Mark Twain A Biography Part 89

Papa said the other day, "I am a mugwump and a mugwump is pure from the marrow out." (Papa knows that I am writing this biography of him, and he said this for it.) He doesn't like to go to church at all, why I never understood, until just now. He told us the other day that he couldn't bear to hear anyone talk but himself, but that he could listen to himself talk for hours without getting tired, of course he said this in joke, but I've no doubt it was founded on truth.

Susy's picture of life at Quarry Farm at this period is realistic and valuable--too valuable to be spared from this biography:

There are eleven cats at the farm here now. Papa's favorite is a little tortoise-sh.e.l.l kitten he has named "Sour Mash," and a little spotted one "Fannie." It is very pretty to see what papa calls the cat procession; it was formed in this way. Old Minniecat headed, (the mother of all the cats) next to her came aunt Susie, then Clara on the donkey, accompanied by a pile of cats, then papa and Jean hand in hand and a pile of cats brought up in the rear, mama and I made up the audience.

Our varius occupations are as follows. Papa rises about 1/2 past 7 in the morning, breakfasts at eight, writes, plays tennis with Clara and me and tries to make the donkey go, in the morning; does varius things in P.M., and in the evening plays tennis with Clara and me and amuses Jean and the donkey.

Mama rises about 1/4 to eight, breakfasts at eight, teaches Jean German reading from 9-10; reads German with me from 10-11. Then she reads studdies or visits with aunt Susie for a while, and then she reads to Clara and I till lunch time things connected with English history (for we hope to go to England next summer) while we sew.

Then we have lunch. She studdies for about half an hour or visits with aunt Susie, then reads to us an hour or more, then studdies writes reads and rests till supper time. After supper she sits out on the porch and works till eight o'clock, from eight o'clock to bedtime she plays whist with papa and after she has retired she reads and studdies German for a while.

Clara and I do most everything from practicing to donkey riding and playing tag. While Jean's time is spent in asking mama what she can have to eat.

It is impossible, at this distance, to convey all that the farm meant to the children during the summers of their infancy and childhood and girlhood which they spent there. It was the paradise, the dreamland they looked forward to during all the rest of the year. Through the long, happy months there they grew strong and brown, and drank deeply of the joy of life. Their cousins Julia, Jervis, and Ida Langdon ranged about their own ages and were almost their daily companions. Their games were mainly of the out-of-doors; the woods and meadows and hillside pastures were their playground. Susy was thirteen when she began her diary; a gentle, thoughtful, romantic child. One afternoon she discovered a wonderful tangle of vines and bushes between the study and the sunset--a rare hiding-place. She ran breathlessly to her aunt:

"Can I have it? Can Clara and I have it all for our own?"

The pet.i.tion was granted, of course, and the place was named Helen's Bower, for they were reading Thaddeus of Warsaw and the name appealed to Susy's poetic fancy. Then Mrs. Clemens conceived the idea of building a house for the children just beyond the bower. It was a complete little cottage when finished, with a porch and with furnis.h.i.+ngs contributed by friends and members of the family. There was a stove--a tiny affair, but practical--dishes, table, chairs, shelves, and a broom. The little house was named Ellerslie, out of Grace Aguilar's Days of Robert Bruce, and became one of the children's most beloved possessions. But alas for Helen's Bower! A workman was sent to clear away the debris after the builders, and being a practical man, he cut away Helen's Bower--destroyed it utterly. Susy first discovered the vandalism, and came rus.h.i.+ng to the house in a torrent of sorrow. For her the joy of life seemed ended, and it was long before she could be comforted. But Ellerslie in time satisfied her hunger for retreat, became, in fact, the nucleus around which the children's summer happiness centered.

To their elders the farm remained always the quiet haven. Once to Orion's wife Clemens wrote:

This is a superb Sunday....

The city in the valley is purple with shade, as seen from up here at the study. The Cranes are reading and loafing in the canvas- curtained summer-house, fifty yards away, on a higher (the highest) point; the cats are loafing over at Ellerslie, which is the children's estate and dwelling house in their own private grounds (by deed from Susie Crane), a hundred yards from the study, among the clover and young oaks and willows. Livy is down at the house, but I shall now go and bring her up to the Cranes to help us occupy the lounges and hammocks, whence a great panorama of distant hills and valley and city is seeable. The children have gone on a lark through the neighboring hills and woods, Susie and Clara horseback and Jean, driving a buggy, with the coachman for comrade and a.s.sistant at need. It is a perfect day indeed.

The ending of each year's summer brought only regret. Clemens would never take away all his things. He had an old superst.i.tion that to leave some article insured return. Mrs. Clemens also left something--her heart's content. The children went around bidding various objects good-by and kissed the gates of Ellerslie too.

CLVIII. MARK TWAIN AT FIFTY

Mark Twain's fiftieth birthday was one of the pleasantly observed events of that year. There was no special celebration, but friends sent kindly messages, and The Critic, then conducted by Jeannette and Joseph Gilder, made a feature of it. Miss Gilder wrote to Oliver Wendell Holmes and invited some verses, which with his never-failing kindliness he sent, though in his accompanying note he said:

"I had twenty-three letters spread out on my table for answering, all marked immediate, when your note came."

Dr. Holmes's stanzas are full of his gentle spirit:

TO MARK TWAIN

(On his fiftieth birthday)

Ah, Clemens, when I saw thee last, We both of us were younger; How fondly mumbling o'er the past Is Memory's toothless hunger!

So fifty years have fled, they say, Since first you took to drinking; I mean in Nature's milky way Of course no ill I'm thinking.

But while on life's uneven road Your track you've been pursuing, What fountains from your wit have flowed What drinks you have been brewing!

I know whence all your magic came, Your secret I've discovered, The source that fed your inward flame, The dreams that round you hovered.

Before you learned to bite or munch, Still kicking in your cradle, The Muses mixed a bowl of punch And Hebe seized the ladle.

Dear babe, whose fiftieth year to-day Your ripe half-century rounded, Your books the precious draught betray The laughing Nine compounded.

So mixed the sweet, the sharp, the strong, Each finds its faults amended, The virtues that to each belong In happiest union blended.

And what the flavor can surpa.s.s Of sugar, spirit, lemons?

So while one health fills every gla.s.s Mark Twain for Baby Clemens!

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

Frank R. Stockton, Charles Dudley Warner, and Joel Chandler Harris sent pleasing letters. Warner said:

You may think it an easy thing to be fifty years old, but you will find it's not so easy to stay there, and your next fifty years will slip away much faster than those just accomplished.

Many wrote letters privately, of course, and Andrew Lang, like Holmes, sent a poem that has a special charm.

FOR MARK TWAIN

To brave Mark Twain, across the sea, The years have brought his jubilee.

One hears it, half in pain, That fifty years have pa.s.sed and gone Since danced the merry star that shone Above the babe Mark Twain.

We turn his pages and we see The Mississippi flowing free; We turn again and grin O'er all Tom Sawyer did and planned With him of the ensanguined hand, With Huckleberry Finn!

Spirit of Mirth, whose chime of bells Shakes on his cap, and sweetly swells Across the Atlantic main, Grant that Mark's laughter never die, That men through many a century May chuckle o'er Mark Twain!

a.s.suredly Mark Twain was made happy by these attentions; to Dr. Holmes he wrote:

DEAR DR. HOLMES,--I shall never be able to tell you the half of how proud you have made me. If I could you would say you were nearly paid for the trouble you took. And then the family: If I could convey the electrical surprise and grat.i.tude and exaltation of the wife and the children last night, when they happened upon that Critic where I had, with artful artlessness, spread it open and retired out of view to see what would happen--well, it was great and fine and beautiful to see, and made me feel as the victor feels when the shouting hosts march by: and if you also could have seen it you would have said the account was squared. For I have brought them up in your company, as in the company of a warm and friendly and beneficent but far-distant sun; and so, for you to do this thing was for the sun to send down out of the skies the miracle of a special ray and transfigure me before their faces. I knew what that poem would be to them; I knew it would raise me up to remote and s.h.i.+ning heights in their eyes, to very fellows.h.i.+p with the chambered Nautilus itself, and that from that fellows.h.i.+p they could never more dissociate me while they should live; and so I made sure to be by when the surprise should come.

Charles Dudley Warner is charmed with the poem for its own felicitous sake; and so indeed am I, but more because it has drawn the sting of my fiftieth year; taken away the pain of it, the grief of it, the somehow shame of it, and made me glad and proud it happened.

With reverence and affection, Sincerely yours, S. L. CLEMENS.

So Samuel Clemens had reached the half-century mark; reached it in what seemed the fullness of success from every viewpoint. If he was not yet the foremost American man of letters, he was at least the most widely known he sat upon the highest mountain-top. Furthermore, it seemed to him that fortune was showering her gifts into his lap. His unfortunate investments were now only as the necessary experiments that had led him to larger successes. As a publisher, he was already the most conspicuous in the world, and he contemplated still larger ventures: a type-setting machine patent, in which he had invested, and now largely controlled, he regarded as the chief invention of the age, absolutely certain to yield incalculable wealth. His connection with the Grant family had a.s.sociated him with an enterprise looking to the building of a railway from Constantinople to the Persian Gulf. Charles A. Dana, of the Sun, had put him in the way of obtaining for publication the life of the Pope, Leo XIII, officially authorized by the Pope himself, and this he regarded as a certain fortune.

Now that the tide had turned he felt no hesitancy in reckoning a fortune from almost any venture. The Grant book, even on the liberal terms allowed to the author, would yield a net profit of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars to its publishers. Huck Finn would yield fifty thousand dollars more. The sales of his other books had considerably increased.

Certainly, at fifty, Mark Twain's fortunes were at flood-tide; buoyant and jubilant, he was floating on the topmost wave. If there were undercurrents and undertow they were down somewhere out of sight. If there were breakers ahead, they were too far distant to be heard. So sure was he of the triumphant consummation of every venture that to a friend at his home one night he said:

"I am frightened at the proportions of my prosperity. It seems to me that whatever I touch turns to gold."

CLIX. THE LIFE OF THE POPE

As Mark Twain in the earlier days of his marriage had temporarily put aside authors.h.i.+p to join in a newspaper venture, so now again literature had dropped into the background, had become an avocation, while financial interests prevailed. There were two chief ventures--the business of Charles L. Webster & Co. and the promotion of the Paige type-setting machine. They were closely identified in fortunes, so closely that in time the very existence of each depended upon the success of the other; yet they were quite distinct, and must be so treated in this story.

The success of the Grant Life had given the Webster business an immense prestige. It was no longer necessary to seek desirable features for publication. They came uninvited. Other war generals preparing their memoirs naturally hoped to appear with their great commander.

McClellan's Own Story was arranged for without difficulty. A Genesis of the Civil War, by Gen. Samuel Wylie Crawford, was offered and accepted.