Margaret felt for him the deep affection that children have for anolder person who understands them and treats them with respect. Mr.Clemens never talked down to her, but considered her opinions with asweet 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 whomI think it is she can identify herself by a certain shell I oncegave her, of which I have the other half. If the two halves fit, Ishall 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 bigone—start across from the opposite corner, and I exclaimed tomyself joyfully, “That is certainly my Margaret!” so I rushed tomeet her. But as she came nearer I began to doubt, and said tomyself, “It's a Margaret—that is plain enough—but I'm afraid it issomebody else's.” So when I was passing her I held my shell so shecouldn't help but see it. Dear, she only glanced at it and passedon! I wondered if she could have overlooked it. It seemed best tofind out; so I turned and followed and caught up with her, and said,deferentially; “Dear Miss, I already know your first name by thelook of you, but would you mind telling me your other one?” She wasvexed and said pretty sharply, “It's Douglas, if you're so anxiousto know. I know your name by your looks, and I'd advise you to shutyourself up with your pen and ink and write some more rubbish. I amsurprised that they allow you to run' at large. You are likely toget run over by a baby-carriage any time. Run along now and don'tlet the cows bite you.”What an idea! There aren't any cows in Fifth Avenue. But I didn'tsmile; I didn't let on to perceive how uncultured she was. She wasfrom 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 veryplace for him. He enjoys himself & is as quarrelsome as a cat.But he will get a backset if Benjamin goes home. Benjamin is thebrightest man in these regions, & the best company. Bright? He ismuch more than that, he is brilliant. He keeps the crowd intenselyalive.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, loosewindows which rattled in the sea-wind. Once in a while a gust ofasthmatic music from the spiritless orchestra downstairs came up thehallway. Yellow, unprotected gas-lights burned uncertainly, andMark 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 shiningdown on the crown of his silver hair, making it gleam and glistenlike 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 missyou; for you were rare, and occasional and select, and Ltd.; whereasBermuda's charms and, graciousnesses were free and common andunrestricted—like the rain, you know, which falls upon the just andthe unjust alike; a thing which would not happen if I weresuperintending the rain's affairs. No, I would rain softly andsweetly upon the just, but whenever I caught a sample of the unjustoutdoors I would drown him.
[As I am beginning this chapter, April 16, 1912, the news comes ofthe loss, on her first trip, of the great White Star Line steamerTitanic, with the destruction of many passengers, among whom areFrank D. Millet, William T. Stead, Isadore Straus, John Jacob Astor,and other distinguished men. They died as heroes, remaining withthe 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 totime in these pages, for he was a dear friend of the Clemenshousehold. One of America's foremost painters; at the time of hisdeath 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 weshall not forget, and whenever we call it to mind we shall alwaysgratefully remember the wise and righteous mind that guided her init and sustained and supported her—Prince Albert's. We need nottalk any idle talk here to-night about either possible or impossiblewar between two countries; there will be no war while we remain saneand the son of Victoria and Albert sits upon the throne. Inconclusion, I believe I may justly claim to utter the voice of mycountry in saying that we hold him in deep honor, and also incordially 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 noteven a minister of the Gospel will take any coin for a cent morethan its accepted value because of that motto. If cholera shouldever reach these shores we should probably pray to be delivered fromthe 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.
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.
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-fiveyears. 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.”
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.
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. Icame back here in bad shape, & had a bilious collapse, but I am allright again, though the doctor from New York has given peremptoryorders that I am not to stir from here before frost. O fortunateSam Moffett! fortunate Livy Clemens! doubly fortunate Susy! Thoseswords go through & through my heart, but there is never a momentthat I am not glad, for the sake of the dead, that they haveescaped.How Livy would love this place! How her very soul would steepitself thankfully in this peace, this tranquillity, this deepstillness, this dreamy expanse of woodsy hill & valley! You mustcome, Aunt Sue, & stay with us a real good visit. Since June 26 wehave had 21 guests, & they have all liked it and said they wouldcome again.
To Howells, on the same day, he wrote:
Won't you & Mrs. Howells & Mildred come & give us as many days asyou can spare & examine John's triumph? It is the most satisfactoryhouse I am acquainted with, & the most satisfactorily situated.... I have dismissed my stenographer, & have entered upon aholiday whose other end is the cemetery.
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.
He gave his time mainly to his guests, his billiards, and his reading, though of course he could not keep from writing on this subject and that as the fancy moved him, and a drawer in one of his dressers began to accumulate fresh though usually fragmentary manuscripts... He read the daily paper, but he no longer took the keen, restless interest in public affairs. New York politics did not concern him any more, and national politics not much. When the Evening Post wrote him concerning the advisability of renominating Governor Hughes he replied:
If you had asked me two months ago my answer would have been prompt& loud & strong: yes, I want Governor Hughes renominated. But it istoo late, & my mouth is closed. I have become a citizen & taxpayerof Connecticut, & could not now, without impertinence, meddle inmatters which are none of my business. I could not do it withimpertinence without trespassing on the monopoly of another.
Howells speaks of Mark Twain's “absolute content” with his new home, and these are the proper words' to express it. He was like a storm-beaten ship that had drifted at last into a serene South Sea haven.
The days began and ended in tranquillity. There were no special morning regulations: One could have his breakfast at any time and at almost any place. He could have it in bed if he liked, or in the loggia or livingroom, or billiard-room. He might even have it in the diningroom, or on the terrace, just outside. Guests—there were usually guests—might suit their convenience in this matter—also as to the forenoons. The afternoon brought games—that is, billiards, provided the guest knew billiards, otherwise hearts. Those two games were his safety-valves, and while there were no printed requirements relating to them the unwritten code of Stormfield provided that guests, of whatever age or previous faith, should engage in one or both of these diversions.
Clemens, who usually spent his forenoon in bed with his reading and his letters, came to the green table of skill and chance eager for the onset; if the fates were kindly, he approved of them openly. If not—well, the fates were old enough to know better, and, as heretofore, had to take the consequences. Sometimes, when the weather was fine and there were no games (this was likely to be on Sunday afternoons), there were drives among the hills and along the Saugatuck through the Bedding Glen.
The cat was always “purring on the hearth” at Stormfield—several cats—for Mark Twain's fondness for this clean, intelligent domestic animal remained, to the end, one of his happiest characteristics. There were never too many cats at Stormfield, and the “hearth” included the entire house, even the billiard-table. When, as was likely to happen at any time during the game, the kittens Sinbad, or Danbury, or Billiards would decide to hop up and play with the balls, or sit in the pockets and grab at them as they went by, the game simply added this element of chance, and the uninvited player was not disturbed. The cats really owned Stormfield; any one could tell that from their deportment. Mark Twain held the title deeds; but it was Danbury and Sinbad and the others that possessed the premises. They occupied any portion of the house or its furnishings at will, and they never failed to attract attention. Mark Twain might be preoccupied and indifferent to the comings and goings of other members of the household; but no matter what he was doing, let Danbury appear in the offing and he was observed and greeted with due deference, and complimented and made comfortable. Clemens would arise from the table and carry certain choice food out on the terrace to Tammany, and be satisfied with almost no acknowledgment by way of appreciation. One could not imagine any home of Mark Twain where the cats were not supreme. In the evening, as at 21 Fifth Avenue, there was music—the stately measures of the orchestrelle—while Mark Twain smoked and mingled unusual speculation with long, long backward dreams.
It was three months from the day of arrival in Redding that some guests came to Stormfield without invitation—two burglars, who were carrying off some bundles of silver when they were discovered. Claude, the butler, fired a pistol after them to hasten their departure, and Clemens, wakened by the shots, thought the family was opening champagne and went to sleep again.
It was far in the night; but neighbor H. A. Lounsbury and Deputy-Sheriff Banks were notified, and by morning the thieves were captured, though only after a pretty desperate encounter, during which the officer received a bullet-wound. Lounsbury and a Stormfield guest had tracked them in the dark with a lantern to Bethel, a distance of some seven miles. The thieves, also their pursuers, had boarded the train there. Sheriff Banks was waiting at the West Redding station when the train came down, and there the capture was made. It was a remarkably prompt and shrewd piece of work. Clemens gave credit for its success chiefly to Lounsbury, whose talents in many fields always impressed him. The thieves were taken to the Redding Town Hall for a preliminary healing. Subsequently they received severe sentences.
Clemens tacked this notice on his front door: