Chapter XIX: of Guy Mannering, & I can no longer hold my head up or (9)

Clemens often allowed his fancy to play with the idea of the orthodox heaven, its curiosities of architecture, and its employments of continuous prayer, psalm-singing, and harpistry.

“What a childish notion it was,” he said, “and how curious that only a little while ago human beings were so willing to accept such fragile evidences about a place of so much importance. If we should find somewhere to-day an ancient book containing an account of a beautiful and blooming tropical Paradise secreted in the center of eternal icebergs--an account written by men who did not even claim to have seen it themselves--no geographical society on earth would take any stock in that book, yet that account would be quite as authentic as any we have of heaven. If God has such a place prepared for us, and really wanted us to know it, He could have found some better way than a book so liable to alterations and misinterpretation. God has had no trouble to prove to man the laws of the constellations and the construction of the world, and such things as that, none of which agree with His so-called book. As to a hereafter, we have not the slightest evidence that there is any--no evidence that appeals to logic and reason. I have never seen what to me seemed an atom of proof that there is a future life.”

Then, after a long pause, he added:

“And yet--I am strongly inclined to expect one.”

CCLXV. LOTOS CLUB HONORS

It was on January 11, 1908, that Mark Twain was given his last great banquet by the Lotos Club. The club was about to move again, into splendid new quarters, and it wished to entertain him once more in its old rooms.

He wore white, and amid the throng of black-clad men was like a white moth among a horde of beetles. The room fairly swarmed with them, and they seemed likely to overwhelm him.

President Lawrence was toast-master of the evening, and he ended his customary address by introducing Robert Porter, who had been Mark Twain's host at Oxford. Porter told something of the great Oxford week, and ended by introducing Mark Twain. It had been expected that Clemens would tell of his London experiences. Instead of doing this, he said he had started a new kind of collection, a collection of compliments. He had picked up a number of valuable ones abroad and some at home. He read selections from them, and kept the company going with cheers and merriment until just before the close of his speech. Then he repeated, in his most impressive manner, that stately conclusion of his Liverpool speech, and the room became still and the eyes of his hearers grew dim. It may have been even more moving than when originally given, for now the closing words, “homeward bound,” had only the deeper meaning.

Dr. John MacArthur followed with a speech that was as good a sermon as any he ever delivered, and closed it by saying:

“I do not want men to prepare for heaven, but to prepare to remain on earth, and it is such men as Mark Twain who make other men not fit to die, but fit to live.”

Andrew Carnegie also spoke, and Colonel Harvey, and as the speaking ended Robert Porter stepped up behind Clemens and threw over his shoulders the scarlet Oxford robe which had been surreptitiously brought, and placed the mortar-board cap upon his head, while the diners vociferated their approval. Clemens was quite calm.

“I like this,” he said, when the noise had subsided. “I like its splendid color. I would dress that way all the time, if I dared.”

In the cab going home I mentioned the success of his speech, how well it had been received.

“Yes,” he said; “but then I have the advantage of knowing now that I am likely to be favorably received, whatever I say. I know that my audiences are warm and responseful. It is an immense advantage to feel that. There are cold places in almost every speech, and if your audience notices them and becomes cool, you get a chill yourself in those zones, and it is hard to warm up again. Perhaps there haven't been so many lately; but I have been acquainted with them more than once.” And then I could not help remembering that deadly Whittier birthday speech of more than thirty years before--that bleak, arctic experience from beginning to end.

“We have just time for four games,” he said, as we reached the billiard-room; but there was no sign of stopping when the four games were over. We were winning alternately, and neither noted the time. I was leaving by an early train, and was willing to play all night. The milk-wagons were rattling outside when he said:

“Well, perhaps we'd better quit now. It seems pretty early, though.” I looked at my watch. It was quarter to four, and we said good night.

CCLXVI. A WINTER IN BERMUDA

Edmund Clarence Stedman died suddenly at his desk, January 18, 1908, and Clemens, in response to telegrams, sent this message:

I do not wish to talk about it. He was a valued friend from days that date back thirty-five years. His loss stuns me and unfits me to speak.

He recalled the New England dinners which he used to attend, and where he had often met Stedman.

“Those were great affairs,” he said. “They began early, and they ended early. I used to go down from Hartford with the feeling that it wasn't an all-night supper, and that it was going to be an enjoyable time. Choate and Depew and Stedman were in their prime then--we were all young men together. Their speeches were always worth listening to. Stedman was a prominent figure there. There don't seem to be any such men now--or any such occasions.”

Stedman was one of the last of the old literary group. Aldrich had died the year before. Howells and Clemens were the lingering “last leaves.”

Clemens gave some further luncheon entertainments to his friends, and added the feature of “doe” luncheons--pretty affairs where, with Clara Clemens as hostess, were entertained a group of brilliant women, such as Mrs. Kate Douglas Riggs, Geraldine Farrax, Mrs. Robert Collier, Mrs. Frank Doubleday, and others. I cannot report those luncheons, for I was not present, and the drift of the proceedings came to me later in too fragmentary a form to be used as history; but I gathered from Clemens himself that he had done all of the talking, and I think they must have been very pleasant afternoons. Among the acknowledgments that followed one of these affairs is this characteristic word-play from Mrs. Riggs:

N. B.--A lady who is invited to and attends a doe luncheon is, of
course, a doe. The question is, if she attends two doe luncheons in
succession is she a doe-doe? If so is she extinct and can never
attend a third?

Luncheons and billiards, however, failed to give sufficient brightness to the dull winter days, or to insure him against an impending bronchial attack, and toward the end of January he sailed away to Bermuda, where skies were bluer and roadsides gay with bloom. His sojourn was brief this time, but long enough to cure him, he said, and he came back full of happiness. He had been driving about over the island with a newly adopted granddaughter, little Margaret Blackmer, whom he had met one morning in the hotel dining-room. A part of his dictated story will convey here this pretty experience.

My first day in Bermuda paid a dividend--in fact a double dividend:
it broke the back of my cold and it added a jewel to my collection.
As I entered the breakfast-room the first object I saw in that
spacious and far-reaching place was a little girl seated solitary at
a table for two. I bent down over her and patted her cheek and
said:

“I don't seem to remember your name; what is it?”

By the sparkle in her brown eyes it amused her. She said:

“Why, you've never known it, Mr. Clemens, because you've never seen
me before.”

“Why, that is true, now that I come to think; it certainly is true,
and it must be one of the reasons why I have forgotten your name.
But I remember it now perfectly--it's Mary.”

She was amused again; amused beyond smiling; amused to a chuckle,
and she said:

“Oh no, it isn't; it's Margaret.”

I feigned to be ashamed of my mistake and said:

“Ah, well, I couldn't have made that mistake a few years ago; but I
am old, and one of age's earliest infirmities is a damaged memory;
but I am clearer now--clearer-headed--it all comes back to me just
as if it were yesterday. It's Margaret Holcomb.”

She was surprised into a laugh this time, the rippling laugh that a
happy brook makes when it breaks out of the shade into the sunshine,
and she said:

“Oh, you are wrong again; you don't get anything right. It isn't
Holcomb, it's Blackmer.”

I was ashamed again, and confessed it; then:

“How old are you, dear?”

“Twelve; New-Year's. Twelve and a month.”

We were close comrades-inseparables, in fact-for eight days. Every
day we made pedestrian excursions--called them that anyway, and
honestly they were intended for that, and that is what they would
have been but for the persistent intrusion of a gray and grave and
rough-coated donkey by the name of Maud. Maud was four feet long;
she was mounted on four slender little stilts, and had ears that
doubled her altitude when she stood them up straight. Her tender
was a little bit of a cart with seat room for two in it, and you
could fall out of it without knowing it, it was so close to the
ground. This battery was in command of a nice, grave, dignified,
gentlefaced little black boy whose age was about twelve, and whose
name, for some reason or other, was Reginald. Reginald and Maud--I
shall not easily forget those names, nor the combination they stood
for. The trips going and coming were five or six miles, and it
generally took us three hours to make it. This was because Maud set
the pace. Whenever she detected an ascending grade she respected
it; she stopped and said with her ears:

“This is getting unsatisfactory. We will camp here.”

The whole idea of these excursions was that Margaret and I should
employ them for the gathering of strength, by walking, yet we were
oftener in the cart than out of it. She drove and I superintended.
In the course of the first excursions I found a beautiful little
shell on the beach at Spanish Point; its hinge was old and dry, and
the two halves came apart in my hand. I gave one of them to
Margaret and said:

“Now dear, sometime or other in the future I shall run across you
somewhere, and it may turn out that it is not you at all, but will
be some girl that only resembles you. I shall be saying to myself
'I know that this is a Margaret by the look of her, but I don't know
for sure whether this is my Margaret or somebody else's'; but, no
matter, I can soon find out, for I shall take my half shell out of
my pocket and say, 'I think you are my Margaret, but I am not
certain; if you are my Margaret you can produce the other half of
this shell.'”

Next morning when I entered the breakfast-room and saw the child I
approached and scanned her searchingly all over, then said, sadly:

“No, I am mistaken; it looks like my Margaret,--but it isn't, and I
am so sorry. I shall go away and cry now.”

Her eyes danced triumphantly, and she cried out:

“No, you don't have to. There!” and she fetched out the identifying
shell.

I was beside myself with gratitude and joyful surprise, and revealed
it from every pore. The child could not have enjoyed this thrilling
little drama more if we had been playing it on the stage. Many
times afterward she played the chief part herself, pretending to be
in doubt as to my identity and challenging me to produce my half of
the shell. She was always hoping to catch me without it, but I
always defeated that game--wherefore she came to recognize at last
that I was not only old, but very smart.

Sometimes, when they were not walking or driving, they sat on the veranda, and he prepared history-lessons for little Margaret by making grotesque figures on cards with numerous legs and arms and other fantastic symbols end features to fix the length of some king's reign. For William the Conqueror, for instance, who reigned twenty-one years, he drew a figure of eleven legs and ten arms. It was the proper method of impressing facts upon the mind of a child. It carried him back to those days at Elmira when he had arranged for his own little girls the game of kings. A Miss Wallace, a friend of Margaret's, and usually one of the pedestrian party, has written a dainty book of those Bermudian days.--[Mark Twain and the Happy Islands, by Elizabeth Wallace.]

Miss Wallace says:

Margaret felt for him the deep affection that children have for an
older person who understands them and treats them with respect. Mr.
Clemens never talked down to her, but considered her opinions with a
sweet dignity.

There were some pretty sequels to the shell incident. After Mark Twain had returned to New York, and Margaret was there, she called one day with her mother, and sent up her card. He sent back word, saying:

“I seem to remember the name; but if this is really the person whom
I think it is she can identify herself by a certain shell I once
gave her, of which I have the other half. If the two halves fit, I
shall know that this is the same little Margaret that I remember.”

The message went down, and the other half of the shell was promptly sent up. Mark Twain had the two half-shells incised firmly in gold, and one of these he wore on his watch-fob, and sent the other to Margaret.

He afterward corresponded with Margaret, and once wrote her:

I'm already making mistakes. When I was in New York, six weeks ago,
I was on a corner of Fifth Avenue and I saw a small girl--not a big
one--start across from the opposite corner, and I exclaimed to
myself joyfully, “That is certainly my Margaret!” so I rushed to
meet her. But as she came nearer I began to doubt, and said to
myself, “It's a Margaret--that is plain enough--but I'm afraid it is
somebody else's.” So when I was passing her I held my shell so she
couldn't help but see it. Dear, she only glanced at it and passed
on! I wondered if she could have overlooked it. It seemed best to
find out; so I turned and followed and caught up with her, and said,
deferentially; “Dear Miss, I already know your first name by the
look of you, but would you mind telling me your other one?” She was
vexed and said pretty sharply, “It's Douglas, if you're so anxious
to know. I know your name by your looks, and I'd advise you to shut
yourself up with your pen and ink and write some more rubbish. I am
surprised that they allow you to run' at large. You are likely to
get run over by a baby-carriage any time. Run along now and don't
let the cows bite you.”

What an idea! There aren't any cows in Fifth Avenue. But I didn't
smile; I didn't let on to perceive how uncultured she was. She was
from the country, of course, and didn't know what a comical blunder.
she was making.

Mr. Rogers's health was very poor that winter, and Clemens urged him to try Bermuda, and offered to go back with him; so they sailed away to the summer island, and though Margaret was gone, there was other entertaining company--other granddaughters to be adopted, and new friends and old friends, and diversions of many sorts. Mr. Rogers's son-in-law, William Evarts Benjamin, came down and joined the little group. It was one of Mark Twain's real holidays. Mr. Rogers's health improved rapidly, and Mark Twain was in fine trim. To Mrs. Rogers, at the end of the first week, he wrote:

DEAR MRS. ROGERS, He is getting along splendidly! This was the very
place for him. He enjoys himself & is as quarrelsome as a cat.

But he will get a backset if Benjamin goes home. Benjamin is the
brightest man in these regions, & the best company. Bright? He is
much more than that, he is brilliant. He keeps the crowd intensely
alive.

With love & all good wishes.
S. L. C.

Mark Twain and Henry Rogers were much together and much observed. They were often referred to as “the King” and “the Rajah,” and it was always a question whether it was “the King” who took care of “the Rajah,” or vice versa. There was generally a group to gather around them, and Clemens was sure of an attentive audience, whether he wanted to air his philosophies, his views of the human race, or to read aloud from the verses of Kipling.

“I am not fond of all poetry,” he would say; “but there's something in Kipling that appeals to me. I guess he's just about my level.”

Miss Wallace recalls certain Kipling readings in his room, when his friends gathered to listen.

On those Kipling evenings the 'mise-en-scene' was a striking one.
The bare hotel room, the pine woodwork and pine furniture, loose
windows which rattled in the sea-wind. Once in a while a gust of
asthmatic music from the spiritless orchestra downstairs came up the
hallway. Yellow, unprotected gas-lights burned uncertainly, and
Mark Twain in the midst of this lay on his bed (there was no couch)
still in his white serge suit, with the light from the jet shining
down on the crown of his silver hair, making it gleam and glisten
like frosted threads.

In one hand he held his book, in the other he had his pipe, which he used principally to gesture with in the most dramatic passages.

Margaret's small successors became the earliest members of the Angel Fish Club, which Clemens concluded to organize after a visit to the spectacular Bermuda aquarium. The pretty angel-fish suggested youth and feminine beauty to him, and his adopted granddaughters became angel-fish to him from that time forward. He bought little enamel angel-fish pins, and carried a number of them with him most of the time, so that he could create membership on short notice. It was just another of the harmless and happy diversions of his gentler side. He was always fond of youth and freshness. He regarded the decrepitude of old age as an unnecessary part of life. Often he said:

“If I had been helping the Almighty when, He created man, I would have had Him begin at the other end, and start human beings with old age. How much better it would have been to start old and have all the bitterness and blindness of age in the beginning! One would not mind then if he were looking forward to a joyful youth. Think of the joyous prospect of growing young instead of old! Think of looking forward to eighteen instead of eighty! Yes, the Almighty made a poor job of it. I wish He had invited my assistance.”

To one of the angel fish he wrote, just after his return:

I miss you, dear. I miss Bermuda, too, but not so much as I miss
you; for you were rare, and occasional and select, and Ltd.; whereas
Bermuda's charms and, graciousnesses were free and common and
unrestricted--like the rain, you know, which falls upon the just and
the unjust alike; a thing which would not happen if I were
superintending the rain's affairs. No, I would rain softly and
sweetly upon the just, but whenever I caught a sample of the unjust
outdoors I would drown him.

CCLXVII. VIEWS AND ADDRESSES

[As I am beginning this chapter, April 16, 1912, the news comes of
the loss, on her first trip, of the great White Star Line steamer
Titanic, with the destruction of many passengers, among whom are
Frank D. Millet, William T. Stead, Isadore Straus, John Jacob Astor,
and other distinguished men. They died as heroes, remaining with
the ship in order that the women and children might be saved.

It was the kind of death Frank Millet would have wished to die.
He was always a soldier--a knight. He has appeared from time to
time in these pages, for he was a dear friend of the Clemens
household. One of America's foremost painters; at the time of his
death he was head of the American Academy of Arts in Rome.]

Mark Twain made a number of addresses during the spring of 1908. He spoke at the Cartoonists' dinner, very soon after his return from Bermuda; he spoke at the Booksellers' banquet, expressing his debt of obligation to those who had published and sold his books; he delivered a fine address at the dinner given by the British Schools and University Club at Delmonico's, May 25th, in honor of Queen Victoria's birthday. In that speech he paid high tribute to the Queen for her attitude toward America, during the crisis of the Civil Wax, and to her royal consort, Prince Albert.

What she did for us in America in our time of storm and stress we
shall not forget, and whenever we call it to mind we shall always
gratefully remember the wise and righteous mind that guided her in
it and sustained and supported her--Prince Albert's. We need not
talk any idle talk here to-night about either possible or impossible
war between two countries; there will be no war while we remain sane
and the son of Victoria and Albert sits upon the throne. In
conclusion, I believe I may justly claim to utter the voice of my
country in saying that we hold him in deep honor, and also in
cordially wishing him a long life and a happy reign.

But perhaps his most impressive appearance was at the dedication of the great City College (May 14, 1908), where President John Finley, who had been struggling along with insufficient room, was to have space at last for his freer and fuller educational undertakings. A great number of honored scholars, statesmen, and diplomats assembled on the college campus, a spacious open court surrounded by stately college architecture of medieval design. These distinguished guests were clad in their academic robes, and the procession could not have been widely different from that one at Oxford of a year before. But there was something rather fearsome about it, too. A kind of scaffolding had been reared in the center of the campus for the ceremonies; and when those grave men in their robes of state stood grouped upon it the picture was strikingly suggestive of one of George Cruikshank's drawings of an execution scene at the Tower of London. Many of the robes were black--these would be the priests--and the few scarlet ones would be the cardinals who might have assembled for some royal martyrdom. There was a bright May sunlight over it all, one of those still, cool brightnesses which served to heighten the weird effect. I am sure that others felt it besides myself, for everybody seemed wordless and awed, even at times when there was no occasion for silence. There was something of another age about the whole setting, to say the least.

We left the place in a motor-car, a crowd of boys following after. As Clemens got in they gathered around the car and gave the college yell, ending with “Twain! Twain! Twain!” and added three cheers for Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, and Pudd'nhead Wilson. They called for a speech, but he only said a few words in apology for not granting their request. He made a speech to them that night at the Waldorf--where he proposed for the City College a chair of citizenship, an idea which met with hearty applause.

In the same address he referred to the “God Trust” motto on the coins, and spoke approvingly of the President's order for its removal.

We do not trust in God, in the important matters of life, and not
even a minister of the Gospel will take any coin for a cent more
than its accepted value because of that motto. If cholera should
ever reach these shores we should probably pray to be delivered from
the plague, but we would put our main trust in the Board of Health.

Next morning, commenting on the report of this speech, he said:

“If only the reporters would not try to improve on what I say. They seem to miss the fact that the very art of saying a thing effectively is in its delicacy, and as they can't reproduce the manner and intonation in type they make it emphatic and clumsy in trying to convey it to the reader.”

I pleaded that the reporters were often young men, eager, and unmellowed in their sense of literary art.

“Yes,” he agreed, “they are so afraid their readers won't see my good points that they set up red flags to mark them and beat a gong. They mean well, but I wish they wouldn't do it.”

He referred to the portion of his speech concerning the motto on the coins. He had freely expressed similar sentiments on other public occasions, and he had received a letter criticizing him for saying that we do not really trust in God in any financial matter.

“I wanted to answer it,” he said; “but I destroyed it. It didn't seem worth noticing.”

I asked how the motto had originated.

“About 1853 some idiot in Congress wanted to announce to the world that this was a religious nation, and proposed putting it there, and no other Congressman had courage enough to oppose it, of course. It took courage in those days to do a thing like that; but I think the same thing would happen to-day.”

“Still the country has become broader. It took a brave man before the Civil War to confess he had read the 'Age of Reason'.”

“So it did, and yet that seems a mild book now. I read it first when I was a cub pilot, read it with fear and hesitation, but marveling at its fearlessness and wonderful power. I read it again a year or two ago, for some reason, and was amazed to see how tame it had become. It seemed that Paine was apologizing everywhere for hurting the feelings of the reader.”

He drifted, naturally, into a discussion of the Knickerbocker Trust Company's suspension, which had tied up some fifty-five thousand dollars of his capital, and wondered how many were trusting in God for the return of these imperiled sums. Clemens himself, at this time, did not expect to come out whole from that disaster. He had said very little when the news came, though it meant that his immediate fortunes were locked up, and it came near stopping the building activities at Redding. It was only the smaller things of life that irritated him. He often met large calamities with a serenity which almost resembled indifference. In the Knickerbocker situation he even found humor as time passed, and wrote a number of gay letters, some of which found their way into print.

It should be added that in the end there was no loss to any of the Knickerbocker depositors.

CCLXVIII. REDDING

The building of the new home at Redding had been going steadily forward for something more than a year. John Mead Howells had made the plans; W. W. Sunderland and his son Philip, of Danbury, Connecticut, were the builders, and in the absence of Miss Clemens, then on a concert tour, Mark Twain's secretary, Miss I. V. Lyon, had superintended the furnishing.

“Innocence at Home,” as the place was originally named, was to be ready for its occupant in June, with every detail in place, as he desired. He had never visited Redding; he had scarcely even glanced at the plans or discussed any of the decorations of the new home. He had required only that there should be one great living-room for the orchestrelle, and another big room for the billiard-table, with plenty of accommodations for guests. He had required that the billiard-room be red, for something in his nature answered to the warm luxury of that color, particularly in moments of diversion. Besides, his other billiard-rooms had been red, and such association may not be lightly disregarded. His one other requirement was that the place should be complete.

“I don't want to see it,” he said, “until the cat is purring on the hearth.”

Howells says:

“He had grown so weary of change, and so indifferent to it, that he was without interest.”

But it was rather, I think, that he was afraid of losing interest by becoming wearied with details which were likely to exasperate him; also, he wanted the dramatic surprise of walking into a home that had been conjured into existence as with a word.

It was expected that the move would be made early in the month; but there were delays, and it was not until the 18th of June that he took possession.

The plan, at this time, was only to use the Redding place as a summer residence, and the Fifth Avenue house was not dismantled. A few days before the 18th the servants, with one exception, were taken up to the new house, Clemens and myself remaining in the loneliness of No. 21, attending to the letters in the morning and playing billiards the rest of the time, waiting for the appointed day and train. It was really a pleasant three days. He invented a new game, and we were riotous and laughed as loudly as we pleased. I think he talked very little of the new home which he was so soon to see. It was referred to no oftener than once or twice a day, and then I believe only in connection with certain of the billiard-room arrangements. I have wondered since what picture of it he could have had in his mind, for he had never seen a photograph. He had a general idea that it was built upon a hill, and that its architecture was of the Italian villa order. I confess I had moments of anxiety, for I had selected the land for him, and had been more or less accessory otherwise. I did not really worry, for I knew how beautiful and peaceful it all was; also something of his taste and needs.

It had been a dry spring, and country roads were dusty, so that those who were responsible had been praying for rain, to be followed by a pleasant day for his arrival. Both petitions were granted; June 18th would fall on Thursday, and Monday night there came a good, thorough, and refreshing shower that washed the vegetation clean and laid the dust. The morning of the 18th was bright and sunny and cool. Clemens was up and shaved by six o'clock in order to be in time, though the train did not leave until four in the afternoon--an express newly timed to stop at Redding--its first trip scheduled for the day of Mark Twain's arrival.

We were still playing billiards when word was brought up that the cab was waiting. My daughter, Louise, whose school on Long Island had closed that day, was with us. Clemens wore his white flannels and a Panama hat, and at the station a group quickly collected, reporters and others, to interview him and speed him to his new home. He was cordial and talkative, and quite evidently full of pleasant anticipation. A reporter or two and a special photographer came along, to be present at his arrival.

The new, quick train, the green, flying landscape, with glimpses of the Sound and white sails, the hillsides and clear streams becoming rapidly steeper and dearer as we turned northward: all seemed to gratify him, and when he spoke at all it was approvingly. The hour and a half required to cover the sixty miles of distance seemed very short. As the train slowed down for the Redding station, he said:

“We'll leave this box of candy”--he had bought a large box on the way--“those colored porters sometimes like candy, and we can get some more.”

He drew out a great handful of silver.

“Give them something--give everybody liberally that does any service.”

There was a sort of open-air reception in waiting. Redding had recognized the occasion as historic. A varied assemblage of vehicles festooned with flowers had gathered to offer a gallant country welcome.

It was now a little before six o'clock of that long June day, still and dreamlike; and to the people assembled there may have been something which was not quite reality in the scene. There was a tendency to be very still. They nodded, waved their hands to him, smiled, and looked their fill; but a spell lay upon them, and they did not cheer. It would have been a pity if they had done so. A noise, and the illusion would have been shattered.

His carriage led away on the three-mile drive to the house on the hilltop, and the floral turnout fell in behind. No first impression of a fair land could have come at a sweeter time. Hillsides were green, fields were white with daisies, dog-wood and laurel shone among the trees. And over all was the blue sky, and everywhere the fragrance of June.

He was very quiet as we drove along. Once with gentle humor, looking over a white daisy field, he said:

“That is buckwheat. I always recognize buckwheat when I see it. I wish I knew as much about other things as I know about buckwheat. It seems to be very plentiful here; it even grows by the roadside.” And a little later: “This is the kind of a road I like; a good country road through the woods.”

The water was flowing over the mill-dam where the road crosses the Saugatuck, and he expressed approval of that clear, picturesque little river, one of those charming Connecticut streams. A little farther on a brook cascaded down the hillside, and he compared it with some of the tiny streams of Switzerland, I believe the Giessbach. The lane that led to the new home opened just above, and as he entered the leafy way he said, “This is just the kind of a lane I like,” thus completing his acceptance of everything but the house and the location.

The last of the procession had dropped away at the entrance of the lane, and he was alone with those who had most anxiety for his verdict. They had not long to wait. As the carriage ascended higher to the open view he looked away, across the Saugatuck Valley to the nestling village and church-spire and farm-houses, and to the distant hills, and declared the land to be a good land and beautiful--a spot to satisfy one's soul. Then came the house--simple and severe in its architecture--an Italian villa, such as he had known in Florence, adapted now to American climate and needs. The scars of building had not all healed yet, but close to the house waved green grass and blooming flowers that might have been there always. Neither did the house itself look new. The soft, gray stucco had taken on a tone that melted into the sky and foliage of its background. At the entrance his domestic staff waited to greet him, and then he stepped across the threshold into the wide hall and stood in his own home for the first time in seventeen years. It was an anxious moment, and no one spoke immediately. But presently his eye had taken in the satisfying harmony of the place and followed on through the wide doors that led to the dining-room--on through the open French windows to an enchanting vista of tree-tops and distant farmside and blue hills. He said, very gently:

“How beautiful it all is? I did not think it could be as beautiful as this.”

He was taken through the rooms; the great living-room at one end of the hall--a room on the walls of which there was no picture, but only color-harmony--and at the other end of the hall, the splendid, glowing billiard-room, where hung all the pictures in which he took delight. Then to the floor above, with its spacious apartments and a continuation of color--welcome and concord, the windows open to the pleasant evening hills. When he had seen it all--the natural Italian garden below the terraces; the loggia, whose arches framed landscape vistas and formed a rare picture-gallery; when he had completed the round and stood in the billiard-room--his especial domain--once more he said, as a final verdict:

“It is a perfect house--perfect, so far as I can see, in every detail. It might have been here always.”

He was at home there from that moment--absolutely, marvelously at home, for he fitted the setting perfectly, and there was not a hitch or flaw in his adaptation. To see him over the billiard-table, five minutes later, one could easily fancy that Mark Twain, as well as the house, had “been there always.” Only the presence of his daughters was needed now to complete his satisfaction in everything.

There were guests that first evening--a small home dinner-party--and so perfect were the appointments and service, that one not knowing would scarcely have imagined it to be the first dinner served in that lovely room. A little later; at the foot of the garden of bay and cedar, neighbors, inspired by Dan Beard, who had recently located near by, set off some fireworks. Clemens stepped out on the terrace and saw rockets climbing through the summer sky to announce his arrival.

“I wonder why they all go to so much trouble for me,” he said, softly. “I never go to any trouble for anybody”--a statement which all who heard it, and all his multitude of readers in every land, stood ready to deny.

That first evening closed with billiards--boisterous, triumphant billiards--and when with midnight the day ended and the cues were set in the rack, there was none to say that Mark Twain's first day in his new home had not been a happy one.

CCLXIX. FIRST DAYS AT STORMFIELD

I went up next afternoon, for I knew how he dreaded loneliness. We played billiards for a time, then set out for a walk, following the long drive to the leafy lane that led to my own property. Presently he said:

“In one way I am sorry I did not see this place sooner. I never want to leave it again. If I had known it was so beautiful I should have vacated the house in town and moved up here permanently.”

I suggested that he could still do so, if he chose, and he entered immediately into the idea. By and by we turned down a deserted road, grassy and beautiful, that ran along his land. At one side was a slope facing the west, and dotted with the slender, cypress-like cedars of New England. He had asked if that were part of his land, and on being told it was he said:

“I would like Howells to have a house there. We must try to give that to Howells.”

At the foot of the hill we came to a brook and followed it into a meadow. I told him that I had often caught fine trout there, and that soon I would bring in some for breakfast. He answered:

“Yes, I should like that. I don't care to catch them any more myself. I like them very hot.”

We passed through some woods and came out near my own ancient little house. He noticed it and said:

“The man who built that had some memory of Greece in his mind when he put on that little porch with those columns.”

My second daughter, Frances, was coming from a distant school on the evening train, and the carriage was starting just then to bring her. I suggested that perhaps he would find it pleasant to make the drive.

“Yes,” he agreed, “I should enjoy that.”

So I took the reins, and he picked up little Joy, who came running out just then, and climbed into the back seat. It was another beautiful evening, and he was in a talkative humor. Joy pointed out a small turtle in the road, and he said:

“That is a wild turtle. Do you think you could teach it arithmetic?”

Joy was uncertain.

“Well,” he went on, “you ought to get an arithmetic--a little ten-cent arithmetic--and teach that turtle.”

We passed some swampy woods, rather dim and junglelike.

“Those,” he said, “are elephant woods.”

But Joy answered:

“They are fairy woods. The fairies are there, but you can't see them because they wear magic cloaks.”

He said: “I wish I had one of those magic cloaks, sometimes. I had one once, but it is worn out now.”

Joy looked at him reverently, as one who had once been the owner of a piece of fairyland.

It was a sweet drive to and from the village. There are none too many such evenings in a lifetime. Colonel Harvey's little daughter, Dorothy, came up a day or two later, and with my daughter Louise spent the first week with him in the new home. They were created “Angel-Fishes”--the first in the new aquarium; that is to say, the billiard-room, where he followed out the idea by hanging a row of colored prints of Bermuda fishes in a sort of frieze around the walls. Each visiting member was required to select one as her particular patron fish and he wrote her name upon it. It was his delight to gather his juvenile guests in this room and teach them the science of billiard angles; but it was so difficult to resist taking the cue and making plays himself that he was required to stand on a little platform and give instruction just out of reach. His snowy flannels and gleaming white hair, against those rich red walls, with those small, summer-clad players, made a pretty picture.

The place did not retain its original name. He declared that it would always be “Innocence at Home” to the angel-fish visitors, but that the title didn't remain continuously appropriate. The money which he had derived from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven had been used to build the loggia wing, and he considered the name of “Stormfield” as a substitute. When, presently, the summer storms gathered on that rock-bound, open hill, with its wide reaches of vine and shrub-wild, fierce storms that bent the birch and cedar, and strained at the bay and huckleberry, with lightning and turbulent wind and thunder, followed by the charging rain--the name seemed to become peculiarly appropriate. Standing with his head bared to the tumult, his white hair tossing in the blast, and looking out upon the wide splendor of the spectacle, he rechristened the place, and “Stormfield” it became and remained.

The last day of Mark Twain's first week in Redding, June 25th, was saddened by the news of the death of Grover Cleveland at his home in Princeton, New Jersey. Clemens had always been an ardent Cleveland admirer, and to Mrs. Cleveland now he sent this word of condolence--

Your husband was a man I knew and loved and honored for twenty-five
years. I mourn with you.

And once during the evening he said:

“He was one of our two or three real Presidents. There is none to take his place.”

CCLXX. THE ALDRICH MEMORIAL. At the end of June came the dedication at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, of the Thomas Bailey Aldrich Memorial Museum, which the poet's wife had established there in the old Aldrich homestead. It was hot weather. We were obliged to take a rather poor train from South Norwalk, and Clemens was silent and gloomy most of the way to Boston. Once there, however, lodged in a cool and comfortable hotel, matters improved. He had brought along for reading the old copy of Sir Thomas Malory's Arthur Tales, and after dinner he took off his clothes and climbed into bed and sat up and read aloud from those stately legends, with comments that I wish I could remember now, only stopping at last when overpowered with sleep.

We went on a special train to Portsmouth next morning through the summer heat, and assembled, with those who were to speak, in the back portion of the opera-house, behind the scenes: Clemens was genial and good-natured with all the discomfort of it; and he liked to fancy, with Howells, who had come over from Kittery Point, how Aldrich must be amused at the whole circumstance if he could see them punishing themselves to do honor to his memory. Richard Watson Gilder was there, and Hamilton Mabie; also Governor Floyd of New Hampshire; Colonel Higginson, Robert Bridges, and other distinguished men. We got to the more open atmosphere of the stage presently, and the exercises began. Clemens was last on the program.

The others had all said handsome, serious things, and Clemens himself had mentally prepared something of the sort; but when his turn came, and he rose to speak, a sudden reaction must have set in, for he delivered an address that certainly would have delighted Aldrich living, and must have delighted him dead, if he could hear it. It was full of the most charming humor, delicate, refreshing, and spontaneous. The audience, that had been maintaining a proper gravity throughout, showed its appreciation in ripples of merriment that grew presently into genuine waves of laughter. He spoke out his regret for having worn black clothes. It was a mistake, he said, to consider this a solemn time--Aldrich would not have wished it to be so considered. He had been a man who loved humor and brightness and wit, and had helped to make life merry and delightful. Certainly, if he could know, he would not wish this dedication of his own home to be a lugubrious, smileless occasion. Outside, when the services were ended, the venerable juvenile writer, J. T. Trowbridge, came up to Clemens with extended hand. Clemens said: “Trowbridge, are you still alive? You must be a thousand years old. Why, I listened to your stories while I was being rocked in the cradle.” Trowbridge said:

“Mark, there's some mistake. My earliest infant smile was wakened with one of your jokes.”

They stood side by side against a fence in the blazing sun and were photographed--an interesting picture.

We returned to Boston that evening. Clemens did not wish to hurry in the summer heat, and we remained another day quietly sight-seeing, and driving around and around Commonwealth Avenue in a victoria in the cool of the evening. Once, remembering Aldrich, he said:

“I was just planning Tom Sawyer when he was beginning the 'Story of a Bad Boy'. When I heard that he was writing that I thought of giving up mine, but Aldrich insisted that it would be a foolish thing to do. He thought my Missouri boy could not by any chance conflict with his boy of New England, and of course he was right.”

He spoke of how great literary minds usually came along in company. He said:

“Now and then, on the stream of time, small gobs of that thing which we call genius drift down, and a few of these lodge at some particular point, and others collect about them and make a sort of intellectual island--a towhead, as they say on the river--such an accumulation of intellect we call a group, or school, and name it.

“Thirty years ago there was the Cambridge group. Now there's been still another, which included Aldrich and Howells and Stedman and Cable. It will soon be gone. I suppose they will have to name it by and by.”

He pointed out houses here and there of people he had known and visited in other days. The driver was very anxious to go farther, to other and more distinguished sights. Clemens mildly but firmly refused any variation of the program, and so we kept on driving around and around the shaded loop of Beacon Street until dusk fell and the lights began to twinkle among the trees.

CCLXXI. DEATH OF “SAM” MOFFETT

Clemens' next absence from Redding came on August 1, 1908, when the sudden and shocking news was received of the drowning of his nephew, Samuel E. Moffett, in the surf of the Jersey shore. Moffett was his nearest male relative, and a man of fine intellect and talents. He was superior in those qualities which men love--he was large-minded and large-hearted, and of noble ideals. With much of the same sense of humor which had made his uncle's fame, he had what was really an abnormal faculty of acquiring and retaining encyclopedic data. Once as a child he had visited Hartford when Clemens was laboring over his history game. The boy was much interested, and asked permission to help. His uncle willingly consented, and referred him to the library for his facts. But he did not need to consult the books; he already had English history stored away, and knew where to find every detail of it. At the time of his death Moffett held an important editorial position on Collier's Weekly.

Clemens was fond and proud of his nephew. Returning from the funeral, he was much depressed, and a day or two later became really ill. He was in bed for a few days, resting, he said, after the intense heat of the journey. Then he was about again and proposed billiards as a diversion. We were all alone one very still, warm August afternoon playing, when he suddenly said:

“I feel a little dizzy; I will sit down a moment.”

I brought him a glass of water and he seemed to recover, but when he rose and started to play I thought he had a dazed look. He said:

“I have lost my memory. I don't know which is my ball. I don't know what game we are playing.”

But immediately this condition passed, and we thought little of it, considering it merely a phase of biliousness due to his recent journey. I have been told since, by eminent practitioners, that it was the first indication of a more serious malady.

He became apparently quite himself again and showed his usual vigor-light of step and movement, able to skip up and down stairs as heretofore. In a letter to Mrs. Crane, August 12th, he spoke of recent happenings:

DEAR AUNT SUE,--It was a most moving, a most heartbreaking sight,
the spectacle of that stunned & crushed & inconsolable family. I
came back here in bad shape, & had a bilious collapse, but I am all
right again, though the doctor from New York has given peremptory
orders that I am not to stir from here before frost. O fortunate
Sam Moffett! fortunate Livy Clemens! doubly fortunate Susy! Those
swords go through & through my heart, but there is never a moment
that I am not glad, for the sake of the dead, that they have
escaped.

How Livy would love this place! How her very soul would steep
itself thankfully in this peace, this tranquillity, this deep
stillness, this dreamy expanse of woodsy hill & valley! You must
come, Aunt Sue, & stay with us a real good visit. Since June 26 we
have had 21 guests, & they have all liked it and said they would
come again.

To Howells, on the same day, he wrote:

Won't you & Mrs. Howells & Mildred come & give us as many days as
you can spare & examine John's triumph? It is the most satisfactory
house I am acquainted with, & the most satisfactorily situated..
.. I have dismissed my stenographer, & have entered upon a
holiday whose other end is the cemetery.

CCLXXII. STORMFIELD ADVENTURES

Clemens had fully decided, by this time, to live the year round in the retirement at Stormfield, and the house at 21 Fifth Avenue was being dismantled. He had also, as he said, given up his dictations for the time, at least, after continuing them, with more or less regularity, for a period of two and a half years, during which he had piled up about half a million words of comment and reminiscence. His general idea had been to add portions of this matter to his earlier books as the copyrights expired, to give them new life and interest, and he felt that he had plenty now for any such purpose.