Mark Twain A Biography Part 169

It seemed startlingly strange to hear a person call you young. It was a brick out of a blue sky, & knocked me groggy for a moment. Ah me, the pathos of it is that we were young then. And he--why, so was he, but he didn't know it. He didn't even know it 9 years later, when we saw him approaching and you warned me, saying:

"Don't say anything about age--he has just turned 50 & thinks he is old, & broods over it."

Well, Clara did sing! And you wrote her a dear letter.

Time to go to sleep.

Yours ever, MARK

The second letter, begun at 10 A.M., outlines the plan by which he is to write on the subject uppermost in his mind without restraint, knowing that the letter is not to be mailed.

...The scheme furnishes a definite target for each letter, & you can choose the target that's going to be the most sympathetic for what you are hungering & thirsting to say at that particular moment.

And you can talk with a quite unallowable frankness & freedom because you are not going to send the letter. When you are on fire with theology you'll not write it to Rogers, who wouldn't be an inspiration; you'll write it to Twich.e.l.l, because it will make him writhe and squirm & break the furniture. When you are on fire with a good thing that's indecent you won't waste it on Twich.e.l.l; you'll save it for Howells, who will love it. As he will never see it you can make it really indecenter than he could stand; & so no harm is done, yet a vast advantage is gained.

The letter was not finished, and the scheme perished there. The Twich.e.l.l letter concerned missionaries, and added nothing to what he had already said on the subject.

He wrote no letter to Mr. Rogers--perhaps never wrote to him again.

CCLXXVIII. THE DEATH OF HENRY ROGERS

Clemens, a little before my return, had been on a trip to Norfolk, Virginia, to attend the opening ceremonies of the Virginia Railway.

He had made a speech on that occasion, in which he had paid a public tribute to Henry Rogers, and told something of his personal obligation to the financier.

He began by telling what Mr. Rogers had done for Helen Keller, whom he called "the most marvelous person of her s.e.x that has existed on this earth since Joan of Arc." Then he said:

That is not all Mr. Rogers has done, but you never see that side of his character because it is never protruding; but he lends a helping hand daily out of that generous heart of his. You never hear of it.

He is supposed to be a moon which has one side dark and the other bright. But the other side, though you don't see it, is not dark; it is bright, and its rays penetrate, and others do see it who are not G.o.d.

I would take this opportunity to tell something that I have never been allowed to tell by Mr. Rogers, either by my mouth or in print, and if I don't look at him I can tell it now.

In 1894, when the publis.h.i.+ng company of Charles L. Webster, of which I was financial agent, failed, it left me heavily in debt. If you will remember what commerce was at that time you will recall that you could not sell anything, and could not buy anything, and I was on my back; my books were not worth anything at all, and I could not give away my copyrights. Mr. Rogers had long-enough vision ahead to say, "Your books have supported you before, and after the panic is over they will support you again," and that was a correct proposition. He saved my copyrights, and saved me from financial ruin. He it was who arranged with my creditors to allow me to roam the face of the earth and persecute the nations thereof with lectures, promising at the end of four years I would pay dollar for dollar. That arrangement was made, otherwise I would now be living out-of-doors under an umbrella, and a borrowed one at that.

You see his white mustache and his hair trying to get white (he is always trying to look like me--I don't blame him for that). These are only emblematic of his character, and that is all. I say, without exception, hair and all, he is the whitest man I have ever known.

This had been early in April. Something more than a month later Clemens was making a business trip to New York to see Mr. Rogers. I was telephoned early to go up and look over some matters with him before he started. I do not remember why I was not to go along that day, for I usually made such trips with him. I think it was planned that Miss Clemens, who was in the city, was to meet him at the Grand Central Station. At all events, she did meet him there, with the news that during the night Mr. Rogers had suddenly died. This was May 20, 1909.

The news had already come to the house, and I had lost no time in preparations to follow by the next train. I joined him at the Grosvenor Hotel, on Fifth Avenue and Tenth Street. He was upset and deeply troubled by the loss of his stanch adviser and friend. He had a helpless look, and he said his friends were dying away from him and leaving him adrift.

"And how I hate to do anything," he added, "that requires the least modic.u.m of intelligence!"

We remained at the Grosvenor for Mr. Rogers's funeral. Clemens served as one of the pall-bearers, but he did not feel equal to the trip to Fairhaven. He wanted to be very quiet, he said. He could not undertake to travel that distance among those whom he knew so well, and with whom he must of necessity join in conversation; so we remained in the hotel apartment, reading and saying very little until bedtime. Once he asked me to write a letter to Jean: "Say, 'Your father says every little while, "How glad I am that Jean is at home again!"' for that is true and I think of it all the time."

But by and by, after a long period of silence, he said:

"Mr. Rogers is under the ground now."

And so pa.s.sed out of earthly affairs the man who had contributed so largely to the comfort of Mark Twain's old age. He was a man of fine sensibilities and generous impulses; withal a keen sense of humor.

One Christmas, when he presented Mark Twain with a watch and a match-case, he wrote:

MY DEAR CLEMENS,--For many years your friends have been complaining of your use of tobacco, both as to quant.i.ty and quality. Complaints are now coming in of your use of time. Most of your friends think that you are using your supply somewhat lavishly, but the chief complaint is in regard to the quality.

I have been appealed to in the mean time, and have concluded that it is impossible to get the right kind of time from a blacking-box.

Therefore, I take the liberty of sending you herewith a machine that will furnish only the best. Please use it with the kind wishes of Yours truly, H. H. ROGERS.

P. S.--Complaint has also been made in regard to the furrows you make in your trousers in scratching matches. You will find a furrow on the bottom of the article inclosed. Please use it. Compliments of the season to the family.

He was a man too busy to write many letters, but when he did write (to Clemens at least) they were always playful and unhurried. One reading them would not find it easy to believe that the writer was a man on whose shoulders lay the burdens of stupendous finance-burdens so heavy that at last he was crushed beneath their weight.

CCLXXIX. AN EXTENSION OF COPYRIGHT

One of the pleasant things that came to Mark Twain that year was the pa.s.sage of a copyright bill, which added to the royalty period an extension of fourteen years. Champ Clark had been largely instrumental in the success of this measure, and had been fighting for it steadily since Mark Twain's visit to Was.h.i.+ngton in 1906. Following that visit, Clark wrote:

... It [the original bill] would never pa.s.s because the bill had literature and music all mixed together. Being a Missourian of course it would give me great pleasure to be of service to you.

What I want to say is this: you have prepared a simple bill relating only to the copyright of books; send it to me and I will try to have it pa.s.sed.

Clemens replied that he might have something more to say on the copyright question by and by--that he had in hand a dialogue--[Similar to the "Open Letter to the Register of Copyrights," North American Review, January, 1905.]--which would instruct Congress, but this he did not complete. Meantime a simple bill was proposed and early in 1909 it became a law. In June Clark wrote:

DR. SAMUEL L. CLEMENS, Stormfield, Redding, Conn.

MY DEAR DOCTOR,--I am gradually becoming myself again, after a period of exhaustion that almost approximated prostration. After a long lecture tour last summer I went immediately into a hard campaign; as soon as the election was over, and I had recovered my disposition, I came here and went into those tariff hearings, which began shortly after breakfast each day, and sometimes lasted until midnight. Listening patiently and meekly, withal, to the lying of tariff barons for many days and nights was followed by the work of the long session; that was followed by a hot campaign to take Uncle Joe's rules away from him; on the heels of that "Campaign that Failed" came the tariff fight in the House. I am now getting time to breathe regularly and I am writing to ask you if the copyright law is acceptable to you. If it is not acceptable to you I want to ask you to write and tell me how it should be changed and I will give my best endeavors to the work. I believe that your ideas and wishes in the matter const.i.tute the best guide we have as to what should be done in the case.

Your friend, CHAMP CLARK.

To this Clemens replied:

STORMFIELD, REDDING, CONN, June 5, 1909.

DEAR CHAMP CLARK,--Is the new copyright law acceptable to me?

Emphatically yes! Clark, it is the only sane & clearly defined & just & righteous copyright law that has ever existed in the United States. Whosoever will compare it with its predecessors will have no trouble in arriving at that decision.

The bill which was before the committee two years ago when I was down there was the most stupefying jumble of conflicting & apparently irreconcilable interests that was ever seen; and we all said "the case is hopeless, absolutely hopeless--out of this chaos nothing can be built." But we were in error; out of that chaotic ma.s.s this excellent bill has been constructed, the warring interests have been reconciled, and the result is as comely and substantial a legislative edifice as lifts its domes and towers and protective lightning-rods out of the statute book I think. When I think of that other bill, which even the Deity couldn't understand, and of this one, which even I can understand, I take off my hat to the man or men who devised this one. Was it R. U. Johnson? Was it the Authors' League? Was it both together? I don't know, but I take off my hat, anyway. Johnson has written a valuable article about the new law--I inclose it.

At last--at last and for the first time in copyright history--we are ahead of England! Ahead of her in two ways: by length of time and by fairness to all interests concerned. Does this sound like shouting? Then I must modify it: all we possessed of copyright justice before the 4th of last March we owed to England's initiative.

Truly yours, S. L. CLEMENS.

Clemens had prepared what was the final word an the subject of copyright just before this bill was pa.s.sed--a pet.i.tion for a law which he believed would regulate the whole matter. It was a generous, even if a somewhat Utopian, plan, eminently characteristic of its author. The new fourteen-year extension, with the prospect of more, made this or any other compromise seem inadvisable.--[The reader may consider this last copyright doc.u.ment by Mark Twain under Appendix N, at the end of this volume.]

CCLx.x.x. A WARNING

Clemens had promised to go to Baltimore for the graduation of "Francesca" of his London visit in 1907--and to make a short address to her cla.s.s.