it would
not be allowed. Many people entreated him not to attempt it; but,
while disclaiming any wish to create disturbance or to be martyred,
he stated that he found himself forced to represent the principle of
free speech, and that nothing could induce him to shrink from upholding
it. Accordingly he began his lecture from a platform guarded by double
rows of police. A tumult was raised in the hall, and a mob attacked
the building simultaneously from without, intending to seize the
speaker and hang him. For twenty minutes he waited silently, while
vitriol-bottles and brick-bats were showered through the windows, and
the police fought the rioters in both hall and street. The disturbance
quelled, he went on for an hour, saying all that he had to say, amid
alternate hisses and applause, and with the added emphasis of missiles
from lingering rioters smashing the window glass. Is it surprising that
this man should have the courage to rise and shout out a solitary “No,”
against the hundreds of a State convention, or that he should have
dared to “bolt” the Presidential nomination of his party, in spite of
jeers and sneers and cries of treachery?
Mr. Curtis’s adversaries, in whatever else they may have been right,
were apt to make two serious mistakes about him. One was, that
they considered him a dilettante in politics; the other, that they
overlooked his “staying-power.” For over thirty-four years he not only
closely studied and wrote upon our politics, but he also took an active
share in them.
For twenty-five years he was the chairman of a local Republican
committee; he made campaign speeches; he sat in conventions; he
influenced thousands of votes. Moreover, his views triumphed. They
did so in the anti-slavery cause; they did so in the Civil Service
Reform movement, and in the Independent movement of 1884. Surely that
is not the record of a dilettante. He never pulled wires, nor did he
seek office; that is all. Once he ran for Congress in a Democratic
district, sure of defeat, but wishing to have a better chance, as
candidate, for speech-making. He took the chairmanship of the Civil
Service Advisory Board as an imperative duty, and resigned it as soon
as he saw its futility under President Grant’s rule. Seward wanted to
make him Consul-General in Egypt; Mr. Hayes offered him the mission
to England, and again that to Germany; but he refused each one. His
only political ambition was to instil sound principles, and to oppose
practical _patriotism_ to “practical politics.” Honorary distinctions
he was willing to accept, in another field. He was an LL.D. of Harvard,
Brown and Madison universities; and in 1864 he was appointed a Regent
of the University of New York, in the line of succession to John Jay,
Chancellor Kent and Gulian Verplanck. This, it seems to me, was a
very fit association, for Mr. Curtis was attached by his qualities of
integrity and refinement to the best representatives of New York. The
idea often occurs to one, that he, more than any one else, continued
the example which Washington Irving set; an example of kindliness and
good-nature blended with indestructible dignity, and of a delicately
imaginative mind consecrating much of its energy to public service.
A teacher of a true State policy, rather than a statesman--an
inspiring leader, more than he was an organizer or executant--he yet
did much hard work in organizing, and tried to perpetuate the desirable
tradition that culture should be joined to questions of right in
Government, and of the popular weal. Twenty years a lecturer, without
rest; twenty-five years a political editor; thirty-six years the suave
and genial occupant of the “Easy Chair”; always steadfast to the
highest aims, and ignoring unworthy slurs;--may we not say reasonably
that he had “staying power”? One source of it was to be found in the
serene cheer of his family life in that Staten Island cottage to which
he clung so closely, and among the well-loved Ashfield hills, where he
long continued to show that power.
GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP.
DR. EDWARD EGGLESTON
DR. EDWARD EGGLESTON
AT LAKE GEORGE
Owl’s Nest, the summer retreat of Dr. Edward Eggleston, is
picturesquely situated on Dunham’s Bay, an arm of Lake George that
deeply indents the land on the southeastern shore of the lake. This
site was chosen partly because the land hereabout is owned by his
son-in-law, and partly because of the seclusion the place affords
from the main current of summer business and travel. With the utmost
freedom of choice, a spot better suited to the needs of a literary
worker with a family could hardly have been selected within the
entire thirty-six miles covering the length of Lake George. Here, a
few years ago, among black rocks, green woods, and blue waters, all
pervaded by the breath of balsam, cedar, and pine, the author of “The
Hoosier Schoolmaster,” after various flights to other northern places
of resort, built the nest which he has since continued to occupy
during six months of the year (with the exception of one year spent
abroad), and in which he does the better part of his literary work,
with material about him prepared at his winter home in Brooklyn.
Owl’s Nest (doubtless jocosely so-called because of the utter absence
from it of everything owlish) consists of three architecturally unique
and tasteful buildings, occupying a natural prominence on the western
shore of the bay. One, the family cottage, is a handsome-looking and
commodious structure of wood, liberally furnished in a manner becoming
the artistic and literary proclivities of its occupants. A little
below this, to the right, and nearer the lake shore, is a summer
boarding-house, built by the owner of the farm for the accommodation
of the friends and admirers of Dr. Eggleston, who annually follow
his flight into the country--so impossible, as it would seem, is
it to escape the consequences of fame. The third and most striking
structure upon the grounds is Dr. Eggleston’s workshop and library--his
lasting and peculiar mark on the shores of Lake George, and the most
prominent and elaborate piece of work of its kind to be found anywhere
in northern New York. This was laid out by a Springfield, Mass.,
architect, after plans of the proprietor’s own. It is built of brown
sandstone quarried on the spot, and laid by local stone-workers,
finished in native chestnut and cherry by home mechanics, and decorated
without with designs, and within with carvings, by the hand of the
author’s artist-daughter, Allegra. Thus are secured for it at once a
sturdy native character of its own, and a sylvan harmony and grace
most pleasing to the fancy. Within this stronghold are arranged in
due order the weapons of the literary champion--historian, novelist,
and essayist--as well as the tools of his daughter, who has long
been working in conjunction with her father in the production of the
illustrated novel, “The Graysons,” given to the world in 1888.
It is into this stronghold that one is conducted on a Sunday afternoon,
after the usual hearty hand-shake; especially if one’s visit relates in
any way to things literary, or to questions that are easiest settled
in an atmosphere of books. You are led through a door opening at the
rear of the building, toward the cottage; immediately opposite to
which, upon entering, appears the entrance to the artist’s studio;
thence along a narrow passage traversing the length of the west wall
and lined to the ceiling with books, through a doorway concealed by a
pair of heavy dropping curtains, and into the author’s study, occupying
the south end of the building. Here you are seated in a soft chair
beside a deep, red brick fireplace (adorned with andirons and other
appurtenances of ancient pattern, captured from some old colonial
mansion), and before a modern bay-window opening to the south.
This window is, structurally, the chief glory and ornament of Dr.
Eggleston’s study--broad, deep, and high, filling fully one-third of
the wall-space in the south end, and so letting into the room, as it
were, a good portion of all out-doors. From this window is obtained a
charming view of the finest points in the surrounding scenery. Directly
in front stretches out for miles to the southward a broad expanse of
marsh, through which winds in sinuous curves a sluggish creek that ends
its idling course where the line of blue water meets the rank green of
the swale. Just here extends from shore to shore a long causeway of
stone and timber, over which runs the highway through the neighborhood.
Flanking the morass on each side are two parallel lines of mountains,
looking blue and hazy and serene on a still day, but marvelously
savage and wild and threatening when a storm is raging. These are,
respectively, the French Mountain spur on the west; and on the east a
long chain of high peaks, which begins with the Sugar Loaf, three miles
inland, approaches the eastern shore, and forms with the grand peaks of
Black, Buck and Finch mountains a magnificent border to the lake as far
down as the Narrows, where it terminates in the bold and picturesque
rock of Tongue Mountain.
This view constitutes almost the whole outlook from the spot, which
is otherwise encroached upon by an intricate tangle of untamed
nature--woods, cliffs and ravines, that back it up on the west, and
flank it on either side down to the water’s edge. Turning from the view
of things outside to consider the things within, you find yourself,
apart from the necessary furniture of the room, walled in by books, to
apparently interminable heights and lengths. I think Dr. Eggleston told
me he has here something like four thousand volumes, perhaps one-fourth
of which may be classed as general literature; the rest being volumes
old and new, of ever conceivable date, style and condition, bearing
upon the subject of colonial history. These have been gathered at
immense pains from the libraries and bookstalls of Europe and America.
In his special field of work Dr. Eggleston long ago proved himself a
profound student and a thorough and successful operator. But if books
tire you, there is at hand a most interesting collection of souvenirs
of foreign travel--pictures, casts, quaint manuscripts, etc.--besides
rare autographs, curios, and relics of every sort, gathered from
everywhere, all of which he shows you with every effort and desire to
entertain. In common with other distinguished persons, Dr. Eggleston
has undergone persecution by the inveterate collector of autographs.
One claimant for a specimen of his penmanship, writing from somewhere
in the Dominion, solicited a “few lines” to adorn his album withal;
whereupon he went to his desk and, taking a blank sheet, drew with pen
and ink two parallel black lines across it, added his signature, and
mailed it promptly to the enclosed address.
The work upon which Dr. Eggleston is engaged (“Life in the Thirteen
Colonies”) has already occupied him over six years, and he estimates
that it will be nearly six years more ere it is completed. Chapters
of it have been appearing from time to time, during its composition,
in _The Century_ magazine; and the first completed volume is now
in the possession of The Century Co. for early publication. It is
distinctively a history of the people in their struggle for empire;
recording to the minutest details their public and domestic life and
affairs, treating exhaustively of their manners, customs, politics,
wars, religion, manufactures, and agriculture, showing in what they
failed and in what succeeded. All this is wrought out in a vivid
style, and possesses the interest and vigor of a romance. This has
been his chief work. Otherwise he has contributed to the periodicals
a large number of essays, short stories, etc., and has lately (by way
of recreation) prepared a youth’s history of the American settlements,
for school use. His working-hours are from eight in the morning till
two in the afternoon, during which time he sticks to his desk, where
he is to be found every day except Sunday, apparently hopelessly
entangled in a thicket of notes and references, in manuscript and in
print, which besets him on all sides. But to the worker there, each
stack is a trusted tool on which he lays his hand unerringly when it
is wanted. He has perfected a system of note-making which reduces
the labor of reference to a minimum, while a type-writer performs
for him the mechanical part of the work. His afternoons are given to
socialities and recreation. His four little grandchildren come in for
a large share of his leisure time; and it is a good thing to see them
all rolling together on the study floor and making the place ring with
their merriment.
I have seen in one of the older anthologies a poem entitled “The
Helper,” of which I remember these words:
“There was a man, a prince among his kind,
And he was called the Helper.”