Mark Twain A Biography Part 166

"Yes," he said, "I might put on a red wig and false whiskers and change my name, but I couldn't disguise my drawling speech and they'd find me out."

It was amusing, but it was rather sad, too. His fame had deprived him of valued privileges.

He talked of many things during these little excursions. Once he told how he had successively advised his nephew, Moffett, in the matter of obtaining a desirable position. Moffett had wanted to become a reporter.

Clemens devised a characteristic scheme. He said:

"I will get you a place on any newspaper you may select if you promise faithfully to follow out my instructions."

The applicant agreed, eagerly enough. Clemens said:

"Go to the newspaper of your choice. Say that you are idle and want work, that you are pining for work--longing for it, and that you ask no wages, and will support yourself. All that you ask is work. That you will do anything, sweep, fill the inkstands, mucilage-bottles, run errands, and be generally useful. You must never ask for wages. You must wait until the offer of wages comes to you. You must work just as faithfully and just as eagerly as if you were being paid for it. Then see what happens."

The scheme had worked perfectly. Young Moffett had followed his instructions to the letter. By and by he attracted attention. He was employed in a variety of ways that earned him the grat.i.tude and the confidence of the office. In obedience to further instructions, he began to make short, brief, unadorned notices of small news matters that came under his eye and laid them on the city editor's desk. No pay was asked; none was expected. Occasionally one of the items was used. Then, of course, it happened, as it must sooner or later at a busy time, that he was given a small news a.s.signment. There was no trouble about his progress after that. He had won the confidence of the management and shown that he was not afraid to work.

The plan had been variously tried since, Clemens said, and he could not remember any case in which it had failed. The idea may have grown out of his own pilot apprentices.h.i.+p on the river, when cub pilots not only received no salary, but paid for the privilege of learning.

Clemens discussed public matters less often than formerly, but they were not altogether out of his mind. He thought our republic was in a fair way to become a monarchy--that the signs were already evident. He referred to the letter which he had written so long ago in Boston, with its amusing fancy of the Archbishop of Dublin and his Grace of Ponkapog, and declared that, after all, it contained something of prophecy.--[See chap. xcvii; also Appendix M.]--He would not live to see the actual monarchy, he said, but it was coming.

"I'm not expecting it in my time nor in my children's time, though it may be sooner than we think. There are two special reasons for it and one condition. The first reason is, that it is in the nature of man to want a definite something to love, honor, reverently look up to and obey; a G.o.d and King, for example. The second reason is, that while little republics have lasted long, protected by their poverty and insignificance, great ones have not. And the condition is, vast power and wealth, which breed commercial and political corruptions, and incite public favorites to dangerous ambitions."

He repeated what I had heard him say before, that in one sense we already had a monarchy; that is to say, a ruling public and political aristocracy which could create a Presidential succession. He did not say these things bitterly now, but reflectively and rather indifferently.

He was inclined to speak unhopefully of the international plans for universal peace, which were being agitated rather persistently.

"The gospel of peace," he said, "is always making a deal of noise, always rejoicing in its progress but always neglecting to furnish statistics. There are no peaceful nations now. All Christendom is a soldier-camp. The poor have been taxed in some nations to the starvation point to support the giant armaments which Christian governments have built up, each to protect itself from the rest of the Christian brotherhood, and incidentally to s.n.a.t.c.h any sc.r.a.p of real estate left exposed by a weaker owner. King Leopold II. of Belgium, the most intensely Christian monarch, except Alexander VI., that has escaped h.e.l.l thus far, has stolen an entire kingdom in Africa, and in fourteen years of Christian endeavor there has reduced the population from thirty millions to fifteen by murder and mutilation and overwork, confiscating the labor of the helpless natives, and giving them nothing in return but salvation and a home in heaven, furnished at the last moment by the Christian priest.

"Within the last generation each Christian power has turned the bulk of its attention to finding out newer and still newer and more and more effective ways of killing Christians, and, incidentally, a pagan now and then; and the surest way to get rich quickly in Christ's earthly kingdom is to invent a kind of gun that can kill more Christians at one shot than any other existing kind. All the Christian nations are at it. The more advanced they are, the bigger and more destructive engines of war they create."

Once, speaking of battles great and small, and how important even a small battle must seem to a soldier who had fought in no other, he said:

"To him it is a mighty achievement, an achievement with a big A, when to a wax-worn veteran it would be a mere incident. For instance, to the soldier of one battle, San Juan Hill was an Achievement with an A as big as the Pyramids of Cheops; whereas, if Napoleon had fought it, he would have set it down on his cuff at the time to keep from forgetting it had happened. But that is all natural and human enough. We are all like that."

The curiosities and absurdities of religious superst.i.tions never failed to furnish him with themes more or less amusing. I remember one Sunday, when he walked down to have luncheon at my house, he sat under the shade and fell to talking of Herod's slaughter of the innocents, which he said could not have happened.

"Tacitus makes no mention of it," he said, "and he would hardly have overlooked a sweeping order like that, issued by a petty ruler like Herod. Just consider a little king of a corner of the Roman Empire ordering the slaughter of the first-born of a lot of Roman subjects.

Why, the Emperor would have reached out that long arm of his and dismissed Herod. That tradition is probably about as authentic as those connected with a number of old bridges in Europe which are said to have been built by Satan. The inhabitants used to go to Satan to build bridges for them, promising him the soul of the first one that crossed the bridge; then, when Satan had the bridge done, they would send over a rooster or a jacka.s.s--a cheap jacka.s.s; that was for Satan, and of course they could fool him that way every time. Satan must have been pretty simple, even according to the New Testament, or he wouldn't have led Christ up on a high mountain and offered him the world if he would fall down and wors.h.i.+p him. That was a manifestly absurd proposition, because Christ, as the Son of G.o.d, already owned the world; and, besides, what Satan showed him was only a few rocky acres of Palestine. It is just as if some one should try to buy Rockefeller, the owner of all the Standard Oil Company, with a gallon of kerosene."

He often spoke of the unseen forces of creation, the immutable laws that hold the planet in exact course and bring the years and the seasons always exactly on schedule time. "The Great Law" was a phrase often on his lips. The exquisite foliage, the cloud shapes, the varieties of color everywhere: these were for him outward manifestations of the Great Law, whose principle I understood to be unity--exact relations throughout all nature; and in this I failed to find any suggestion of pessimism, but only of justice. Once he wrote on a card for preservation:

From everlasting to everlasting, this is the law: the sum of wrong & misery shall always keep exact step with the sum of human blessedness.

No "civilization," no "advance," has ever modified these proportions by even the shadow of a shade, nor ever can, while our race endures.

CCLXIV. CITIZEN AND FARMER

The procession of guests at Stormfield continued pretty steadily.

Clemens kept a book in which visitors set down their names and the dates of arrival and departure, and when they failed to attend to these matters he diligently did it himself after they were gone.

Members of the Harper Company came up with their wives; "angel-fish"

swam in and out of the aquarium; Bermuda friends came to see the new home; Robert Collier, the publisher, and his wife--"Mrs. Sally," as Clemens liked to call her--paid their visits; Lord Northcliffe, who was visiting America, came with Colonel Harvey, and was so impressed with the architecture of Stormfield that he adopted its plans for a country-place he was about to build in Newfoundland. Helen Keller, with Mr. and Mrs. Macy, came up for a week-end visit. Mrs. Crane came over from Elmira; and, behold! one day came the long-ago sweetheart of his childhood, little Laura Hawkins--Laura Frazer now, widowed and in the seventies, with a granddaughter already a young lady quite grown up.

That Mark Twain was not wearying of the new conditions we may gather from a letter written to Mrs. Rogers in October:

I've grown young in these months of dissipation here. And I have left off drinking--it isn't necessary now. Society & theology are sufficient for me.

To Helen Allen, a Bermuda "Angel-Fish," he wrote:

We have good times here in this soundless solitude on the hilltop.

The moment I saw the house I was glad I built it, & now I am gladder & gladder all the time. I was not dreaming of living here except in the summer-time--that was before I saw this region & the house, you see--but that is all changed now; I shall stay here winter & summer both & not go back to New York at all. My child, it's as tranquil & contenting as Bermuda. You will be very welcome here, dear.

He interested himself in the affairs and in the people of Redding. Not long after his arrival he had gathered in all the inhabitants of the country-side, neighbors of every quality, for closer acquaintance, and threw open to them for inspection every part of the new house. He appointed Mrs. Lounsbury, whose acquaintance was very wide; a sort of committee on reception, and stood at the entrance with her to welcome each visitor in person.

It was a sort of gala day, and the rooms and the grounds were filled with the visitors. In the dining-room there were generous refreshments.

Again, not long afterward, he issued a special invitation to all of those-architects, builders, and workmen who had taken any part, however great or small, in the building of his home. Mr. and Mrs. Littleton were visiting Stormfield at this time, and both Clemens and Littleton spoke to these a.s.sembled guests from the terrace, and made them feel that their efforts had been worth while.

Presently the idea developed to establish something that would be of benefit to his neighbors, especially to those who did not have access to much reading-matter. He had been for years flooded with books by authors and publishers, and there was a heavy surplus at his home in the city.

When these began to arrive he had a large number of volumes set aside as the nucleus of a public library. An unused chapel not far away--it could be seen from one of his windows--was obtained for the purpose; officers were elected; a librarian was appointed, and so the Mark Twain Library of Redding was duly established. Clemens himself was elected its first president, with the resident physician, Dr. Ernest H. Smith, vice-president, and another resident, William E. Grumman, librarian.

On the afternoon of its opening the president made a brief address. He said:

I am here to speak a few instructive words to my fellow-farmers.

I suppose you are all farmers: I am going to put in a crop next year, when I have been here long enough and know how. I couldn't make a turnip stay on a tree now after I had grown it. I like to talk. It would take more than the Redding air to make me keep still, and I like to instruct people. It's n.o.ble to be good, and it's n.o.bler to teach others to be good, and less trouble. I am glad to help this library. We get our morals from books. I didn't get mine from books, but I know that morals do come from books --theoretically at least. Mr. Beard or Mr. Adams will give some land, and by and by we are going to have a building of our own.

This statement was news to both Mr. Beard and Mr. Adams and an inspiration of the moment; but Mr. Theodore Adams, who owned a most desirable site, did in fact promptly resolve to donate it for library purposes. Clemens continued:

I am going to help build that library with contributions from my visitors. Every male guest who comes to my house will have to contribute a dollar or go away without his baggage.

--[A characteristic notice to guests requiring them to contribute a dollar to the Library Building Fund was later placed on the billiard-room mantel at Stormfield with good results.]--If those burglars that broke into my house recently had done that they would have been happier now, or if they'd have broken into this library they would have read a few books and led a better life. Now they are in jail, and if they keep on they will go to Congress. When a person starts downhill you can never tell where he's going to stop.

I am sorry for those burglars. They got nothing that they wanted and scared away most of my servants. Now we are putting in a burglar-alarm instead of a dog. Some advised the dog, but it costs even more to entertain a dog than a burglar. I am having the ground electrified, so that for a mile around any one who puts his foot across the line sets off an alarm that will be heard in Europe. Now I will introduce the real president to you, a man whom you know already--Dr. Smith.

So a new and important benefit was conferred upon the community, and there was a feeling that Redding, besides having a literary colony, was to be literary in fact.

It might have been mentioned earlier that Redding already had literary a.s.sociations when Mark Twain arrived. As far back as Revolutionary days Joel Barlow, a poet of distinction, and once Minister to France, had been a resident of Redding, and there were still Barlow descendants in the towns.h.i.+p.

William Edgar Grumman, the librarian, had written the story of Redding's share in the Revolutionary War--no small share, for Gen. Israel Putnam's army had been quartered there during at least one long, trying winter.

Charles Burr Todd, of one of the oldest Redding families, himself--still a resident, was also the author of a Redding history.

Of literary folk not native to Redding, Dora Reed Goodale and her sister Elaine, the wife of Dr. Charles A. Eastman, had, long been residents of Redding Center; Jeanette L. Gilder and Ida M. Tarbell had summer homes on Redding Ridge; Dan Beard, as already mentioned, owned a place near the banks of the Saugatuck, while Kate V. St. Maur, also two of Nathaniel Hawthorne's granddaughters had recently located adjoining the Stormfield lands. By which it will be seen that Redding was in no way unsuitable as a home for Mark Twain.

CCLXV. A MANTEL AND A BABY ELEPHANT

Mark Twain was the receiver of two notable presents that year. The first of these, a mantel from Hawaii, presented to him by the Hawaiian Promotion Committee, was set in place in the billiard-room on the morning of his seventy-third birthday. This committee had written, proposing to build for his new home either a mantel or a chair, as he might prefer, the same to be carved from the native woods. Clemens decided on a billiard-room mantel, and John Howells forwarded the proper measurements. So, in due time, the mantel arrived, a beautiful piece of work and in fine condition, with the Hawaiian word, "Aloha," one of the sweetest forms of greeting in any tongue, carved as its central ornament.