The Emperor passes in a modest open carriage. Next that happy12-year-old butcher-boy, all in white apron and turban, standing up& so proud!How fast they drive-nothing like it but in London. And the horsesseem to be of very fine breed, though I am not an expert in horses& do not speak with assurance. I can always tell which is the frontend of a horse, but beyond that my art is not above the ordinary.The “Court Gazette” of a German paper can be covered with a playing-card. In an English paper the movements of titled people take upabout three times that room. In the papers of Republican Francefrom six to sixteen times as much. There, if a Duke's dog shouldcatch cold in the head they would stop the press to announce it andcry about it. In Germany they respect titles, in England theyrevere them, in France they adore them. That is, the Frenchnewspapers do.Been taken for Mommsen twice. We have the same hair, but onexamination it was found the brains were different.
On February 14th he records that Professor Helmholtz called, but unfortunately leaves no further memorandum of that visit. He was quite recovered by this time, but was still cautioned about going out in the severe weather. In the final entry he says:
Thirty days sick abed—full of interest—read the debates and getexcited over them, though don't 'versteh'. By reading keep in astate of excited ignorance, like a blind man in a house afire;flounder around, immensely but unintelligently interested; don'tknow how I got in and can't find the way out, but I'm having abooming time all to myself.Don't know what a 'Schelgesetzentwurf' is, but I keep as excited over itand as worried about it as if it was my own child. I simply live on theSch.; it is my daily bread. I wouldn't have the question settled foranything in the world. Especially now that I've lost the 'offentlicheMilitargericht circus'. I read all the debates on that question with anever-failing interest, but all at once they sprung a vote on me a coupleof days ago & did something by a vote of 100 to 143, but I couldn'tfind out what it was.
The dinner with Emperor William II. at General von Versen's was set for the 20th of February. A few days before, Mark Twain entered in his note-book:
In that day the Imperial lion and the Democratic lamb shall sit downtogether, and a little General shall feed them.
Mark Twain was the guest of honor on this occasion, and was seated at the Emperor's right hand. The Emperor's brother, Prince Heinrich, sat opposite; Prince Radolin farther along. Rudolf Lindau, of the Foreign Office, was also present. There were fourteen at the table, all told. In his memorandum made at the time, Clemens gave no account of the dinner beyond the above details, only adding:
After dinner 6 or 8 officers came in, & all hands adjourned to thebig room out of the smoking-room and held a “smoking parliament”after the style of the ancient Potsdam one, till midnight, when theEmperor shook hands and left.
It was not until fourteen years later that Mark Twain related some special matters pertaining to that evening. He may have expanded then somewhat to fill out spaces of his memory, and embroidered them, as was his wont; but that something happened, either in reality or in his imagination, which justified his version of it we may believe. He told it as here given, premising: “This may appear in print after I am dead, but not before.
“From 1891 until day before yesterday I had never mentioned thematter, nor set it down with a pen, nor ever referred to it in anyway—not even to my wife, to whom I was accustomed to telleverything that happened to me.“At the dinner his Majesty chatted briskly and entertainingly alongin easy and flowing English, and now and then he interrupted himselfto address a remark to me or to some other individual of the guests.When the reply had been delivered he resumed his talk. I noticedthat the table etiquette tallied with that which was the law of myhouse at home when we had guests; that is to say, the guestsanswered when the host favored them with a remark, and then quieteddown and behaved themselves until they got another chance. If I hadbeen in the Emperor's chair and he in mine I should have feltinfinitely comfortable and at home, but I was guest now, andconsequently felt less at home. From old experience I was familiarwith the rules of the game and familiar with their exercise from thehigh place of host; but I was not familiar with the trammeled andless satisfactory position of guest, therefore I felt a littlestrange and out of place. But there was no animosity—no, theEmperor was host, therefore, according to my own rule, he had aright to do the talking, and it was my honorable duty to intrude nointerruptions or other improvements except upon invitation; and ofcourse it could be my turn some day—some day, on some friendlyvisit of inspection to America, it might be my pleasure anddistinction to have him as guest at my table; then I would give hima rest and a quiet time.“In one way there was a difference between his table and mine-forinstance, atmosphere; the guests stood in awe of him, and naturallythey conferred that feeling upon me, for, after all, I am onlyhuman, although I regret it. When a guest answered a question hedid it with a deferential voice and manner; he did not put anyemotion into it, and he did not spin it out, but got it out of hissystem as quickly as he could, and then looked relieved. TheEmperor was used to this atmosphere, and it did not chill his blood;maybe it was an inspiration to him, for he was alert, brilliant, andfull of animation; also he was most gracefully and felicitouslycomplimentary to my books—and I will remark here that the happyphrasing of a compliment is one of the rarest of human gifts and thehappy delivery of it another. I once mentioned the high complimentwhich he paid to the book 'Old Times on the Mississippi'; but therewere others, among them some high praise of my description in 'ATramp Abroad' of certain striking phases of German student life.“Fifteen or twenty minutes before the dinner ended the Emperor madea remark to me in praise of our generous soldier pensions; then,without pausing, he continued the remark, not speaking to me, butacross the table to his brother, Prince Heinrich. The Princereplied, endorsing the Emperor's view of the matter. Then Ifollowed with my own view of it. I said that in the beginning ourgovernment's generosity to the soldier was clear in its intent andpraiseworthy, since the pensions were conferred upon soldiers whohad earned them, soldiers who had been disabled in the war and couldno longer earn a livelihood for themselves and their families, butthat the pensions decreed and added later lacked the virtue of aclean motive, and had, little by little, degenerated into a widerand wider and more and more offensive system of vote-purchasing, andwas now become a source of corruption, which was an unpleasant thingto contemplate and was a danger besides. I think that that wasabout the substance of my remark; but in any case the remark had aquite definite result, and that is the memorable thing about it—manifestly it made everybody uncomfortable. I seemed to perceivethis quite plainly. I had committed an indiscretion. Possibly itwas in violating etiquette by intruding a remark when I had not beeninvited to make one; possibly it was in taking issue with an opinionpromulgated by his Majesty. I do not know which it was, but I quiteclearly remember the effect which my act produced—to wit, theEmperor refrained from addressing any remarks to me afterward, andnot merely during the brief remainder of the dinner, but afterwardin the kneip-room, where beer and cigars and hilarious anecdotingprevailed until about midnight. I am sure that the Emperor's goodnight was the only thing he said to me in all that time.“Was this rebuke studied and intentional? I don't know, but Iregarded it in that way. I can't be absolutely sure of it becauseof modifying doubts created afterward by one or two circumstances.For example: the Empress Dowager invited me to her palace, and thereigning Empress invited me to breakfast, and also sent for Generalvon Versen to come to her palace and read to her and her ladies frommy books.”
It was a personal message from the Emperor that fourteen years later recalled to him this curious circumstance. A gentleman whom Clemens knew went on a diplomatic mission to Germany. Upon being presented to Emperor William, the latter had immediately begun to talk of Mark Twain and his work. He spoke of the description of German student life as the greatest thing of its kind ever written, and of the sketch on the German language as wonderful; then he said:
“Convey to Mr. Clemens my kindest regards, ask him if he remembers that dinner at Von Versen's, and ask him why he didn't do any more talking at that dinner.”
It seemed a mysterious message. Clemens thought it might have been meant to convey some sort of an imperial apology; but again it might have meant that Mark Twain's breach and the Emperor's coolness on that occasion were purely imaginary, and that the Emperor had really expected him to talk far more than he did.
Returning to the Royal Hotel after the Von Versen dinner, Mark Twain received his second high compliment that day on the Mississippi book. The portier, a tow-headed young German, must have been comparatively new at the hotel; for apparently he had just that day learned that his favorite author, whose books he had long been collecting, was actually present in the flesh. Clemens, all ready to apologize for asking so late an admission, was greeted by the portier's round face all sunshine and smiles. The young German then poured out a stream of welcome and compliments and dragged the author to a small bedroom near the front door, where he excitedly pointed out a row of books, German translations of Mark Twain.
“There,” he said; “you wrote them. I've found it out. Lieber Gott! I did not know it before, and I ask a million pardons. That one there, Old Times on the Mississippi, is the best you ever wrote.”
The note-book records only one social event following the Emperor's dinner—a dinner with the secretary of the legation. The note says:
At the Emperor's dinner black cravats were ordered. Tonight I went in a black cravat and everybody else wore white ones. Just my luck.
The Berlin activities came to an end then. He was still physically far from robust, and his doctors peremptorily ordered him to stay indoors or to go to a warmer climate. This was March 1st. Clemens and his wife took Joseph Very, and, leaving the others for the time in Berlin, set out for Mentone, in the south of France.
Mentone was warm and quiet, and Clemens worked when his arm permitted. He was alone there with Mrs. Clemens, and they wandered about a good deal, idling and picture-making, enjoying a sort of belated honeymoon. Clemens wrote to Susy:
Joseph is gone to Nice to educate himself in kodaking—and to get the pictures mounted which mama thinks she took here; but I noticed she didn't take the plug out, as a rule. When she did she took nine pictures on top of each other—composites.
They remained a month in Mentone, then went over to Pisa, and sent Joseph to bring the rest of the party to Rome. In Rome they spent another month—a period of sight-seeing, enjoyable, but to Clemens pretty profitless.
“I do not expect to be able to write any literature this year,” he said in a letter to Hall near the end of April. “The moment I take up my pen my rheumatism returns.”
Still he struggled along and managed to pile up a good deal of copy in the course of weeks. From Rome to Florence, at the end of April, and so pleasing was the prospect, and so salubrious the air of that ancient city, that they resolved to engage residence there for the next winter. They inspected accommodations of various kinds, and finally, through Prof. Willard Fiske, were directed to the Villa Viviani, near Settignano, on a hill to the eastward of Florence, with vineyard and olive-grove sloping away to the city lying in a haze-a vision of beauty and peace. They closed the arrangement for Viviani, and about the middle of May went up to Venice for a fortnight of sight-seeing—a break in the travel back to Germany. William Gedney Bunce, the Hartford artist, was in Venice, and Sarah Orne Jewett and other home friends.
From Venice, by way of Lake Como and “a tangled route” (his note-book says) to Lucerne, and so northward to Berlin and on to Bad Nauheim, where they had planned to spend the summer. Clemens for some weeks had contemplated a trip to America, for matters there seemed to demand his personal attention. Summer arrangements for the family being now concluded, he left within the week and set sail on the Havel for New York. To Jean he wrote a cheerful good-by letter, more cheerful, we may believe, than he felt.
BREMEN, 7.45 A.M., June 14, 1892.
DEAR JEAN CLEMENS,—I am up & shaved & got my clean shirt on & feel mighty fine, & am going down to show off before I put on the rest of my clothes.
Perhaps mama & Mrs. Hague can persuade the Hauswirth to do right; but if he don't you go down & kill his dog.
I wish you would invite the Consul-General and his ladies down to take one of those slim dinners with mama, then he would complain to the Government.
Clemens felt that his presence in America, was demanded by two things. Hall's reports continued, as ever, optimistic; but the semi-annual statements were less encouraging. The Library of Literature and some of the other books were selling well enough; but the continuous increase of capital required by a business conducted on the instalment plan had steadily added to the firm's liabilities, while the prospect of a general tightening in the money-market made the outlook not a particularly happy one. Clemens thought he might be able to dispose of the Library or an interest in it, or even of his share of the business itself, to some one with means sufficient to put it on an easier financial footing. The uncertainties of trade and the burden of increased debt had become a nightmare which interfered with his sleep. It seemed hard enough to earn a living with a crippled arm, without this heavy business care.
The second interest requiring attention was that other old one—the machine. Clemens had left the matter in Paige's hands, and Paige, with persuasive eloquence, had interested Chicago capital to a point where a company had been formed to manufacture the type-setter in that city. Paige reported that he had got several million dollars subscribed for the construction of a factory, and that he had been placed on a salary as a sort of general “consulting omniscient” at five thousand dollars a month. Clemens, who had been negotiating again with the Mallorys for the disposal of his machine royalties, thought it proper to find out just what was going on. He remained in America less than two weeks, during which he made a flying trip to Chicago and found that Paige's company really had a factory started, and proposed to manufacture fifty machines. It was not easy to find out the exact status of this new company, but Clemens at least was hopeful enough of its prospects to call off the negotiations with the Mallorys which had promised considerable cash in hand. He had been able to accomplish nothing material in the publishing situation, but his heart-to-heart talk with Hall for some reason had seemed comforting. The business had been expanding; they would now “concentrate.” He returned on the Lahn, and he must have been in better health and spirits, for it is said he kept the ship very merry during the passage. He told many extravagantly amusing yarns; so many that a court was convened to try him on the charge of “inordinate and unscientific lying.” Many witnesses testified, and his own testimony was so unconvincing that the jury convicted him without leaving the bench. He was sentenced to read aloud from his own works for a considerable period every day until the steamer should reach port. It is said that he faithfully carried out this part of the program, and that the proceeds from the trial and the various readings amounted to something more than six hundred dollars, which was turned over to the Seamen's Fund.
Clemens's arm was really much better, and he put in a good deal of spare time during the trip writing an article on “All Sorts and Conditions of Ships,” from Noah's Ark down to the fine new Havel, then the latest word in ship-construction. It was an article written in a happy vein and is profitable reading to-day. The description of Columbus as he appeared on the deck of his flag-ship is particularly rich and flowing:
If the weather was chilly he came up clad from plumed helmet tospurred heel in magnificent plate-armor inlaid with arabesques ofgold, having previously warmed it at the galley fire. If theweather was warm he came up in the ordinary sailor toggery of thetime-great slouch hat of blue velvet, with a flowing brush of snowyostrich-plumes, fastened on with a flashing cluster of diamonds andemeralds; gold-embroidered doublet of green velvet, with slashedsleeves exposing undersleeves of crimson satin; deep collar and cuffruffles of rich, limp lace; trunk hose of pink velvet, with bigknee-knots of brocaded yellow ribbon; pearl-tinted silk stockings,clocked and daintily embroidered; lemon-colored buskins of unbornkid, funnel-topped, and drooping low to expose the pretty stockings;deep gauntlets of finest white heretic skin, from the factory of theHoly Inquisition, formerly part of the person of a lady of rank;rapier with sheath crusted with jewels and hanging from a broadbaldric upholstered with rubies and sapphires.
Clemens was able to write pretty steadily that summer in Nauheim and turned off a quantity of copy. He completed several short articles and stories, and began, or at least continued work on, two books—'Tom Sawyer Abroad' and 'Those Extraordinary Twins'—the latter being the original form of 'Pudd'nhead Wilson'. As early as August 4th he wrote to Hall that he had finished forty thousand words of the “Tom Sawyer” story, and that it was to be offered to some young people's magazine, Harper's Young People or St. Nicholas; but then he suddenly decided that his narrative method was altogether wrong. To Hall on the 10th he wrote:
I have dropped that novel I wrote you about because I saw a moreeffective way of using the main episode—to wit, by telling itthrough the lips of Huck Finn. So I have started Huck Finn & TomSawyer (still 15 years old) & their friend the freed slave Jimaround the world in a stray balloon, with Huck as narrator, &somewhere after the end of that great voyage he will work in thatoriginal episode & then nobody will suspect that a whole book hasbeen written & the globe circumnavigated merely to get that episodein in an effective (& at the same time apparently unintentional)way. I have written 12,000 words of this new narrative, & find thatthe humor flows as easily as the adventures & surprises—so I shallgo along and make a book of from 50,000 to 100,000 words.It is a story for boys, of course, & I think it will interest anyboy between 8 years & 80.When I was in New York the other day Mrs. Dodge, editor of St.Nicholas, wrote and offered me $5,000 for (serial right) a story forboys 50,000 words long. I wrote back and declined, for I had othermatter in my mind then.I conceive that the right way to write a story for boys is to writeso that it will not only interest boys, but will also stronglyinterest any man who has ever been a boy. That immensely enlargesthe audience.Now, this story doesn't need to be restricted to a child's magazine—it is proper enough for any magazine, I should think, or for asyndicate. I don't swear it, but I think so.Proposed title—New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
He was full of his usual enthusiasm in any new undertaking, and writes of the Extraordinary Twins:
By and by I shall have to offer (for grown folks' magazine) a novelentitled, 'Those Extraordinary Twins'. It's the howling farce Itold you I had begun awhile back. I laid it aside to ferment whileI wrote Tom Sawyer Abroad, but I took it up again on a littledifferent plan lately, and it is swimming along satisfactorily now.I think all sorts of folks will read it. It is clear out of thecommon order—it is a fresh idea—I don't think it resemblesanything in literature.
He was quite right; it did not resemble anything in literature, nor did it greatly resemble literature, though something at least related to literature would eventually grow out of it.
In a letter written many years afterward by Frank Mason, then consul-general at Frankfort, he refers to “that happy summer at Nauheim.” Mason was often a visitor there, and we may believe that his memory of the summer was justified. For one thing, Clemens himself was in better health and spirits and able to continue his work. But an even greater happiness lay in the fact that two eminent physicians had pronounced Mrs. Clemens free from any organic ills. To Orion, Clemens wrote:
We are in the clouds because the bath physicians say positively thatLivy has no heart disease but has only weakness of the heart musclesand will soon be well again. That was worth going to Europe to findout.
It was enough to change the whole atmosphere of the household, and financial worries were less considered. Another letter to Orion relates history:
The Twichells have been here four days & we have had good times withthem. Joe & I ran over to Homburg, the great pleasure-resort,Saturday, to dine with friends, & in the morning I went walking inthe promenade & met the British ambassador to the Court of Berlinand he introduced me to the Prince of Wales. I found him a mostunusually comfortable and unembarrassing Englishman.
Twichell has reported Mark Twain's meeting with the Prince (later Edward VII) as having come about by special request of the latter, made through the British ambassador. “The meeting,” he says, “was a most cordial one on both sides, and presently the Prince took Mark Twain's arm and the two marched up and down, talking earnestly together, the Prince, solid, erect, and soldier-like, Clemens weaving along in his curious, swinging gait in a full tide of talk, and brandishing a sun-umbrella of the most scandalous description.”
When they parted Clemens said:
“It has been, indeed, a great pleasure to meet your Royal Highness.”
The Prince answered:
“And it is a pleasure, Mr. Clemens, to have met you—again.”
Clemens was puzzled to reply.
“Why,” he said, “have we met before?”
The Prince smiled happily.
“Oh yes,” he said; “don't you remember that day on the Strand when you were on the top of a bus and I was heading a procession and you had on your new overcoat with flap-pockets?”—[See chap. clxiii, “A Letter to the Queen of England.”]
It was the highest compliment he could have paid, for it showed that he had read, and had remembered all those years. Clemens expressed to Twichell regret that he had forgotten to mention his visit to the Prince's sister, Louise, in Ottawa, but he had his opportunity at a dinner next day. Later the Prince had him to supper and they passed an entire evening together.
There was a certain uneasiness in the Nauheim atmosphere that year, for the cholera had broken out at Hamburg, and its victims were dying at a terrific rate. It was almost impossible to get authentic news as to the spread of the epidemic, for the German papers were curiously conservative in their reports. Clemens wrote an article on the subject but concluded not to print it. A paragraph will convey its tenor.
What I am trying to make the reader understand is the strangeness ofthe situation here—a mighty tragedy being played upon a stage thatis close to us, & yet we are as ignorant of its details as we shouldbe if the stage were in China. We sit “in front,” & the audience isin fact the world; but the curtain is down, & from behind it we hearonly an inarticulate murmur. The Hamburg disaster must go intohistory as the disaster without a history.
He closes with an item from a physician's letter—an item which he says “gives you a sudden and terrific sense of the situation there.”
For in a line it flashes before you—this ghastly picture—a thingseen by the physician: a wagon going along the street with five sickpeople in it, and with them four dead ones.
'The American Claimant', published in May (1892), did not bring a very satisfactory return. For one thing, the book-trade was light, and then the Claimant was not up to his usual standard. It had been written under hard circumstances and by a pen long out of practice; it had not paid, and its author must work all the harder on the new undertakings. The conditions at Nauheim seemed favorable, and they lingered there until well into September. To Mrs. Crane, who had returned to America, Clemens wrote on the 18th, from Lucerne, in the midst of their travel to Italy:
We remained in Nauheim a little too long. If we had left four orfive days earlier we should have made Florence in three days. Hardtrip because it was one of those trains that gets tired every 7minutes and stops to rest three-quarters of an hour. It took us3 1/2 hours to get there instead of the regulation 2 hours. Weshall pull through to Milan to-morrow if possible. Next day weshall start at 10 AM and try to make Bologna, 5 hours. Next day,Florence, D. V. Next year we will walk. Phelps came to Frankfortand we had some great times—dinner at his hotel; & the Masons,supper at our inn—Livy not in it. She was merely allowed aglimpse, no more. Of course Phelps said she was merely pretendingto be ill; was never looking so well & fine.A Paris journal has created a happy interest by inoculating one ofits correspondents with cholera. A man said yesterday he wished toGod they would inoculate all of them. Yes, the interest is quitegeneral and strong & much hope is felt.Livy says I have said enough bad things, and better send all ourloves & shut up. Which I do—and shut up.
They lingered at Lucerne until Mrs. Clemens was rested and better able to continue the journey, arriving at last in Florence, September 26th. They drove out to the Villa Viviani in the afternoon and found everything in readiness for their reception, even to the dinner, which was prepared and on the table. Clemens, in his notes, speaks of this and adds:
It takes but a sentence to state that, but it makes an indolent person tired to think of the planning & work and trouble that lie concealed in it.
Some further memoranda made at this time have that intimate interest which gives reality and charm. The 'contadino' brought up their trunks from the station, and Clemens wrote:
The 'contadino' is middle-aged & like the rest of the peasants—thatis to say, brown, handsome, good-natured, courteous, & entirelyindependent without making any offensive show of it. He charged toomuch for the trunks, I was told. My informer explained that thiswas customary.September 27. The rest of the trunks brought up this morning. Hecharged too much again, but I was told that this was also customary.It's all right, then. I do not wish to violate the customs. Hiredlandau, horses, & coachman. Terms, 480 francs a month & a pourboireto the coachman, I to furnish lodging for the man & the horses, butnothing else. The landau has seen better days & weighs 30 tons.The horses are feeble & object to the landau; they stop & turnaround every now & then & examine it with surprise & suspicion.This causes delay. But it entertains the people along the road.They came out & stood around with their hands in their pockets &discussed the matter with each other. I was told that they saidthat a 30-ton landau was not the thing for horses like those—whatthey needed was a wheelbarrow.
His description of the house pictures it as exactly today as it did then, for it has not changed in these twenty years, nor greatly, perhaps, in the centuries since it was built.
It is a plain, square building, like a box, & is painted lightyellow & has green window-shutters. It stands in a commandingposition on the artificial terrace of liberal dimensions, which iswalled around with masonry. From the walls the vineyards & oliveorchards of the estate slant away toward the valley. There areseveral tall trees, stately stone-pines, also fig-trees & trees ofbreeds not familiar to me. Roses overflow the retaining-walls, &the battered & mossy stone urn on the gate-posts, in pink & yellowcataracts exactly as they do on the drop-curtains in the theaters.The house is a very fortress for strength. The main walls—allbrick covered with plaster—are about 3 feet thick. I have severaltimes tried to count the rooms of the house, but the irregularitiesbaffle me. There seem to be 28. There are plenty of windows &worlds of sunlight. The floors are sleek & shiny & full ofreflections, for each is a mirror in its way, softly imaging allobjects after the subdued fashion of forest lakes. The curiousfeature of the house is the salon. This is a spacious & loftyvacuum which occupies the center of the house. All the rest of thehouse is built around it; it extends up through both stories & itsroof projects some feet above the rest of the building. The senseof its vastness strikes you the moment you step into it & cast youreyes around it & aloft. There are divans distributed along itswalls. They make little or no show, though their aggregate lengthis 57 feet. A piano in it is a lost object. We have tried toreduce the sense of desert space & emptiness with tables & things,but they have a defeated look, & do not do any good. Whateverstands or moves under that soaring painted vault is belittled.
He describes the interior of this vast room (they grew to love it), dwelling upon the plaster-relief portraits above its six doors, Florentine senators and judges, ancient dwellers there and former owners of the estate.
The date of one of them is 1305—middle-aged, then, & a judge—hecould have known, as a youth, the very greatest Italian artists, &he could have walked & talked with Dante, & probably did. The dateof another is 1343—he could have known Boccaccio & spent hisafternoons wandering in Fiesole, gazing down on plague-reekingFlorence & listening to that man's improper tales, & he probablydid. The date of another is 1463—he could have met Columbus & heknew the magnificent Lorenzo, of course. These are all Cerretanis—or Cerretani-Twains, as I may say, for I have adopted myself intotheir family on account of its antiquity—my origin having beenheretofore too recent to suit me.
We are considering the details of Viviani at some length, for it was in this setting that he began and largely completed what was to be his most important work of this later time—in some respects his most important of any time—the 'Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc'. If the reader loves this book, and he must love it if he has read it, he will not begrudge the space here given to the scene of its inspiration. The outdoor picture of Viviani is of even more importance, for he wrote oftener out-of-doors than elsewhere. Clemens added it to his notes several months later, but it belongs here.
The situation of this villa is perfect. It is three miles fromFlorence, on the side of a hill. Beyond some hill-spurs is Fiesoleperched upon its steep terraces; in the immediate foreground is theimposing mass of the Ross castle, its walls and turrets rich withthe mellow weather-stains of forgotten centuries; in the distantplain lies Florence, pink & gray & brown, with the ruddy, huge domeof the cathedral dominating its center like a captive balloon, &flanked on the right by the smaller bulb of the Medici chapel & onthe left by the airy tower of the Palazzo Vecchio; all around thehorizon is a billowy rim of lofty blue hills, snowed white withinnumerable villas. After nine months of familiarity with thispanorama I still think, as I thought in the beginning, that this isthe fairest picture on our planet, the most enchanting to look upon,the most satisfying to the eye & the spirit. To see the sun sinkdown, drowned in his pink & purple & golden floods, & overwhelmFlorence with tides of color that make all the sharp lines dim &faint & turn the solid city into a city of dreams, is a sight tostir the coldest nature & make a sympathetic one drunk with ecstasy.
The Clemens household at Florence consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Clemens, Susy, and Jean. Clara had soon returned to Berlin to attend Mrs. Willard's school and for piano instruction. Mrs. Clemens improved in the balmy autumn air of Florence and in the peaceful life of their well-ordered villa. In a memorandum of October 27th Clemens wrote:
The first month is finished. We are wonted now. This carefree lifeat a Florentine villa is an ideal existence. The weather is divine,the outside aspects lovely, the days and nights tranquil andreposeful, the seclusion from the world and its worries assatisfactory as a dream. Late in the afternoons friends come outfrom the city & drink tea in the open air & tell what is happeningin the world; & when the great sun sinks down upon Florence & thedaily miracle begins they hold their breath & look. It is not atime for talk.
No wonder he could work in that environment. He finished 'Tom Sawyer Abroad', also a short story, 'The L 1,000,000 Bank-Note' (planned many years before), discovered the literary mistake of the 'Extraordinary Twins' and began converting it into the worthier tale, 'Pudd'nhead Wilson', soon completed and on its way to America.
With this work out of his hands, Clemens was ready for his great new undertaking. A seed sown by the wind more than forty years before was ready to bloom. He would write the story of Joan of Arc.
In a note which he made many years later Mark Twain declared that he was fourteen years at work on Joan of Arc; that he had been twelve years preparing for it, and that he was two years in writing it.
There is nothing in any of his earlier notes or letters to indicate that he contemplated the story of Joan as early as the eighties; but there is a bibliographical list of various works on the subject, probably compiled for him not much later than 1880, for the latest published work of the list bears that date. He was then too busy with his inventions and publishing schemes to really undertake a work requiring such vast preparation; but without doubt he procured a number of books and renewed that old interest begun so long ago when a stray wind had blown a leaf from that tragic life into his own. Joan of Arc, by Janet Tuckey, was apparently the first book he read with the definite idea of study, for this little volume had been recently issued, and his copy, which still exists, is filled with his marginal notes. He did not speak of this volume in discussing the matter in after-years. He may have forgotten it. He dwelt mainly on the old records of the trial which had been dug out and put into modern French by Quicherat; the 'Jeanne d'Arc' of J. Michelet, and the splendid 'Life of the Maid' of Lord Ronald Gower, these being remembered as his chief sources of information.—[The book of Janet Tuckey, however, and ten others, including those mentioned, are credited as “authorities examined in verification” on a front page of his published book. In a letter written at the conclusion of “Joan” in 1895, the author states that in the first two-thirds of the story he used one French and one English authority, while in the last third he had constantly drawn from five French and five English sources.]
“I could not get the Quicherat and some of the other books in English,” he said, “and I had to dig them out of the French. I began the story five times.”
None of these discarded beginnings exists to-day, but we may believe they were wisely put aside, for no story of the Maid could begin more charmingly, more rarely, than the one supposedly told in his old age by Sieur Louis de Conte, secretary of Joan of Arc, and translated by Jean Francois Alden for the world to read. The impulse which had once prompted Mark Twain to offer The Prince and the Pauper anonymously now prevailed. He felt that the Prince had missed a certain appreciation by being connected with his signature, and he resolved that its companion piece (he so regarded Joan) should be accepted on its merits and without prejudice. Walking the floor one day at Viviani, smoking vigorously, he said to Mrs. Clemens and Susy:
“I shall never be accepted seriously over my own signature. People always want to laugh over what I write and are disappointed if they don't find a joke in it. This is to be a serious book. It means more to me than anything I have ever undertaken. I shall write it anonymously.”
So it was that that gentle, quaint Sieur de Conte took up the pen, and the tale of Joan was begun in that beautiful spot which of all others seems now the proper environment for its lovely telling.
He wrote rapidly once he got his plan perfected and his material arranged. The reading of his youth and manhood, with the vivid impressions of that earlier time, became now something remembered, not merely as reading, but as fact.
Others of the family went down into the city almost daily, but he remained in that still garden with Joan as his companion—the old Sieur de Conte, saturated with memories, pouring out that marvelous and tragic tale. At the end of each day he would read to the others what he had written, to their enjoyment and wonder.
How rapidly he worked may be judged from a letter which he wrote to Hall in February, in which he said:
I am writing a companion piece to 'The Prince and the Pauper', which is half done & will make 200,000 words.
That is to say, he had written one hundred thousand words in a period of perhaps six weeks, marvelous work when one remembers that after all he was writing history, some of which he must dig laboriously from a foreign source. He had always, more or less, kept up his study of the French, begun so long ago on the river and it stood him in good stead now. Still, it was never easy for him, and the multitude of notes along the margin of his French authorities bears evidence of his faithfulness and the magnitude of his toil. No previous work had ever required so much of him, such thorough knowledge; none had ever so completely commanded his interest. He would have been willing to remain shut away from visitors, to have been released altogether from social obligations; and he did avoid most of them. Not all, for he could not always escape, and perhaps did not always really wish to. Florence and its suburbs were full of delightful people—some of them his old friends. There were luncheons, dinners, teas, dances, concerts, operas always in progress somewhere, and not all of these were to be resisted even by an absorbed author who was no longer himself, but sad old Sieur de Conte, following again the banner of the Maid of Orleans, marshaling her twilight armies across his illumined page.