Chapter XXXVI: of the Mississippi book (21)

There is nothing in any of his earlier notes or letters to indicate that he contemplated the story of Joan as early as the eighties; but there is a bibliographical list of various works on the subject, probably compiled for him not much later than 1880, for the latest published work of the list bears that date. He was then too busy with his inventions and publishing schemes to really undertake a work requiring such vast preparation; but without doubt he procured a number of books and renewed that old interest begun so long ago when a stray wind had blown a leaf from that tragic life into his own. Joan of Arc, by Janet Tuckey, was apparently the first book he read with the definite idea of study, for this little volume had been recently issued, and his copy, which still exists, is filled with his marginal notes. He did not speak of this volume in discussing the matter in after-years. He may have forgotten it. He dwelt mainly on the old records of the trial which had been dug out and put into modern French by Quicherat; the 'Jeanne d'Arc' of J. Michelet, and the splendid 'Life of the Maid' of Lord Ronald Gower, these being remembered as his chief sources of information.--[The book of Janet Tuckey, however, and ten others, including those mentioned, are credited as “authorities examined in verification” on a front page of his published book. In a letter written at the conclusion of “Joan” in 1895, the author states that in the first two-thirds of the story he used one French and one English authority, while in the last third he had constantly drawn from five French and five English sources.]

“I could not get the Quicherat and some of the other books in English,” he said, “and I had to dig them out of the French. I began the story five times.”

None of these discarded beginnings exists to-day, but we may believe they were wisely put aside, for no story of the Maid could begin more charmingly, more rarely, than the one supposedly told in his old age by Sieur Louis de Conte, secretary of Joan of Arc, and translated by Jean Francois Alden for the world to read. The impulse which had once prompted Mark Twain to offer The Prince and the Pauper anonymously now prevailed. He felt that the Prince had missed a certain appreciation by being connected with his signature, and he resolved that its companion piece (he so regarded Joan) should be accepted on its merits and without prejudice. Walking the floor one day at Viviani, smoking vigorously, he said to Mrs. Clemens and Susy:

“I shall never be accepted seriously over my own signature. People always want to laugh over what I write and are disappointed if they don't find a joke in it. This is to be a serious book. It means more to me than anything I have ever undertaken. I shall write it anonymously.”

So it was that that gentle, quaint Sieur de Conte took up the pen, and the tale of Joan was begun in that beautiful spot which of all others seems now the proper environment for its lovely telling.

He wrote rapidly once he got his plan perfected and his material arranged. The reading of his youth and manhood, with the vivid impressions of that earlier time, became now something remembered, not merely as reading, but as fact.

Others of the family went down into the city almost daily, but he remained in that still garden with Joan as his companion--the old Sieur de Conte, saturated with memories, pouring out that marvelous and tragic tale. At the end of each day he would read to the others what he had written, to their enjoyment and wonder.

How rapidly he worked may be judged from a letter which he wrote to Hall in February, in which he said:

I am writing a companion piece to 'The Prince and the Pauper', which is half done & will make 200,000 words.

That is to say, he had written one hundred thousand words in a period of perhaps six weeks, marvelous work when one remembers that after all he was writing history, some of which he must dig laboriously from a foreign source. He had always, more or less, kept up his study of the French, begun so long ago on the river and it stood him in good stead now. Still, it was never easy for him, and the multitude of notes along the margin of his French authorities bears evidence of his faithfulness and the magnitude of his toil. No previous work had ever required so much of him, such thorough knowledge; none had ever so completely commanded his interest. He would have been willing to remain shut away from visitors, to have been released altogether from social obligations; and he did avoid most of them. Not all, for he could not always escape, and perhaps did not always really wish to. Florence and its suburbs were full of delightful people--some of them his old friends. There were luncheons, dinners, teas, dances, concerts, operas always in progress somewhere, and not all of these were to be resisted even by an absorbed author who was no longer himself, but sad old Sieur de Conte, following again the banner of the Maid of Orleans, marshaling her twilight armies across his illumined page.

CLXXXIV. NEW HOPE IN THE MACHINE

If all human events had not been ordered in the first act of the primal atom, and so become inevitable, it would seem a pity now that he must abandon his work half-way, and make another hard, distracting trip to America.

But it was necessary for him to go. Even Hall was no longer optimistic. His letters provided only the barest shreds of hope. Times were hard and there was every reason to believe they would be worse. The World's Fair year promised to be what it speedily became--one of the hardest financial periods this country has ever seen. Chicago could hardly have selected a more profitless time for her great exposition. Clemens wrote urging Hall to sell out all, or a portion, of the business--to do anything, indeed, that would avoid the necessity of further liability and increased dread. Every payment that could be spared from the sales of his manuscript was left in Hall's hands, and such moneys as still came to Mrs. Clemens from her Elmira interests were flung into the general fund. The latter were no longer large, for Langdon & Co. were suffering heavily in the general depression, barely hoping to weather the financial storm.

It is interesting to note that age and misfortune and illness had a tempering influence on Mark Twain's nature. Instead of becoming harsh and severe and bitter, he had become more gentle, more kindly. He wrote often to Hall, always considerately, even tenderly. Once, when something in Hall's letter suggested that he had perhaps been severe, he wrote:

Mrs. Clemens is deeply distressed, for she thinks I have been
blaming you or finding fault with you about something. But most
assuredly that cannot be. I tell her that although I am prone to
write hasty and regrettable things to other people I am not a bit
likely to write such things to you. I can't believe I have done
anything so ungrateful. If I have, pile coals of fire upon my head
for I deserve it. You have done magnificently with the business, &
we must raise the money somehow to enable you to reap a reward for
all that labor.

He was fond of Hall. He realized how honest and resolute and industrious he had been. In another letter he wrote him that it was wonderful he had been able to “keep the ship afloat in the storm that has seen fleets and fleets go down”; and he added: “Mrs. Clemens says I must tell you not to send us any money for a month or two, so that you may be afforded what little relief is in our power.”

The type-setter situation seemed to promise something. In fact, the machine once more had become the principal hope of financial salvation. The new company seemed really to begetting ahead in spite of the money stringency, and was said to have fifty machines well under way: About the middle of March Clemens packed up two of his shorter manuscripts which he had written at odd times and forwarded them to Hall, in the hope that they would be disposed of and the money waiting him on his arrival; and a week later, March 22, 1893, he sailed from Genoa on the Kaiser Wilhelm II, a fine, new boat. One of the manuscripts was 'The Californian's Tale' and the other was 'Adam's Diary'.--[It seems curious that neither of these tales should have found welcome with the magazines. “The Californian's Tale” was published in the Liber Scriptorum, an Authors' Club book, edited by Arthur Stedman. The 'Diary' was disposed of to the Niagara Book, a souvenir of Niagara Falls, which contained sketches by Howells, Clemens, and others. Harper's Magazine republished both these stories in later years--the Diary especially with great success.]

Some joke was likely to be played on Mark Twain during these ocean journeys, and for this particular voyage an original one was planned. They knew how he would fume and swear if he should be discovered with dutiable goods and held up in the Custom House, and they planned for this effect. A few days before arriving in New York one passenger after another came to him, each with a box of expensive cigars, and some pleasant speech expressing friendship and appreciation and a hope that they would be remembered in absence, etc., until he had perhaps ten or a dozen very choice boxes of smoking material. He took them all with gratitude and innocence. He had never declared any dutiable baggage, entering New York alone, and it never occurred to him that he would need to do so now. His trunk and bags were full; he had the cigars made into a nice package, to be carried handily, and on his arrival at the North German Lloyd docks stood waiting among his things for the formality of Customs examination, his friends assembled for the explosion.

They had not calculated well; the Custom-House official came along presently with the usual “Open your baggage, please,” then suddenly recognizing the owner of it he said:

“Oh, Mr. Clemens, excuse me. We have orders to extend to you the courtesies of the port. No examination of your effects is necessary.”

It was the evening of Monday, April 3d, when he landed in New York and went to the Hotel Glenham. In his notes he tells of having a two-hour talk with Howells on the following night. They had not seen each other for two years, and their correspondence had been broken off. It was a happy, even if somewhat sad, reunion, for they were no longer young, and when they called the roll of friends there were many vacancies. They had reached an age where some one they loved died every year. Writing to Mrs. Crane, Clemens speaks of the ghosts of memory; then he says:

I dreamed I was born & grew up & was a pilot on the Mississippi & a
miner & a journalist in Nevada & a pilgrim in the Quaker City & had
a wife & children & went to live in a villa at Florence--& this
dream goes on & on & sometimes seems so real that I almost believe
it is real. I wonder if it is? But there is no way to tell, for if
one applies tests they would be part of the dream, too, & so would
simply aid the deceit. I wish I knew whether it is a dream or real.

He was made handsomely welcome in New York. His note-book says:

Wednesday. Dined with Mary Mapes Dodge, Howells, Rudyard Kipling &
wife, Clarke,--[ William Fayal Clarke, now editor of St. Nicholas
Magazine.]--Jamie Dodge & wife.

Thursday, 6th. Dined with Andrew Carnegie, Prof. Goldwin Smith,
John Cameron, Mr. Glenn. Creation of league for absorbing Canada
into our Union. Carnegie also wants to add Great Britain & Ireland.

It was on this occasion that Carnegie made his celebrated maxim about the basket and the eggs. Clemens was suggesting that Carnegie take an interest in the typesetter, and quoted the old adage that one should not put all of his eggs into one basket. Carnegie regarded him through half-closed lids, as was his custom, and answered:

“That's a mistake; put all your eggs into one basket--and watch that
basket.”

He had not come to America merely for entertainment. He was at the New York office of the type-setter company, acquiring there what seemed to be good news, for he was assured that his interests were being taken care of, and that within a year at most his royalty returns would place him far beyond the fear of want. He forwarded this good news to Italy, where it was sorely needed, for Mrs. Clemens found her courage not easy to sustain in his absence. That he had made his letter glowing enough, we may gather from her answer.

It does not seem credible that we are really again to have money to
spend. I think I will jump around and spend money just for fun, and
give a little away, if we really get some. What should we do and
how should we feel if we had no bright prospects before us, and yet
how many people are situated in that way?

He decided to make another trip to Chicago to verify, with his own eyes, the manufacturing reports, and to see Paige, who would appear to have become more elusive than ever as to contracts, written and implied. He took Hall with him, and wrote Orion to meet him at the Great Northern Hotel. This would give him a chance to see Orion and would give Orion a chance to see the great Fair. He was in Chicago eleven days, and in bed with a heavy cold almost the whole of that time. Paige came to see him at his rooms, and, as always, was rich in prospects and promises; full of protestations that, whatever came, when the tide of millions rolled in, they would share and share alike. The note-book says:

Paige shed even more tears than usual. What a talker he is! He
could persuade a fish to come out and take a walk with him. When he
is present I always believe him; I can't help it.

Clemens returned to New York as soon as he was able to travel. Going down in the elevator a man stepped in from one of the floors swearing violently. Clemens, leaning over to Hall, with his hand to his mouth, and in a whisper audible to every one, said:

“Bishop of Chicago.”

The man, with a quick glance, recognized his fellow-passenger and subsided.

On May 13th Clemens took the Kaiser Wilhelm II. for Genoa. He had accomplished little, but he was in better spirits as to the machine. If only the strain of his publishing business had slackened even for a moment! Night and day it was always with him. Hall presently wrote that the condition of the money-market was “something beyond description. You cannot get money on anything short of government bonds.” The Mount Morris Bank would no longer handle their paper. The Clemens household resorted to economies hitherto undreamed of. Mrs. Clemens wrote to her sister that she really did not see sometimes where their next money would come from. She reported that her husband got up in the night and walked the floor in his distress.

He wrote again to Hall, urging him to sell and get rid of the debts and responsibilities at whatever sacrifice:

I am terribly tired of business. I am by nature and disposition
unfit for it, & I want to get out of it. I am standing on the Mount
Morris volcano with help from the machine a long, long way off--&
doubtless a long way further off than the Connecticut company
imagine.

Get me out of business!

He knew something of the delays of completing a typesetting machine, and he had little faith in any near relief from that source. He wrote again go Hall, urging him to sell some of his type-setter royalties. They should be worth something now since the manufacturing company was actually in operation; but with the terrible state of the money-market there was no sale for anything. Clemens attempted to work, but put in most of his time footing up on the margin of his manuscript the amount of his indebtedness, the expenses of his household, and the possibilities of his income. It was weary, hard, nerve-racking employment. About the muddle of June they closed Viviani. Susy Clemens went to Paris to cultivate her voice, a rare soprano, with a view to preparing for the operatic stage. Clemens took Mrs. Clemens, with little Jean, to Germany for the baths. Clara, who had graduated from Mrs. Willard's school in Berlin, joined them in Munich, and somewhat later Susy also joined them, for Madame Marchesi, the great master of voice-culture, had told her that she must acquire physique to carry that voice of hers before she would undertake to teach her.

In spite of his disturbed state of mind Clemens must have completed some literary work during this period, for we find first mention, in a letter to Hall, of his immortal defense of Harriet Shelley, a piece of writing all the more marvelous when we consider the conditions of its performance. Characteristically, in the same letter, he suddenly develops a plan for a new enterprise--this time for a magazine which Arthur Stedman or his father will edit, and the Webster company will publish as soon as their present burdens are unloaded. But we hear no more of this project.

But by August he was half beside himself with anxiety. On the 6th he wrote Hall:

Here we never see a newspaper, but even if we did I could not come
anywhere near appreciating or correctly estimating the tempest you
have been buffeting your way through--only the man who is in it can
do that--but I have tried not to burden you thoughtlessly or
wantonly. I have been overwrought & unsettled in mind by
apprehensions, & that is a thing that is not helpable when one is in
a strange land & sees his resources melt down to a two months'
supply & can't see any sure daylight beyond. The bloody machine
offers but a doubtful outlook--& will still offer nothing much
better for a long time to come; for when the “three weeks” are up,
there will be three months' tinkering to follow, I guess. That is
unquestionably the boss machine of the world, but is the toughest
one on prophets when it is in an incomplete state that has ever seen
the light.

And three days later:

Great Scott, but it's a long year--for you & me! I never knew the
almanac to drag so. At least not since I was finishing that other
machine.

I watch for your letters hungrily--just as I used to watch for the
telegram saying the machine's finished--but when “next week
certainly” suddenly swelled into “three weeks sure” I recognized the
old familiar tune I used to hear so much. W----don't know what
sick-heartedness is--but he is in a way to find out.

And finally, on the 4th:

I am very glad indeed if you and Mr. Langdon are able to see any
daylight ahead. To me none is visible. I strongly advise that
every penny that comes in shall be applied to paying off debts. I
may be in error about this, but it seems to me that we have no other
course open. We can pay a part of the debts owing to outsiders
--none to Clemenses. In very prosperous times we might regard our
stock & copyrights as assets sufficient, with the money owing to us,
to square up & quit even, but I suppose we may not hope for such
luck in the present condition of things.

What I am mainly hoping for is to save my book royalties. If they
come into danger I hope you will cable me so that I can come over &
try to save them, for if they go I am a beggar.

I would sail to-day if I had anybody to take charge of my family &
help them through the difficult journeys commanded by the doctors.

A few days later he could stand it no longer, and on August 29 (1893) sailed, the second time that year, for New York.

CLXXXV. AN INTRODUCTION TO H. H. ROGERS

Clemens took a room at The Players--“a cheap room,” he wrote, “at $1.50 per day.” It was now the end of September, the beginning of a long half-year, during which Mark Twain's fortunes were at a lower ebb than ever before; lower, even, than during those mining days among the bleak Esmeralda hills. Then he had no one but him self and was young. Now, at fifty-eight, he had precious lives dependent upon him, and he was weighed down with a vast burden of debt. The liabilities of Charles L. Webster & Co. were fully two hundred thousand dollars. Something like sixty thousand dollars of this was money supplied by Mrs. Clemens, but the vast remaining sum was due to banks, to printers, to binders, and to dealers in various publishing materials. Somehow it must be paid. As for their assets, they looked ample enough on paper, but in reality, at a time like this, they were problematical. In fact, their value was very doubtful indeed. What he was to do Clemens did not know. He could not even send cheerful reports to Europe. There was no longer anything to promise concerning the type-setter. The fifty machines which the company had started to build had dwindled to ten machines; there was a prospect that the ten would dwindle to one, and that one a reconstruction of the original Hartford product, which had cost so much money and so many weary years. Clemens spent a good part of his days at The Players, reading or trying to write or seeking to divert his mind in the company of the congenial souls there, waiting for-he knew not what.

Yet at this very moment a factor was coming into his life, a human element, a man to whom in his old age Mark Twain owed more than to any other of his myriad of friends. One night, when he was with Dr. Clarence C. Rice at the Murray Hill Hotel, Rice said:

“Clemens, I want you to know my friend, Mr. H. H. Rogers. He is an admirer of your books.”

Clemens turned and was looking into the handsome, clean-cut features of the great financier, whose name was hardly so familiar then as it became at a later period, but whose power was already widely known and felt among his kind.

“Mr. Clemens,” said Mr. Rogers, “I was one of your early admirers. I heard you lecture a long time ago on the Sandwich Islands. I was interested in the subject in those days, and I heard that Mark Twain was a man who had been there. I didn't suppose I'd have any difficulty getting a seat, but I did; the house was jammed. When I came away I realized that Mark Twain was a great man, and I have read everything of yours since that I could get hold of.”

They sat down at a table, and Clemens told some of his amusing stories. Rogers was in a perpetual gale of laughter. When at last he rose to go the author and the financier were as old friends. Mr. Rogers urged him to visit him at his home. He must introduce him to Mrs. Rogers, he said, who was also his warm admirer. It was only a little while after this that Dr. Rice said to the millionaire:

“Mr. Rogers, I wish you would look into Clemens's finances a little: I am afraid they are a good deal confused.”

This would be near the end of September, 1893. On October 18 Clemens wrote home concerning a possible combination of Webster & Co. with John Brisben Walker, of the 'Cosmopolitan', and added:

I have got the best and wisest man of the whole Standard Oil group-a
multi-millionaire--a good deal interested in looking into the type-
setter. He has been searching into that thing for three weeks and
yesterday he said to me:

“I find the machine to be all you represent it. I have here
exhaustive reports from my own experts, and I know every detail of
its capacity, its immense construction, its cost, its history, and
all about its inventor's character. I know that the New York
company and the Chicago company are both stupid, and that they are
unbusinesslike people, destitute of money and in a hopeless boggle.”

Then he told me the scheme he had planned and said:

“If I can arrange with these people on this basis--it will take
several weeks to find out--I will see to it that they get the money
they need. In the mean time you 'stop walking the floor'.”

Of course, with this encouragement, Clemens was in the clouds again. Furthermore, Rogers had suggested to his son-in-law, William Evarts Benjamin, also a subscription publisher, that he buy from the Webster company The Library of American Literature for fifty thousand dollars, a sum which provided for the more insistent creditors. There was hope that the worst was over. Clemens did in reality give up walking the floor, and for the time, at least, found happier diversions. He must not return to Europe as yet, for the type-setter matter was still far from conclusion. On the 11th of November he was gorgeously entertained by the Lotos Club in its new building. Introducing him, President Frank Lawrence said:

“What name is there in literature that can be likened to his? Perhaps some of the distinguished gentlemen about this table can tell us, but I know of none. Himself his only parallel, it seems to me. He is all our own--a ripe and perfect product of the American soil.”

CLXXXVI. “THE BELLE OF NEW YORK”

Those were feverish weeks of waiting, with days of alternate depression and exaltation as the pendulum swung to and fro between hope and despair. By daylight Clemens tried to keep himself strenuously busy; evenings and nights he plunged into social activities--dinners, amusements, suppers, balls, and the like. He was besieged with invitations, sought for by the gayest and the greatest; “Jamie” Dodge conferred upon him the appropriate title: of “The Belle of New York.” In his letters home he describes in detail many of the festivities and the wildness with which he has flung himself into them, dilating on his splendid renewal of health, his absolute immunity from fatigue. He attributes this to his indifference to diet and regularities of meals and sleep; but we may guess that it was due to a reaction from having shifted his burden to stronger financial shoulders. Henry Rogers had taken his load upon him.

“It rests me,” Rogers said, “to experiment with the affairs of a friend when I am tired of my own. You enjoy yourself. Let me work at the puzzle a little.”

And Clemens, though his conscience pricked him, obeyed, as was his habit at such times. To Mrs. Clemens (in Paris now, at the Hotel Brighton) he wrote:

He is not common clay, but fine-fine & delicate. I did hate to
burden his good heart & overworked head, but he took hold with
avidity & said it was no burden to work for his friends, but a
pleasure. When I arrived in September, Lord! how black the prospect
was & how desperate, how incurably desperate! Webster & Co. had to
have a small sum of money or go under at once. I flew to Hartford
--to my friends--but they were not moved, not strongly interested, &
I was ashamed that I went. It was from Mr. Rogers, a stranger, that
I got the money and was by it saved. And then--while still a
stranger--he set himself the task of saving my financial life
without putting upon me (in his native delicacy) any sense that I
was the recipient of a charity, a benevolence. He gave time to me
--time, which could not be bought by any man at $100,000 a
month--no, nor for three times the money.

He adds that a friend has just offered to Webster & Co. a book that arraigns the Standard Oil magnates individual by individual.

I wanted to say the only man I care for in the world, the only man I
would give a d---n for, the only man who is lavishing his sweat &
blood to save me & mine from starvation is a Standard Oil magnate.
If you know me, you know whether I want the book or not.

But I didn't say that. I said I didn't want any book; I wanted to
get out of this publishing business & out of all business & was here
for that purpose & would accomplish it if I could.

He tells how he played billiards with Rogers, tirelessly as always, until the millionaire had looked at him helplessly and asked:

“Don't you ever get tired?”

And he answered:

“I don't know what it is to get tired. I wish I did.”

He wrote of going with Mr. Rogers to the Madison Square Garden to see an exhibition of boxing given by the then splendid star of pugilism, James J. Corbett. Dr. Rice accompanied him, and painters Robert Reid and Edward Simmons, from The Players. They had five seats in a box, and Stanford White came along presently and took Clemens into the champion's dressing-room.

Corbett has a fine face and is modest and diffident, besides being
the most perfectly & beautifully constructed human animal in the
world. I said:

“You have whipped Mitchell & maybe you will whip Jackson in June
--but you are not done then. You will have to tackle me.”

He answered, so gravely that one might easily have thought him in
earnest:

“No, I am not going to meet you in the ring. It is not fair or
right to require it. You might chance to knock me out, by no merit
of your own, but by a purely accidental blow, & then my reputation
would be gone & you would have a double one. You have got fame
enough & you ought not to want to take mine away from me.”

Corbett was for a long time a clerk in the Nevada Bank, in San
Francisco.

There were lots of little boxing-matches to entertain the crowd;
then at last Corbett appeared in the ring & the 8,000 people present
went mad with enthusiasm. My two artists went mad about his form.
They said they had never seen anything that came reasonably near
equalling its perfection except Greek statues, & they didn't surpass
it.

Corbett boxed 3 rounds with the middle-weight Australian champion
--oh, beautiful to see!--then the show was over and we struggled out
through a perfect mash of humanity. When we reached the street I
found I had left my arctics in the box. I had to have them, so
Simmons said he would go back & get them, & I didn't dissuade him.
I wouldn't see how he was going to make his way a single yard into
that solid incoming wave of people--yet he must plow through it full
50 yards. He was back with the shoes in 3 minutes!

How do you reckon he accomplished that miracle? By saying:

“Way, gentlemen, please--coming to fetch Mr. Corbett's overshoes.”

The word flew from mouth to mouth, the Red Sea divided, & Simmons
walked comfortably through & back, dry-shod. This is Fire-escape
Simmons, the inveterate talker, you know: Exit--in case of Simmons.

I had an engagement at a beautiful dwelling close to The Players for
10.30; I was there by 10.45. Thirty cultivated & very musical
ladies & gentlemen present--all of them acquaintances & many of them
personal friends of mine. That wonderful Hungarian band was there
(they charge $500 for an evening). Conversation and band until
midnight; then a bite of supper; then the company was compactly
grouped before me & I told them about Dr. B. E. Martin & the
etchings, & followed it with the Scotch-Irish christening. My, but
the Martin is a darling story! Next, the head tenor from the Opera
sang half a dozen great songs that set the company wild, yes, mad
with delight, that nobly handsome young Damrosch accompanying on the
piano.

Just a little pause, then the band burst out into an explosion of
weird and tremendous dance-music, a Hungarian celebrity & his wife
took the floor; I followed--I couldn't help it; the others drifted
in, one by one, & it was Onteora over again.

By half past 4. I had danced all those people down--& yet was not
tired; merely breathless. I was in bed at 5 & asleep in ten
minutes. Up at 9 & presently at work on this letter to you. I
think I wrote until 2 or half past. Then I walked leisurely out to
Mr. Rogers's (it is called 3 miles, but is short of it), arriving at
3.30, but he was out--to return at 5.30--so I didn't stay, but
dropped over and chatted with Howells until five.
--[Two Mark Twain anecdotes are remembered of that winter at The
Players:

Just before Christmas a member named Scott said one day:

“Mr. Clemens, you have an extra overcoat hanging in the coatroom. I've got to attend my uncle's funeral and it's raining very hard. I'd like to wear it.”

The coat was an old one, in the pockets of which Clemens kept a melancholy assortment of pipes, soiled handkerchiefs, neckties, letters, and what not.

“Scott,” he said, “if you won't lose anything out of the pockets of that coat you may wear it.”

An hour or two later Clemens found a notice in his mail-box that a package for him was in the office. He called for it and found a neat bundle, which somehow had a Christmas look. He carried it up to the reading-room with a showy, air.

“Now, boys,” he said, “you may make all the fun of Christmas you like, but it's pretty nice, after all, to be remembered.”

They gathered around and he undid the package. It was filled with the pipes, soiled handkerchiefs, and other articles from the old overcoat. Scott had taken special precautions against losing them.

Mark Twain regarded them a moment in silence, then he drawled:

“Well--, d---n Scott. I hope his uncle's funeral will be a failure!”

The second anecdote concerns The Player egg-cups. They easily hold two eggs, but not three. One morning a new waiter came to take the breakfast order. Clemens said:

“Boy, put three soft eggs in that cup for me.”

By and by the waiter returned, bringing the breakfast. Clemens looked at the egg portion and asked:

“Boy, what was my order?”

“Three soft eggs broken in the cup, Mr. Clemens.”

“And you've filled that order, have you?”

“Yes, Mr. Clemens.”

“Boy, you are trifling with the truth; I've been trying all winter to get three eggs into that cup.”]

In one letter he tells of a dinner with his old Comstock friend, John Mackay--a dinner without any frills, just soup and raw oysters and corned beef and cabbage, such as they had reveled in sometimes, in prosperous moments, thirty years before.

“The guests were old gray Pacific coasters,” he said, “whom I knew when they were young and not gray. The talk was of the days when we went gipsying-along time ago--thirty years.”

Indeed, it was a talk of the dead. Mainly that. And of how they looked & the harum-scarum things they did & said. For there were no cares in that life, no aches & pains, & not time enough in the day (& three-fourths of the night) to work off one's surplus vigor & energy. Of the midnight highway-robbery joke played upon me with revolvers at my head on the windswept & desolate Gold Hill Divide no witness was left but me, the victim. Those old fools last night laughed till they cried over the particulars of that old forgotten crime.

In still another letter he told of a very wonderful entertainment at Robert Reid's studio. There were present, he says:

Coquelin;
Richard Harding Davis;
Harrison, the great outdoor painter;
Wm. H. Chase, the artist;
Bettini, inventor of the new phonograph;
Nikola Tesla, the world-wide illustrious electrician; see article
about him in Jan. or Feb. Century.
John Drew, actor;
James Barnes, a marvelous mimic; my, you should see him!
Smedley, the artist;
Zorn, “ ”
Zogbaum, “ ”
Reinhart, “ ”
Metcalf, “ ”
Ancona, head tenor at the Opera;

Oh, & a great lot of others. Everybody there had done something &
was in his way famous.

Somebody welcomed Coquelin in a nice little French speech, John Drew
did the like for me in English, & then the fun began. Coquelin did
some excellent French monologues--one of them an ungrammatical
Englishman telling a colorless historiette in French. It nearly
killed the fifteen or twenty people who understood it.

I told a yarn, Ancona sang half a dozen songs, Barnes did his
darling imitations, Handing Davis sang the hanging of Danny Deever,
which was of course good, but he followed it with that mast
fascinating (for what reason I don't know) of all Kipling's poems,
“On the Road to Mandalay,” sang it tenderly, & it searched me deeper
& charmed me more than the Deever.

Young Gerrit Smith played some ravishing dance-music, & we all
danced about an hour. There couldn't be a pleasanter night than
that one was. Some of those people complained of fatigue, but I
don't seem to know what the sense of fatigue is.

In his reprieve he was like some wild thing that had regained liberty.

He refers to Susy's recent illness and to Mrs. Clemens's own poor state of health.

Dear, dear Susy! My strength reproaches me when I think of her and
you.

It is an unspeakable pity that you should be without any one to go
about with the girls, & it troubles me, & grieves me, & makes me
curse & swear; but you see, dear heart, I've got to stick right
where I am till I find out whether we are rich or whether the
poorest person we are acquainted with in anybody's kitchen is better
off than we are.. I stand on the land-end of a springboard, with
the family clustered on the other end; if I take my foot----

He realized his hopes to her as a vessel trying to make port; once he wrote:

The ship is in sight now....

When the anchor is down then I shall say:

“Farewell--a long farewell--to business! I will never touch it
again!”

I will live in literature, I will wallow in it, revel in it; I will
swim in ink! 'Joan of Arc'--but all this is premature; the anchor
is not down yet.

Sometimes he sent her impulsive cables calculating to sustain hope. Mrs. Clemens, writing to her sister in January, said:

Mr. Clemens now for ten days has been hourly expecting to send me
word that Paige had signed the (new) contract, but as yet no
despatch comes.... On the 5th of this month I received a
cable, “Expect good news in ten days.” On the 15th I receive a
cable, “Look out for good news.” On the 19th a cable, “Nearing
success.”

It appealed to her sense of humor even in these dark days. She added:

They make me laugh, for they are so like my beloved “Colonel.”

Mr. Rogers had agreed that he would bring Paige to rational terms, and with Clemens made a trip to Chicago. All agreed now that the machine promised a certain fortune as soon as a contract acceptable to everybody could be concluded--Paige and his lawyer being the last to dally and dicker as to terms. Finally a telegram came from Chicago saying that Paige had agreed to terms. On that day Clemens wrote in his note-book:

This is a great date in my history. Yesterday we were paupers with but 3 months' rations of cash left and $160,000 in debt, my wife & I, but this telegram makes us wealthy.

But it was not until a fortnight later that Paige did actually sign. This was on the 1st of February, '94, and Clemens that night cabled to Paris, so that Mrs. Clemens would have it on her breakfast-plate the morning of their anniversary:

“Wedding news. Our ship is safe in port. I sail the moment Rogers can spare me.”

So this painted bubble, this thing of emptiness, had become as substance again--the grand hope. He was as concerned with it as if it had been an actual gold-mine with ore and bullion piled in heaps--that shadow, that farce, that nightmare. One longs to go back through the years and face him to the light and arouse him to the vast sham of it all.

CLXXXVII. SOME LITERARY MATTERS

Clemens might have lectured that winter with profit, and Major Pond did his best to persuade him; but Rogers agreed that his presence in New York was likely to be too important to warrant any schedule of absence. He went once to Boston to lecture for charity, though his pleasure in the experience was a sufficient reward. On the evening before the lecture Mrs. James T. Fields had him to her house to dine with Dr. Holmes, then not far from the end of his long, beautiful life.--[He died that same year, October, 1894.]

Clemens wrote to Paris of their evening together:

Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes never goes out (he is in his 84th year), but he came out this time--said he wanted to “have a time” once more with me.

Mrs. Fields said Aldrich begged to come, & went away crying because she wouldn't let him. She allowed only her family (Sarah Orne Jewett & sister) to be present, because much company would overtax Dr. Holmes.

Well, he was just delightful! He did as brilliant and beautiful talking (& listening) as he ever did in his life, I guess. Fields and Jewett said he hadn't been in such splendid form for years. He had ordered his carriage for 9. The coachman sent in for him at 9, but he said, “Oh, nonsense!--leave glories & grandeurs like these? Tell him to go away & come in an hour!”

At 10 he was called for again, & Mrs. Fields, getting uneasy, rose, but he wouldn't go--& so we rattled ahead the same as ever. Twice more Mrs. Fields rose, but he wouldn't go--& he didn't go till half past 10--an unwarrantable dissipation for him in these days. He was prodigiously complimentary about some of my books, & is having Pudd'nhead read to him. I told him you & I used the Autocrat as a courting book & marked it all through, & that you keep it in the sacred green box with the loveletters, & it pleased him.

One other address Clemens delivered that winter, at Fair Haven, on the opening of the Millicent Library, a present to the town from Mrs. Rogers. Mrs. Rogers had suggested to her husband that perhaps Mr. Clemens would be willing to say a few words there. Mr. Rogers had replied, “Oh, Clemens is in trouble. I don't like to ask him,” but a day or two later told him of Mrs. Rogers's wish, adding:

“Don't feel at all that you need to do it. I know just how you are feeling, how worried you are.”

Clemens answered, “Mr. Rogers, do you think there is anything I could do for you that I wouldn't do?”

It was on this occasion that he told for the first time the “stolen watermelon” story, so often reprinted since; how once he had stolen a watermelon, and when he found it to be a green one, had returned it to the farmer, with a lecture on honesty, and received a ripe one in its place.

In spite of his cares and diversions Clemens's literary activities of this time were considerable. He wrote an article for the Youth's Companion--“How to Tell a Story”--and another for the North American Review on Fenimore Cooper's “Literary Offenses.” Mark Twain had not much respect for Cooper as a literary artist. Cooper's stilted artificialities and slipshod English exasperated him and made it hard for him to see that in spite of these things the author of the Deerslayer was a mighty story-teller. Clemens had also promised some stories to Walker, of the Cosmopolitan, and gave him one for his Christmas number, “Traveling with a Reformer,” which had grown out of some incidents of that long-ago journey with Osgood to Chicago, supplemented by others that had happened on the more recent visit to that city with Hall. This story had already appeared when Clemens and Rogers had made their Chicago trip. Rogers had written for passes over the Pennsylvania road, and the president, replying, said:

“No, I won't give Mark Twain a pass over our road. I've been reading his 'Traveling with a Reformer,' in which he abuses our road. I wouldn't let him ride over it again if I could help it. The only way I'll agree to let him go over it at all is in my private car. I have stocked it with everything he can possibly want, and have given orders that if there is anything else he wants the train is to be stopped until they can get it.”

“Pudd'nhead Wilson” was appearing in the Century during this period, and “Tom Sawyer Abroad” in the St. Nicholas. The Century had issued a tiny calendar of the Pudd'nhead maxims, and these quaint bits of philosophy, the very gems of Mark Twain mental riches, were in everybody's mouth. With all this going on, and with his appearance at various social events, he was rather a more spectacular figure that winter than ever before.

From the note-book:

The Haunted Looking-glass. The guest (at midnight a dim light
burning) wakes up & sees appear & disappear the faces that have
looked into the glass during 3 centuries.

Love seems the swiftest but is the slowest of all growths. No man
and woman really know what perfect love is until they have been
married a quarter of a century.

It is more trouble to make a maxim than it is to do right.

Of all God's creatures, there is only one that cannot be made the
slave of the lash--that one is the cat.

Truth is stranger than fiction--to some people, but I am measurably
familiar with it.

CLXXXVIII. FAILURE

It was the first week in March before it was thought to be safe for Clemens to return to France, even for a brief visit to his family. He hurried across and remained with them what seemed an infinitesimal time, a bare three weeks, and was back again in New York by the middle of April. The Webster company difficulties had now reached an acute stage. Mr. Rogers had kept a close watch on its financial affairs, hoping to be able to pull it through or to close it without failure, paying all the creditors in full; but on the afternoon of the 16th of April, 1894, Hall arrived at Clemens's room at The Players in a panic. The Mount Morris Bank had elected a new president and board of directors, and had straightway served notice on him that he must pay his notes--two notes of five thousand dollars each in a few days when due. Mr. Rogers was immediately notified, of course, and said he would sleep on it and advise them next day. He did not believe that the bank would really push them to the wall. The next day was spent in seeing what could be done, and by evening it was clear that unless a considerable sum of money was raised a voluntary assignment was the proper course. The end of the long struggle had come. Clemens hesitated less on his own than on his wife's account. He knew that to her the word failure would be associated with disgrace. She had pinched herself with a hundred economies to keep the business afloat, and was willing to go on economizing to avert this final disaster. Mr. Rogers said:

“Mr. Clemens, assure her from me that there is not even a tinge of disgrace in making this assignment. By doing it you will relieve yourself of a fearful load of dread, and in time will be able to pay everything and stand clear before the world. If you don't do it you will probably never be free from debt, and it will kill you and Mrs. Clemens both. If there is any disgrace it would be in not taking the course that will give you and her your freedom and your creditors a better chance for their claims. Most of them will be glad enough to help you.”

It was on the afternoon of the next day, April 18, 1894, that the firm of Charles L. Webster & Co. executed assignment papers and closed its doors. A meeting of the creditors was called, at which H. H. Rogers was present, representing Clemens. For the most part the creditors were liberal and willing to agree to any equitable arrangement. But there were a few who were grumpy and fussy. They declared that Mark Twain should turn over his copyrights, his Hartford home, and whatever other odds and ends could be discovered. Mr. Rogers, discussing the matter in 1908, said:

“They were bent on devouring every pound of flesh in sight and picking the bones afterward, as Clemens and his wife were perfectly willing they should do. I was getting a little warm all the time at the highhanded way in which these few men were conducting the thing, and presently I got on my feet and said, 'Gentlemen, you are not going to have this thing all your way. I have something to say about Mr. Clemens's affairs. Mrs. Clemens is the chief creditor of this firm. Out of her own personal fortune she has lent it more than sixty thousand dollars. She will be a preferred creditor, and those copyrights will be assigned to her until her claim is paid in full. As for the home in Hartford, it is hers already.'

“There was a good deal of complaint, but I refused to budge. I insisted that Mrs. Clemens had the first claims on the copyrights, though, to tell the truth, these did not promise much then, for in that hard year the sale of books was small enough. Besides Mrs. Clemens's claim the debts amounted to one hundred thousand dollars, and of course there must be a definite basis of settlement, so it was agreed that Clemens should pay fifty cents on the dollar, when the assets were finally realized upon, and receive a quittance. Clemens himself declared that sooner or later he would pay the other fifty cents, dollar for dollar, though I believe there was no one besides himself and his wife and me who believed he would ever be able to do it. Clemens himself got discouraged sometimes, and was about ready to give it up, for he was getting on in years--nearly sixty--and he was in poor health. Once when we found the debt, after the Webster salvage, was going to be at least seventy thousand dollars, he said, 'I need not dream of paying it. I never could manage it.' But he stuck to it. He was at my house a good deal at first. We gave him a room there and he came and went as he chose. The worry told upon him. He became frail during those weeks, almost ethereal, yet it was strange how brilliant he was, how cheerful.”

The business that had begun so promisingly and prosperously a decade before had dwindled to its end. The last book it had in hand was 'Tom Sawyer Abroad', just ready for issue. It curiously happened that on the day of the failure copies of it were filed in Washington for copyright. Frank Bliss came over from Hartford, and Clemens arranged with him for the publication of 'Pudd'nhead Wilson', thereby renewing the old relationship with the American Publishing Company after a break of a dozen years.

Naturally, the failure of Mark Twain's publishing firm made a public stir, and it showed how many and sincere were his friends, how ready they were with sympathy and help of a more material kind. Those who understood best, congratulated him on being out of the entanglement.

Poultney Bigelow, Douglas Taylor, Andrew Carnegie, Charles Dudley Warner, and others extended financial help, Bigelow and Taylor each inclosing him a check of one thousand dollars for immediate necessities. He was touched by these things, but the checks were returned. Many of his creditors sent him personal letters assuring him that he was to forget his obligation to them completely until such time as the remembering would cost him no uneasiness.

Clemens, in fact, felt relieved, now that the worst had come, and wrote bright letters home. In one he said: