Mark Twain's Letters Part 90

With a power of love, Sweetheart, SAML.

HOTEL D'EUROPE, AVIGNON,

Monday, 6 p.m., Sept. 28.

Well, Livy darling, I have been having a perfect feast of letters for an hour, and I thank you and dear Clam with all my heart. It's like hearing from home after a long absence.

It is early to be in bed, but I'm always abed before 9, on this voyage; and up at 7 or a trifle later, every morning. If I ever take such a trip again, I will have myself called at the first tinge of dawn and get to sea as soon after as possible. The early dawn on the water-nothing can be finer, as I know by old Mississippi experience. I did so long for you and Sue yesterday morning--the most superb sunrise!--the most marvelous sunrise! and I saw it all from the very faintest suspicion of the coming dawn all the way through to the final explosion of glory. But it had interest private to itself and not to be found elsewhere in the world; for between me and it, in the far distant-eastward, was a silhouette mountain-range in which I had discovered, the previous afternoon, a most n.o.ble face upturned to the sky, and mighty form out stretched, which I had named Napoleon Dreaming of Universal Empire--and now, this prodigious face, soft, rich, blue, spirituelle, asleep, tranquil, reposeful, lay against that giant conflagration of ruddy and golden splendors all rayed like a wheel with the upstreaming and far-reaching lances of the sun. It made one want to cry for delight, it was so supreme in its unimaginable majesty and beauty.

We had a curious experience today. A little after I had sealed and directed my letter to you, in which I said we should make Avignon before 4, we got lost. We ceased to encounter any village or ruin mentioned in our "particularizes" and detailed Guide of the Rhone--went drifting along by the hour in a wholly unknown land and on an uncharted river!

Confound it, we stopped talking and did nothing but stand up in the boat and search the horizons with the gla.s.s and wonder what in the devil had happened. And at last, away yonder at 5 o'clock when some east towers and fortresses hove in sight we couldn't recognize them for Avignon--yet we knew by the broken bridge that it was Avignon.

Then we saw what the trouble was--at some time or other we had drifted down the wrong side of an island and followed a sluggish branch of the Rhone not frequented in modern times. We lost an hour and a half by it and missed one of the most picturesque and gigantic and history-sodden ma.s.ses of castellated medieval ruin that Europe can show.

It was dark by the time we had wandered through the town and got the letters and found the hotel--so I went to bed.

We shall leave here at noon tomorrow and float down to Arles, arriving about dark, and there bid good bye to the boat, the river-trip finished.

Between Arles and Nimes (and Avignon again,) we shall be till Sat.u.r.day morning--then rail it through on that day to Ouchy, reaching the hotel at 11 at night if the train isn't late.

Next day (Sunday) if you like, go to Basel, and Monday to Berlin. But I shall be at your disposal, to do exactly as you desire and prefer.

With no end of love to all of you and twice as much to you, sweetheart, SAML.

I believe my arm is a trifle better than it was when I started.

The mention in the foregoing letter of the Napoleon effigy is the beginning of what proved to be a rather interesting episode. Mark Twain thought a great deal of his discovery, as he called it--the giant figure of Napoleon outlined by the distant mountain range.

In his note-book he entered memoranda telling just where it was to be seen, and added a pencil sketch of the huge profile. But then he characteristically forgot all about it, and when he recalled the incident ten years later, he could not remember the name of the village, Beauchastel, from which the great figure could be seen; also, that he had made a record of the place.

But he was by this time more certain than ever that his discovery was a remarkable one, which, if known, would become one of the great natural wonders, such as Niagara Falls. Theodore Stanton was visiting him at the time, and Clemens urged him, on his return to France, to make an excursion to the Rhone and locate the Lost Napoleon, as he now called it. But Clemens remembered the wonder as being somewhere between Arles and Avignon, instead of about a hundred miles above the last-named town. Stanton naturally failed to find it, and it remained for the writer of these notes, motoring up the Rhone one September day, exactly twenty-two years after the first discovery, to re-locate the vast reclining figure of the first consul of France, "dreaming of Universal Empire." The re-discovery was not difficult--with Mark Twain's memoranda as a guide--and it was worth while. Perhaps the Lost Napoleon is not so important a natural wonder as Mark Twain believed, but it is a striking picture, and on a clear day the calm blue face outlined against the sky will long hold the traveler's attention.

To Clara Clemens, in Ouchy, Switzerland:

AFLOAT, 11.20 a.m., Sept. 29, Tuesday.

DEAR OLD BEN,--The vast stone ma.s.ses and huge towers of the ancient papal palace of Avignon are projected above an intervening wooded island a mile up the river behind me--for we are already on our way to Arles. It is a perfectly still morning, with a brilliant sun, and very hot--outside; but I am under cover of the linen hood, and it is cool and shady in here.

Please tell mamma I got her very last letter this morning, and I perceive by it that I do not need to arrive at Ouchy before Sat.u.r.day midnight. I am glad, because I couldn't do the railroading I am proposing to do during the next two or three days and get there earlier.

I could put in the time till Sunday midnight, but shall not venture it without telegraphic instructions from her to Nimes day after tomorrow, Oct. 1, care Hotel Manivet.

The only adventures we have is in drifting into rough seas now and then. They are not dangerous, but they go thro' all the motions of it.

Yesterday when we shot the Bridge of the Holy Spirit it was probably in charge of some inexperienced deputy spirit for the day, for we were allowed to go through the wrong arch, which brought us into a tourbillon below which tried to make this old scow stand on its head. Of course I lost my temper and blew it off in a way to be heard above the roar of the tossing waters. I lost it because the admiral had taken that arch in deference to my opinion that it was the best one, while his own judgment told him to take the one nearest the other side of the river. I could have poisoned him I was so mad to think I had hired such a turnip. A boatman in command should obey n.o.body's orders but his own, and yield to n.o.body's suggestions.

It was very sweet of you to write me, dear, and I thank you ever so much. With greatest love and kisses,

PAPA.

To Mrs. Clemens, in Ouchy, Switzerland:

ARLES, Sept. 30, noon.

Livy darling, I hain't got no time to write today, because I am sight seeing industriously and imagining my chapter.

Bade good-bye to the river trip and gave away the boat yesterday evening. We had ten great days in her.

We reached here after dark. We were due about 4.30, counting by distance, but we couldn't calculate on such a lifeless current as we found.

I love you, sweetheart.

SAML.

It had been a long time since Clemens had written to his old friend Twich.e.l.l, but the Rhone trip must have reminded him of those days thirteen years earlier, when, comparatively young men, he and Twich.e.l.l were tramping through the Black Forest and scaling Gemmi Pa.s.s. He sent Twich.e.l.l a reminder of that happy time.

To Rev. Joseph H. Twich.e.l.l, in Hartford, Conn:

NIMES, Oct. 1, '91.

DEAR JOE,--I have been ten days floating down the Rhone on a raft, from Lake Bourget, and a most curious and darling kind of a trip it has been.

You ought to have been along--I could have made room for you easily--and you would have found that a pedestrian tour in Europe doesn't begin with a raft-voyage for hilarity and mild adventure, and intimate contact with the unvisited native of the back settlements, and extinction from the world and newspapers, and a conscience in a state of coma, and lazy comfort, and solid happiness. In fact there's nothing that's so lovely.

But it's all over. I gave the raft away yesterday at Arles, and am loafing along back by short stages on the rail to Ouchy-Lausanne where the tribe are staying.

Love to you all MARK.

The Clemenses settled in Berlin for the winter, at 7 Kornerstra.s.se, and later at the Hotel Royal. There had been no permanent improvement in Mark Twain's arm and he found writing difficult.

Some of the letters promised to Laffan and McClure were still unfinished.

Young Hall, his publis.h.i.+ng manager in America, was working hard to keep the business afloat, and being full of the optimism of his years did not fail to make as good a showing as he could. We may believe his letters were very welcome to Clemens and his wife, who found little enough in the general prospect to comfort them.

To Mr. Hall, in New York:

BERLIN, Nov. 27, '91.

DEAR MR. HALL,--That kind of a statement is valuable. It came this morning. This is the first time since the business began that I have had a report that furnished the kind of information I wanted, and was really enlightening and satisfactory. Keep it up. Don't let it fall into desuetude.