As we paused for a rest, a lamb from a flock of sheep near by venturedinquisitively toward us, whereupon Mark seated himself on a rock, and withbeckoning hand and soft words tried to get it to come to him.
On the lamb's part it was a struggle between curiosity and timidity, butin a succession of advances and retreats it gained confidence, though at avery gradual rate. It was a scene for a painter: the great Americanhumorist on one side of the game and that silly little creature on theother, with the Matterhorn for a background. Mark was reminded that thetime he was consuming was valuable—but to no purpose. The GornerGrat could wait. He held on with undiscouraged perseverance till hecarried his point: the lamb finally put its nose in his hand, and he washappy over it all the rest of the day.
The matter of religion came up now and again in the drift of their discussions. It was Twichell's habit to have prayers in their room every night at the hotels, and Clemens was willing to join in the observances. Once Twichell, finding him in a responsive mood—a remorseful mood—gave his sympathy, and spoke of the larger sympathy of divinity. Clemens listened and seemed soothed and impressed, but his philosophies were too wide and too deep for creeds and doctrines. A day or two later, as they were tramping along in the hot sun, his honesty had to speak out.
“Joe,” he said, “I'm going to make a confession. I don't believe in your religion at all. I've been living a lie right straight along whenever I pretended to. For a moment, sometimes, I have been almost a believer, but it immediately drifts away from me again. I don't believe one word of your Bible was inspired by God any more than any other book. I believe it is entirely the work of man from beginning to end—atonement and all. The problem of life and death and eternity and the true conception of God is a bigger thing than is contained in that book.”
So the personal side of religious discussion closed between them, and was never afterward reopened.
They joined Mrs. Clemens and the others at Lausanne at last, and their Swiss holiday was over. Twichell set out for home by way of England, and Clemens gave himself up to reflection and rest after his wanderings. Then, as the days of their companionship passed in review, quickly and characteristically he sent a letter after his comrade:
DEAR OLD JOE, It is actually all over! I was so low-spirited at thestation yesterday, and this morning, when I woke, I couldn't seem toaccept the dismal truth that you were really gone, and the pleasanttramping and talking at an end. Ah, my boy! it has been such arich holiday to me, and I feel under such deep and honestobligations to you for coming. I am putting out of my mind allmemory of the times when I misbehaved toward you and hurt you; I amresolved to consider it forgiven, and to store up and remember onlythe charming hours of the journeys and the times when I was notunworthy to be with you and share a companionship which to me standsfirst after Livy's. It is justifiable to do this; for why should Ilet my small infirmities of disposition live and grovel among mymental pictures of the eternal sublimities of the Alps?Livy can't accept or endure the fact that you are gone. But youare, and we cannot get around it. So take our love with you, andbear it also over the sea to Harmony, and God bless you both.MARK.
The Clemens party wandered down into Italy—to the lakes, Venice, Florence, Rome—loitering through the galleries, gathering here and there beautiful furnishings—pictures, marbles, and the like—for the Hartford home.
In Venice they bought an old careen bed, a massive regal affair with serpentine columns surmounted by singularly graceful cupids, and with other cupids sporting on the headboard: the work of some artist who had been dust three centuries maybe, for this bed had come out of an old Venetian palace, dismantled and abandoned. It was a furniture with a long story, and the years would add mightily to its memories. It would become a stately institution in the Clemens household. The cupids on the posts were removable, and one of the highest privileges of childhood would be to occupy that bed and have down one of the cupids to play with. It was necessary to be ill to acquire that privilege—not violently and dangerously ill, but interestingly so—ill enough to be propped up with pillows and have one's meals served on a tray, with dolls and picture-books handy, and among them a beautiful rosewood cupid who had kept dimpled and dainty for so many, many years.
They spent three weeks in Venice: a dreamlike experience, especially for the children, who were on the water most of the time, and became fast friends with their gondolier, who taught them some Italian words; then a week in Florence and a fortnight in Rome.
—[From the note-book:
“BAY—When the waiter brought my breakfast this morning I spoke to him in Italian.
“MAMA—What did you say?
“B.—I said, 'Polly-vo fransay.'
“M.—What does it mean? “
B.—I don't know. Whatdoesit mean, Susy?
“S.—It means, 'Polly wants a cracker.'”]
Clemens discovered that in twelve years his attitude had changed somewhat concerning the old masters. He no longer found the bright, new copies an improvement on the originals, though the originals still failed to wake his enthusiasm. Mrs. Clemens and Miss Spaulding spent long hours wandering down avenues of art, accompanied by him on occasion, though not always willingly. He wrote his sorrow to Twichell:
I do wish you were in Rome to do my sight-seeing for me. Rome interests me as much as East Hartford could, and no more; that is, the Rome which the average tourist feels an interest in. There are other things here which stir me enough to make life worth living. Livy and Clara are having a royal time worshiping the old masters, and I as good a time gritting my ineffectual teeth over them.
Once when Sarah Orne Jewett was with the party he remarked that if the old masters had labeled their fruit one wouldn't be so likely to mistake pears for turnips.
“Youth,” said Mrs. Clemens, gravely, “if you do not care for these masterpieces yourself, you might at least consider the feelings of others”; and Miss Jewett, regarding him severely, added, in her quaint Yankee fashion:
“Now, you've been spoke to!”
He felt duly reprimanded, but his taste did not materially reform. He realized that he was no longer in a proper frame of mind to write of general sight-seeing. One must be eager, verdant, to write happily the story of travel. Replying to a letter from Howells on the subject he said:
I wish I could give those sharp satires on European life which youmention, but of course a man can't write successful satire except hebe in a calm, judicial good-humor; whereas I hate travel, and I hatehotels, and I hate the opera, and I hate the old masters. In truthI don't ever seem to be in a good enough humor with anything tosatirize it. No, I want to stand up before it and curse it and foamat the mouth, or take a club and pound it to rags and pulp. I havegot in two or three chapters about Wagner's operas, and managed todo it without showing temper, but the strain of another such effortwould burst me.
Clemens became his own courier for a time in Italy, and would seem to have made more of a success of it than he did a good many years afterward, if we may believe the story he has left us of his later attempt:
“Am a shining success as a courier,” he records, “by the use of francs. Have learned how to handle the railway guide intelligently and with confidence.”
He declares that he will have no more couriers; but possibly he could have employed one to advantage on the trip out of Italy, for it was a desperately hard one, with bad connections and delayed telegrams. When, after thirty-six hours weary, continuous traveling, they arrived at last in Munich in a drizzle and fog, and were domiciled in their winter quarters, at No. 1a, Karlstrasse, they felt that they had reached the home of desolation itself, the very throne of human misery.
And the rooms were so small, the conveniences so meager, and theporcelain stove was grim, ghastly, dismal, intolerable! So Livy andClara Spaulding sat down forlorn and cried, and I retired to aprivate place to pray. By and by we all retired to our narrowGerman beds, and when Livy and I had finished talking across theroom it was all decided that we should rest twenty-four hours, thenpay whatever damages were required and straightway fly to the southof France.
The rooms had been engaged by letter, months before, of their proprietress, Fraulein Dahlweiner, who had met them at the door with a lantern in her hand, full of joy in their arrival and faith in her ability to make them happy. It was a faith that was justified. Next morning, when they all woke, rested, the weather had cleared, there were bright fires in the rooms, the world had taken on a new aspect. Fraulein Dahlweiner, the pathetic, hard-working little figure, became almost beautiful in their eyes in her efforts for their comfort. She arranged larger rooms and better conveniences for them. Their location was central and there was a near-by park. They had no wish to change. Clemens, in his letter to Howells, boasts that he brought the party through from Rome himself, and that they never had so little trouble before; but in looking over this letter, thirty years later, he commented, “Probably a lie.”
He secured a room some distance away for his work, but then could not find his Swiss note-book. He wrote Twichell that he had lost it, and that after all he might not be obliged to write a volume of travels. But the notebook turned up and the work on the new book proceeded. For a time it went badly. He wrote many chapters, only to throw them aside. He had the feeling that he had somehow lost the knack of descriptive narrative. He had become, as it seemed, too didactic. He thought his description was inclined to be too literal, his humor manufactured. These impressions passed, by and by; interest developed, and with it enthusiasm and confidence. In a letter to Twichell he reported his progress:
I was about to write to my publisher and propose some other book, when the confounded thing [the note-book] turned up, and down went my heart into my boots. But there was now no excuse, so I went solidly to work, tore up a great part of the MS. written in Heidelberg—wrote and tore up, continued to write and tear up—and at last, reward of patient and noble persistence, my pen got the old swing again! Since then I'm glad that Providence knew better what to do with the Swiss notebook than I did.
Further along in the same letter there breaks forth a true heart-answer to that voice of the Alps which, once heard, is never wholly silent:
O Switzerland! The further it recedes into the enriching haze oftime, the more intolerably delicious the charm of it and the cheerof it and the glory and majesty, and solemnity and pathos of itgrow. Those mountains had a soul: they thought, they spoke. Andwhat a voice it was! And how real! Deep down in my memory it issounding yet. Alp calleth unto Alp! That stately old Scripturalwording is the right one for God's Alps and God's ocean. How punywe were in that awful Presence, and how painless it was to be so!How fitting and right it seemed, and how stingless was the sense ofour unspeakable insignificance! And Lord, how pervading were therepose and peace and blessedness that poured out of the heart of theinvisible Great Spirit of the mountains!Now what is it? There are mountains and mountains and mountains inthis world, but only these take you by the heartstrings. I wonderwhat the secret of it is. Well, time and time and again it hasseemed to me that I must drop everything and flee to Switzerlandonce more. It is a longing, a deep, strong, tugging longing. That isthe word. We must go again, Joe.
That winter in Munich was not recalled as an unpleasant one in after-years. His work went well enough—always a chief source of gratification. Mrs. Clemens and Miss Spaulding found interest in the galleries, in quaint shops, in the music and picturesque life of that beautiful old Bavarian town. The children also liked Munich. It was easy for them to adopt any new environment or custom. The German Christmas, with its lavish tree and toys and cakes, was an especial delight. The German language they seemed fairly to absorb. Writing to his mother Clemens said:
I cannot see but that the children speak German as well as they do English. Susy often translates Livy's orders to the servants. I cannot work and study German at the same time; so I have dropped the latter and do not even read the language, except in the morning paper to get the news.
In Munich—as was the case wherever they were known—there were many callers. Most Americans and many foreigners felt it proper to call on Mark Twain. It was complimentary, but it was wearying sometimes. Mrs. Clemens, in a letter written from Venice, where they had received even more than usual attention, declared there were moments when she almost wished she might never see a visitor again.
Originally there was a good deal about Munich in the new book, and some of the discarded chapters might have been retained with advantage. They were ruled out in the final weeding as being too serious, along with the French chapters. Only a few Italian memories were left to follow the Switzerland wanderings.
The book does record one Munich event, though transferring it to Heilsbronn. It is the incident of the finding of the lost sock in the vast bedroom. It may interest the reader to compare what really happened, as set down in a letter to Twichell, with the story as written for publication:
Last night I awoke at three this morning, and after raging to myselffor two interminable hours I gave it up. I rose, assumed a catlikestealthiness, to keep from waking Livy, and proceeded to dress inthe pitch-dark. Slowly but surely I got on garment after garment—all down to one sock; I had one slipper on and the other in my hand.Well, on my hands and knees I crept softly around, pawing andfeeling and scooping along the carpet, and among chair-legs, forthat missing sock, I kept that up, and still kept it up, and kept itup. At first I only said to myself, “Blame that sock,” but thatsoon ceased to answer. My expletives grew steadily stronger andstronger, and at last, when I found I was lost, I had to sit flatdown on the floor and take hold of something to keep from liftingthe roof off with the profane explosion that was trying to get outof me. I could see the dim blur of the window, but of course it wasin the wrong place and could give me no information as to where Iwas. But I had one comfort—I had not waked Livy; I believed Icould find that sock in silence if the night lasted long enough.So I started again and softly pawed all over the place, and sureenough, at the end of half an hour I laid my hand on the missingarticle. I rose joyfully up and butted the washbowl and pitcher offthe stand, and simply raised——so to speak. Livy screamed, thensaid, “Who is it? What is the matter?” I said, “There ain'tanything the matter. I'm hunting for my sock.” She said, “Are youhunting for it with a club?”I went in the parlor and lit the lamp, and gradually the furysubsided and the ridiculous features of the thing began to suggestthemselves. So I lay on the sofa with note-book and pencil, andtransferred the adventure to our big room in the hotel atHeilsbronn, and got it on paper a good deal to my satisfaction.
He wrote with frequency to Howells, and sent him something for the magazine now and then: the “Gambetta Duel” burlesque, which would make a chapter in the book later, and the story of “The Great Revolution in Pitcairn.”—[Included in The Stolen White Elephant volume. The “Pitcairn” and “Elephant” tales were originally chapters in 'A Tramp Abroad'; also the unpleasant “Coffin-box” yarn, which Howells rejected for the Atlantic and generally condemned, though for a time it remained a favorite with its author.]
Howells's novel, 'The Lady of the Aroostook', was then running through the 'Atlantic', and in one of his letters Clemens expresses the general deep satisfaction of his household in that tale:
If your literature has not struck perfection now we are not able to see what is lacking. It is all such truth—truth to the life; everywhere your pen falls it leaves a photograph.... Possibly you will not be a fully accepted classic until you have been dead one hundred years—it is the fate of the Shakespeares of all genuine professions—but then your books will be as common as Bibles, I believe. In that day I shall be in the encyclopedias too, thus: “Mark Twain, history and occupation unknown; but he was personally acquainted with Howells.”
Though in humorous form, this was a sincere tribute. Clemens always regarded with awe William Dean Howells's ability to dissect and photograph with such delicacy the minutiae of human nature; just as Howells always stood in awe of Mark Twain's ability to light, with a single flashing sentence, the whole human horizon.
They decided to spend the spring months in Paris, so they gave up their pleasant quarters with Fraulein Dahlweiner, and journeyed across Europe, arriving at the French capital February 28, 1879. Here they met another discouraging prospect, for the weather was cold and damp, the cabmen seemed brutally ill-mannered, their first hotel was chilly, dingy, uninviting. Clemens, in his note-book, set down his impressions of their rooms. A paragraph will serve:
Ten squatty, ugly arm-chairs, upholstered in the ugliest andcoarsest conceivable scarlet plush; two hideous sofas of the same—uncounted armless chairs ditto. Five ornamental chairs, seatscovered with a coarse rag, embroidered in flat expanse with aconfusion of leaves such as no tree ever bore, six or seven a dirtywhite and the rest a faded red. How those hideous chairs do swearat the hideous sofa near them! This is the very hatefulest room Ihave seen in Europe.Oh, how cold and raw and unwarmable it is!
It was better than that when the sun came out, and they found happier quarters presently at the Hotel Normandy, rue de l'Echelle.
But, alas, the sun did not come out often enough. It was one of those French springs and summers when it rains nearly every day, and is distressingly foggy and chill between times. Clemens received a bad impression of France and the French during that Parisian-sojourn, from which he never entirely recovered. In his note-book he wrote: “France has neither winter, nor summer, nor morals. Apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country.”
The weather may not have been entirely accountable for his prejudice, but from whatever cause Mark Twain, to the day of his death, had no great love for the French as a nation. Conversely, the French as a nation did not care greatly for Mark Twain. There were many individual Frenchmen that Mark Twain admired, as there were many Frenchmen who admired the work and personality of Mark Twain; but on neither side was there the warm, fond, general affection which elsewhere throughout Europe he invited and returned.
His book was not yet finished. In Paris he worked on it daily, but without enthusiasm. The city was too noisy, the weather too dismal. His note-book says:
May 7th. I wish this terrible winter would come to an end. Have had rain almost without intermission for two months and one week.
May 28th. This is one of the coldest days of this most damnable and interminable winter.
It was not all gloom and discomfort. There was congenial company in Paris, and dinner-parties, and a world of callers. Aldrich the scintillating—[ Of Aldrich Clemens used to say: “When Aldrich speaks it seems to me he is the bright face of the moon, and I feel like the other side.” Aldrich, unlike Clemens, was not given to swearing. The Parisian note-book has this memorandum: “Aldrich gives his seat in the horse-car to a crutched cripple, and discovers that what he took for a crutch is only a length of walnut beading and the man not lame; whereupon Aldrich uses the only profanity that ever escaped his lips: 'Damn a dam'd man who would carry a dam'd piece of beading under his dam'd arm!'”]—was there, also Gedney Bunce, of Hartford, Frank Millet and his wife, Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen and his wife, and a Mr. and Mrs. Chamberlain, artist people whom the Clemenses had met pleasantly in Italy. Turgenieff, as in London, came to call; also Baron Tauchnitz, that nobly born philanthropist of German publishers, who devoted his life, often at his personal cost, to making the literature of other nations familiar to his own. Tauchnitz had early published the 'Innocents', following it with other Mark Twain volumes as they appeared, paying always, of his own will and accord, all that he could afford to pay for this privilege; which was not really a privilege, for the law did not require him to pay at all. He traveled down to Paris now to see the author, and to pay his respects to him. “A mighty nice old gentleman,” Clemens found him. Richard Whiteing was in Paris that winter, and there were always plenty of young American painters whom it was good to know.
They had what they called the Stomach Club, a jolly organization, whose purpose was indicated by its name. Mark Twain occasionally attended its sessions, and on one memorable evening, when Edwin A. Abbey was there, speeches were made which never appeared in any printed proceedings. Mark Twain's address that night has obtained a wide celebrity among the clubs of the world, though no line of it, or even its title has ever found its way into published literature.
Clemens had a better time in Paris than the rest of his party. He could go and come, and mingle with the sociabilities when the abnormal weather kept the others housed in. He did a good deal of sight-seeing of his own kind, and once went up in a captive balloon. They were all studying French, more or less, and they read histories and other books relating to France. Clemens renewed his old interest in Joan of Arc, and for the first time appears to have conceived the notion of writing the story of that lovely character.
The Reign of Terror interested him. He reread Carlyle's Revolution, a book which he was never long without reading, and they all read 'A Tale of Two Cities'. When the weather permitted they visited the scenes of that grim period.
In his note-book he comments:
“The Reign of Terror shows that, without distinction or rank, thepeople were savages. Marquises, dukes, lawyers, blacksmiths, theyeach figure in due proportion to their crafts.”
And again:
“For 1,000 years this savage nation indulged itself in massacre;every now and then a big massacre or a little one. The spirit ispeculiar to France—I mean in Christendom—no other state has hadit. In this France has always walked abreast, kept her end up withher brethren, the Turks and the Burmese. Their chief traits—loveof glory and massacre.”
Yet it was his sense of fairness that made him write, as a sort of quittance:
“You perceive I generalize with intrepidity from single instances.It is the tourists' custom. When I see a man jump from the VendomeColumn I say, 'They like to do that in Paris.'”
Following this implied atonement, he records a few conclusions, drawn doubtless from Parisian reading and observation:
“Childish race and great.”“I'm for cremation.”“I disfavor capital punishment.”“Samson was a Jew, therefore not a fool. The Jews have the bestaverage brain of any people in the world. The Jews are the onlyrace in the world who work wholly with their brains, and never withtheir hands. There are no Jew beggars, no Jew tramps, no Jewditchers, hod-carriers, day-laborers, or followers of toilsomemechanical trade.“They are peculiarly and conspicuously the world's intellectualaristocracy.”“Communism is idiocy. They want to divide up the property. Supposethey did it. It requires brains to keep money as well as to makeit. In a precious little while the money would be back in theformer owner's hands and the communist would be poor again. Thedivision would have to be remade every three years or it would dothe communist no good.”
A curious thing happened one day in Paris. Boyesen, in great excitement, came to the Normandy and was shown to the Clemens apartments. He was pale and could hardly speak, for his emotion. He asked immediately if his wife had come to their rooms. On learning that she had not, he declared that she was lost or had met with an accident. She had been gone several hours, he said, and had sent no word, a thing which she had never done before. He besought Clemens to aid him in his search for her, to do something to help him find her. Clemens, without showing the least emotion or special concentration of interest, said quietly:
“I will.”
“Where will you go first,” Boyesen demanded.
Still in the same even voice Clemens said:
“To the elevator.”
He passed out of the room, with Boyesen behind him, into the hall. The elevator was just coming up, and as they reached it, it stopped at their landing, and Mrs. Boyesen stepped out. She had been delayed by a breakdown and a blockade. Clemens said afterward that he had a positive conviction that she would be on the elevator when they reached it. It was one of those curious psychic evidences which we find all along during his life; or, if the skeptics prefer to call them coincidences, they are privileged to do so.
Paris, June 1, 1879. Still this vindictive winter continues. Had araw, cold rain to-day. To-night we sit around a rousing wood fire.
They stood it for another month, and then on the 10th of July, when it was still chilly and disagreeable, they gave it up and left for Brussels, which he calls “a dirty, beautiful (architecturally), interesting town.”
Two days in Brussels, then to Antwerp, where they dined on the Trenton with Admiral Roan, then to Rotterdam, Dresden, Amsterdam, and London, arriving there the 29th of July, which was rainy and cold, in keeping with all Europe that year.
Had to keep a rousing big cannel-coal fire blazing in the grate allday. A remarkable summer, truly!
London meant a throng of dinners, as always: brilliant, notable affairs, too far away to recall. A letter written by Mrs. Clemens at the time preserves one charming, fresh bit of that departed bloom.
Clara [Spaulding] went in to dinner with Mr. Henry James; sheenjoyed him very much. I had a little chat with him before dinner,and he was exceedingly pleasant and easy to talk with. I hadexpected just the reverse, thinking one would feel looked over byhim and criticized.Mr. Whistler, the artist, was at the dinner, but he did not attractme. Then there was a lady, over eighty years old, a Mrs. Stuart,who was Washington Irving's love, and she is said to have been hisonly love, and because of her he went unmarried to his grave.—[Mrs. Clemens was misinformed. Irving's only “love” was a MissHoffman.]—She was also an intimate friend of Madame Bonaparte.You would judge Mrs. Stuart to be about fifty, and she was the lifeof the drawing-room after dinner, while the ladies were alone,before the gentlemen came up. It was lovely to see such a sweet oldage; every one was so fond of her, every one deferred to her, yetevery one was joking her, making fun of her, but she was alwaysequal to the occasion, giving back as bright replies as possible;you had not the least sense that she was aged. She quoted French inher stories with perfect ease and fluency, and had all the time sucha kindly, lovely way. When she entered the room, before dinner, Mr.James, who was then talking with me, shook hands with her and said,“Good evening, you wonderful lady.” After she had passed...he said, “She is the youngest person in London. She has theyoungest feelings and the youngest interests.... She isalways interested.”It was a perfect delight to hear her and see her.
For more than two years they had had an invitation from Reginald Cholmondeley to pay him another visit.
So they went for a week to Condover, where many friends were gathered, including Millais, the painter, and his wife (who had been the wife of Ruskin), numerous relatives, and other delightful company. It was one of the happiest chapters of their foreign sojourn.—[Moncure D. Conway, who was in London at the time, recalls, in his Autobiography, a visit which he made with Mr. and Mrs. Clemens to Stratford-on-Avon. “Mrs. Clemens was an ardent Shakespearian, and Mark Twain determined to give her a surprise. He told her that we were going on a journey to Epworth, and persuaded me to connive with the joke by writing to Charles Flower not to meet us himself, but send his carriage. On arrival at the station we directed the driver to take us straight to the church. When we entered, and Mrs. Clemens read on Shakespeare's grave, 'Good friend, for Jesus' sake, forbear,' she started back, exclaiming, 'where am I?' Mark received her reproaches with an affluence of guilt, but never did lady enjoy a visit more than that to Avonbank. Mrs. Charles Flower (nee Martineau) took Mrs. Clemens to her heart, and contrived that every social or other attraction of that region should surround her.”]
From the note-book:
Sunday, August 17,'79. Raw and cold, and a drenching rain. Went tohear Mr. Spurgeon. House three-quarters full-say three thousandpeople. First hour, lacking one minute, taken up with two prayers,two ugly hymns, and Scripture-reading. Sermon three-quarters of anhour long. A fluent talker, good, sonorous voice. Topic treated inthe unpleasant, old fashion: Man a mighty bad child, God working athim in forty ways and having a world of trouble with him.A wooden-faced congregation; just the sort to see no incongruity inthe majesty of Heaven stooping to plead and sentimentalize oversuch, and see in their salvation an important matter.Tuesday, August 19th. Went up Windermere Lake in the steamer.Talked with the great Darwin.
They had planned to visit Dr. Brown in Scotland. Mrs. Clemens, in particular, longed to go, for his health had not been of the best, and she felt that they would never have a chance to see him again. Clemens in after years blamed himself harshly for not making the trip, declaring that their whole reason for not going was an irritable reluctance on his part to take the troublesome journey and a perversity of spirit for which there was no real excuse. There is documentary evidence against this harsh conclusion. They were, in fact, delayed here and there by misconnections and the continued terrific weather, barely reaching Liverpool in time for their sailing date, August 23d. Unquestionably he was weary of railway travel, for he always detested it. Time would magnify his remembered reluctance, until, in the end, he would load his conscience with the entire burden of blame.
Their ship was the Gallia, and one night, when they were nearing the opposite side of the Atlantic, Mark Twain, standing on deck, saw for the third time in his experience a magnificent lunar rainbow: a complete arch, the colors part of the time very brilliant, but little different from a day rainbow. It is not given to many persons in this world to see even one of these phenomena. After each previous vision there had come to him a period of good-fortune. Perhaps this also boded well for him.
The Gallia reached New York September 3, 1879. A report of his arrival, in the New York Sun, stated that Mark Twain had changed in his absence; that only his drawl seemed natural.
His hat, as he stood on the deck of the incoming Cunarder, Gallia,was of the pattern that English officers wear in India, and his suitof clothes was such as a merchant might wear in his store. Helooked older than when he went to Germany, and his hair has turnedquite gray.
It was a late hour when they were finally up to the dock, and Clemens, anxious to get through the Custom House, urged the inspector to accept his carefully prepared list of dutiable articles, without opening the baggage. But the official was dubious. Clemens argued eloquently, and a higher authority was consulted. Again Clemens stated his case and presented his arguments. A still higher chief of inspection was summoned, evidently from his bed. He listened sleepily to the preamble, then suddenly said: “Oh, chalk his baggage, of course! Don't you know it's Mark Twain and that he'll talk all night?”
They went directly to the farm, for whose high sunlit loveliness they had been longing through all their days of absence. Mrs. Clemens, in her letters, had never failed to dwell on her hunger for that fair hilltop. From his accustomed study-table Clemens wrote to Twichell:
“You have run about a good deal, Joe, but you have never seen any place that was so divine as the farm. Why don't you come here and take a foretaste of Heaven?” Clemens declared he would roam no more forever, and settled down to the happy farm routine. He took up his work, which had not gone well in Paris, and found his interest in it renewed. In the letter to Twichell he said:
I am revising my MS. I did not expect to like it, but I do. I havebeen knocking out early chapters for more than a year now, notbecause they had not merit, but merely because they hindered theflow of the narrative; it was a dredging process. Day beforeyesterday my shovel fetched up three more chapters and laid them,reeking, on the festering shore-pile of their predecessors, and nowI think the yarn swims right along, without hitch or halt. Ibelieve it will be a readable book of travels. I cannot see that itlacks anything but information.
Mrs. Clemens was no less weary of travel than her husband. Yet she had enjoyed their roaming, and her gain from it had been greater than his. Her knowledge of art and literature, and of the personal geography of nations, had vastly increased; her philosophy of life had grown beyond all counting.
She had lost something, too; she had outstripped her traditions. One day, when she and her sister had walked across the fields, and had stopped to rest in a little grove by a pretty pond, she confessed, timidly enough and not without sorrow, how she had drifted away from her orthodox views. She had ceased to believe, she said, in the orthodox Bible God, who exercised a personal supervision over every human soul. The hordes of people she had seen in many lands, the philosophies she had listened to from her husband and those wise ones about him, the life away from the restricted round of home, all had contributed to this change. Her God had become a larger God; the greater mind which exerts its care of the individual through immutable laws of time and change and environment—the Supreme Good which comprehends the individual flower, dumb creature, or human being only as a unit in the larger scheme of life and love. Her sister was not shocked or grieved; she too had grown with the years, and though perhaps less positively directed, had by a path of her own reached a wider prospect of conclusions. It was a sweet day there in the little grove by the water, and would linger in the memory of both so long as life lasted. Certainly it was the larger faith; though the moment must always come when the narrower, nearer, more humanly protecting arm of orthodoxy lends closer comfort. Long afterward, in the years that followed the sorrow of heavy bereavement, Clemens once said to his wife, “Livy, if it comforts you to lean on the Christian faith do so,” and she answered, “I can't, Youth. I haven't any.”
And the thought that he had destroyed her illusion, without affording a compensating solace, was one that would come back to him, now and then, all his days.
If the lunar rainbow had any fortuitous significance, perhaps we may find it in the two speeches which Mark Twain made in November and December of that year. The first of these was delivered at Chicago, on the occasion of the reception of General Grant by the Army of the Tennessee, on the evening of November 13, 1879. Grant had just returned from his splendid tour of the world. His progress from San Francisco eastward had been such an ovation as is only accorded to sovereignty. Clemens received an invitation to the reunion, but, dreading the long railway journey, was at first moved to decline. He prepared a letter in which he made “business” his excuse, and expressed his regret that he would not be present to see and hear the veterans of the Army of the Tennessee at the moment when their old commander entered the room and rose in his place to speak.
“Besides,” he said, “I wanted to see the General again anyway and renew the acquaintance. He would remember me, because I was the person who did not ask him for an office.”
He did not send the letter. Reconsidering, it seemed to him that there was something strikingly picturesque in the idea of a Confederate soldier who had been chased for a fortnight in the rain through Ralls and Monroe counties, Missouri, now being invited to come and give welcome home to his old imaginary pursuer. It was in the nature of an imperative command, which he could not refuse to obey.
He accepted and agreed to speak. They had asked him to respond to the toast of “The Ladies,” but for him the subject was worn out. He had already responded to that toast at least twice. He telegraphed that there was one class of the community that had always been overlooked upon such occasions, and that if they would allow him to do so he would take that class for a toast: the babies. Necessarily they agreed, and he prepared himself accordingly.
He arrived in Chicago in time for the prodigious procession of welcome. Grant was to witness the march from a grand reviewing stand, which had been built out from the second story of the Palmer House. Clemens had not seen the General since the “embarrassing” introduction in Washington, twelve years before. Their meeting was characteristic enough. Carter Harrison, Mayor of Chicago, arriving with Grant, stepped over to Clemens, and asked him if he wouldn't like to be presented. Grant also came forward, and a moment later Harrison was saying:
“General, let me present Mr. Clemens, a man almost as great as yourself.” They shook hands; there was a pause of a moment, then Grant said, looking at him gravely:
“Mr. Clemens, I am not embarrassed, are you?”
So he remembered that first, long-ago meeting. It was a conspicuous performance. The crowd could not hear the words, but they saw the greeting and the laugh, and cheered both men.
Following the procession, there were certain imposing ceremonies of welcome at Haverly's Theater where long, laudatory eloquence was poured out upon the returning hero, who sat unmoved while the storm of music and cheers and oratory swept about him. Clemens, writing of it that evening to Mrs. Clemens, said:
I never sat elbow to elbow with so many historic names before.Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Schofield, Pope, Logan, and so on.What an iron man Grant is! He sat facing the house, with his rightleg crossed over his left, his right boot sole tilted up at anangle, and his left hand and arm reposing on the arm of his chair.You note that position? Well, when glowing references were made toother grandees on the stage, those grandees always showed a trifleof nervous consciousness, and as these references came frequentlythe nervous changes of position and attitude were also frequent.But Grant! He was under a tremendous and ceaseless bombardment ofpraise and congratulation; but as true as I'm sitting here he nevermoved a muscle of his body for a single instant during thirtyminutes! You could have played him on a stranger for an effigy.Perhaps he never would have moved, but at last a speaker made such aparticularly ripping and blood-stirring remark about him that theaudience rose and roared and yelled and stamped and clapped anentire minute—Grant sitting as serene as ever-when General Shermanstepped up to him, laid his hand affectionately on his shoulder,bent respectfully down, and whispered in his ear. Then Grant got upand bowed, and the storm of applause swelled into a hurricane.
But it was the next evening that the celebration rose to a climax. This was at the grand banquet at the Palmer House, where six hundred guests sat down to dinner and Grant himself spoke, and Logan and Hurlbut, and Vilas and Woodford and Pope, fifteen in all, including Robert G. Ingersoll and Mark Twain. Chicago has never known a greater event than that dinner, for there has never been a time since when those great soldiers and citizens could have been gathered there.
To Howells Clemens wrote: