Mark Twain A Biography Part 155

Ware, of Kansas, with whose penname--"Ironquill"--Clemens had long been familiar.

Ware was a breezy Western genius of the finest type. If he had abandoned law for poetry, there is no telling how far his fame might have reached.

There was in his work that same spirit of Americanism and humor and humanity that is found in Mark Twain's writings, and he had the added faculty of rhyme and rhythm, which would have set him in a place apart.

I had known Ware personally during a period of Western residence, and later, when he was Commissioner of Pensions under Roosevelt. I usually saw him when he came to New York, and it was a great pleasure now to bring together the two men whose work I so admired. They met at a small private luncheon at The Players, and Peter Dunne was there, and Robert Collier, and it was such an afternoon as Howells has told of when he and Aldrich and Bret Harte and those others talked until the day faded into twilight, and twilight deepened into evening. Clemens had put in most of the day before reading Ware's book of poems, 'The Rhymes of Ironquill', and had declared his work to rank with the very greatest of American poetry--I think he called it the most truly American in flavor. I remember that at the luncheon he noted Ware's big, splendid physique and his Western liberties of syntax with a curious intentness. I believe he regarded him as being nearer his own type in mind and expression than any one he had met before.

Among Ware's poems he had been especially impressed with the "Fables,"

and with some verses ent.i.tled "Whist," which, though rather more optimistic, conformed to his own philosophy. They have a distinctly "Western" feeling.

WHIST Hour after hour the cards were fairly shuffled, And fairly dealt, and still I got no hand; The morning came; but I, with mind unruffled, Did simply say, "I do not understand."

Life is a game of whist. From unseen sources The cards are shuffled, and the hands are dealt.

Blind are our efforts to control the forces That, though unseen, are no less strongly felt.

I do not like the way the cards are shuffled, But still I like the game and want to play; And through the long, long night will I, unruffled, Play what I get, until the break of day.

VOLUME III, Part 2: 1907-1910

CCLVI. HONORS FROM OXFORD

Clemens made a brief trip to Bermuda during the winter, taking Twich.e.l.l along; their first return to the island since the trip when they had promised to come back so soon-nearly thirty years before. They had been comparatively young men then. They were old now, but they found the green island as fresh and full of bloom as ever. They did not find their old landlady; they could not even remember her name at first, and then Twich.e.l.l recalled that it was the same as an author of certain schoolbooks in his youth, and Clemens promptly said, "Kirkham's Grammar." Kirkham was truly the name, and they went to find her; but she was dead, and the daughter, who had been a young girl in that earlier time, reigned in her stead and entertained the successors of her mother's guests. They walked and drove about the island, and it was like taking up again a long-discontinued book and reading another chapter of the same tale. It gave Mark Twain a fresh interest in Bermuda, one which he did not allow to fade again.

Later in the year (March, 1907) I also made a journey; it having been agreed that I should take a trip to the Mississippi and to the Pacific coast to see those old friends of Mark Twain's who were so rapidly pa.s.sing away. John Briggs was still alive, and other Hannibal schoolmates; also Joe Goodman and Steve Gillis, and a few more of the early pioneers--all eminently worth seeing in the matter of such work as I had in hand. The billiard games would be interrupted; but whatever reluctance to the plan there may have been on that account was put aside in view of prospective benefits. Clemens, in fact, seemed to derive joy from the thought that he was commissioning a kind of personal emissary to his old comrades, and provided me with a letter of credentials.

It was a long, successful trip that I made, and it was undertaken none too soon. John Briggs, a gentle-hearted man, was already entering the valley of the shadow as he talked to me by his fire one memorable afternoon, and reviewed the pranks of those days along the river and in the cave and on Holliday's Hill. I think it was six weeks later that he died; and there were others of that scattering procession who did not reach the end of the year. Joe Goodman, still full of vigor (in 1912), journeyed with me to the green and dreamy solitudes of Jacka.s.s Hill to see Steve and Jim Gillis, and that was an unforgetable Sunday when Steve Gillis, an invalid, but with the fire still in his eyes and speech, sat up on his couch in his little cabin in that Arcadian stillness and told old tales and adventures. When I left he said:

"Tell Sam I'm going to die pretty soon, but that I love him; that I've loved him all my life, and I'll love him till I die. This is the last word I'll ever send to him." Jim Gillis, down in Sonora, was already lying at the point of death, and so for him the visit was too late, though he was able to receive a message from his ancient mining partner, and to send back a parting word.

I returned by way of New Orleans and the Mississippi River, for I wished to follow that abandoned water highway, and to visit its presiding genius, Horace Bixby,--[He died August 2, 1912, at the age of 86]--still alive and in service as pilot of the government snagboat, his headquarters at St. Louis.

Coming up the river on one of the old pa.s.senger steam boats that still exist, I noticed in a paper which came aboard that Mark Twain was to receive from Oxford University the literary doctor's degree. There had been no hint of this when I came away, and it seemed rather too sudden and too good to be true. That the little barefoot lad that had played along the river-banks at Hannibal, and received such meager advantages in the way of schooling--whose highest ambition had been to pilot such a craft as this one--was about to be crowned by the world's greatest inst.i.tution of learning, to receive the highest recognition for achievement in the world of letters, was a thing which would not be likely to happen outside of a fairy tale.

Returning to New York, I ran out to Tuxedo, where he had taken a home for the summer (for it was already May), and walking along the shaded paths of that beautiful suburban park, he told me what he knew of the Oxford matter.

Moberly Bell, of the London Times, had been over in April, and soon after his return to England there had come word of the proposed honor.

Clemens privately and openly (to Bell) attributed it largely to his influence. He wrote to him:

DEAR MR. BELL,--Your hand is in it & you have my best thanks.

Although I wouldn't cross an ocean again for the price of the s.h.i.+p that carried me I am glad to do it for an Oxford degree. I shall plan to sail for England a shade before the middle of June, so that I can have a few days in London before the 26th.

A day or two later, when the time for sailing had been arranged, he overtook his letter with a cable:

I perceive your hand in it. You have my best thanks. Sail on Minneapolis June 8th. Due in Southampton ten days later.

Clemens said that his first word of the matter had been a newspaper cablegram, and that he had been doubtful concerning it until a cablegram to himself had confirmed it.

"I never expected to cross the water again," he said; "but I would be willing to journey to Mars for that Oxford degree."

He put the matter aside then, and fell to talking of Jim Gillis and the others I had visited, dwelling especially on Gillis's astonis.h.i.+ng faculty for improvising romances, recalling how he had stood with his back to the fire weaving his endless, grotesque yarns, with no other guide than his fancy. It was a long, happy walk we had, though rather a sad one in its memories; and he seemed that day, in a sense, to close the gate of those early scenes behind him, for he seldom referred to them afterward.

He was back at 21 Fifth Avenue presently, arranging for his voyage.

Meantime, cable invitations of every sort were pouring in, from this and that society and dignitary; invitations to dinners and ceremonials, and what not, and it was clear enough that his English sojourn was to be a busy one. He had hoped to avoid this, and began by declining all but two invitations--a dinner-party given by Amba.s.sador Whitelaw Reid and a luncheon proposed by the "Pilgrims." But it became clear that this would not do. England was not going to confer its greatest collegiate honor without being permitted to pay its wider and more popular tribute.

Clemens engaged a special secretary for the trip--Mr. Ralph W. Ashcroft, a young Englishman familiar with London life. They sailed on the 8th of June, by a curious coincidence exactly forty years from the day he had sailed on the Quaker City to win his great fame. I went with him to the s.h.i.+p. His first elation had pa.s.sed by this time, and he seemed a little sad, remembering, I think, the wife who would have enjoyed this honor with him but could not share it now.

CCLVII. A TRUE ENGLISH WELCOME

Mark Twain's trip across the Atlantic would seem to have been a pleasant one. The Minneapolis is a fine, big s.h.i.+p, and there was plenty of company. Prof. Archibald Henderson, Bernard Shaw's biographer, was aboard;--[Professor Henderson has since then published a volume on Mark Twain-an interesting commentary on his writings--mainly from the sociological point of view.]--also President Patton, of the Princeton Theological Seminary; a well-known cartoonist, Richards, and some very attractive young people--school-girls in particular, such as all through his life had appealed to Mark Twain. Indeed, in his later life they made a stronger appeal than ever. The years had robbed him of his own little flock, and always he was trying to replace them. Once he said:

"During those years after my wife's death I was was.h.i.+ng about on a forlorn sea of banquets and speech-making in high and holy causes, and these things furnished me intellectual cheer, and entertainment; but they got at my heart for an evening only, then left it dry and dusty.

I had reached the grandfather stage of life without grandchildren, so I began to adopt some."

He adopted several on that journey to England and on the return voyage, and he kept on adopting others during the rest of his life. These companions.h.i.+ps became one of the happiest aspects of his final days, as we shall see by and by.

There were entertainments on the s.h.i.+p, one of them given for the benefit of the Seamen's Orphanage. One of his adopted granddaughters--"Charley"

he called her--played a violin solo and Clemens made a speech. Later his autographs were sold at auction. Dr. Patton was auctioneer, and one autographed postal card brought twenty-five dollars, which is perhaps the record price for a single Mark Twain signature. He wore his white suit on this occasion, and in the course of his speech referred to it.

He told first of the many defects in his behavior, and how members of his household had always tried to keep him straight. The children, he said, had fallen into the habit of calling it "dusting papa off." Then he went on:

When my daughter came to see me off last Sat.u.r.day at the boat she slipped a note in my hand and said, "Read it when you get aboard the s.h.i.+p." I didn't think of it again until day before yesterday, and it was a "dusting off." And if I carry out all the instructions that I got there I shall be more celebrated in England for my behavior than for anything else. I got instructions how to act on every occasion. She underscored "Now, don't you wear white clothes on s.h.i.+p or on sh.o.r.e until you get back," and I intended to obey. I have been used to obeying my family all my life, but I wore the white clothes to-night because the trunk that has the dark clothes in it is in the cellar. I am not apologizing for the white clothes; I am only apologizing to my daughter for not obeying her.

He received a great welcome when the s.h.i.+p arrived at Tilbury. A throng of rapid-fire reporters and photographers immediately surrounded him, and when he left the s.h.i.+p the stevedores gave him a round of cheers. It was the beginning of that almost unheard-of demonstration of affection and honor which never for a moment ceased, but augmented from day to day during the four weeks of his English sojourn.

In a dictation following his return, Mark Twain said:

Who began it? The very people of all people in the world whom I would have chosen: a hundred men of my own cla.s.s--grimy sons of labor, the real builders of empires and civilizations, the stevedores! They stood in a body on the dock and charged their masculine lungs, and gave me a welcome which went to the marrow of me.

J. Y. W. MacAlister was at the St. Pancras railway station to meet him, and among others on the platform was Bernard Shaw, who had come down to meet Professor Henderson. Clemens and Shaw were presented, and met eagerly, for each greatly admired the other. A throng gathered. Mark Twain was extricated at last, and hurried away to his apartments at Brown's Hotel, "a placid, subdued, homelike, old-fas.h.i.+oned English inn,"

he called it, "well known to me years ago, a blessed retreat of a sort now rare in England, and becoming rarer every year."

But Brown's was not placid and subdued during his stay. The London newspapers declared that Mark Twain's arrival had turned Brown's not only into a royal court, but a post-office--that the procession of visitors and the bundles of mail fully warranted this statement. It was, in fact, an experience which surpa.s.sed in general magnitude and magnificence anything he had hitherto known. His former London visits, beginning with that of 1872, had been distinguished by high attentions, but all of them combined could not equal this. When England decides to get up an ovation, her people are not to be outdone even by the lavish Americans. An a.s.sistant secretary had to be engaged immediately, and it sometimes required from sixteen to twenty hours a day for two skilled and busy men to receive callers and reduce the pile of correspondence.

A pile of invitations had already acc.u.mulated, and others flowed in.

Lady Stanley, widow of Henry M. Stanley, wrote:

You know I want to see you and join right hand to right hand. I must see your dear face again.... You will have no peace, rest, or leisure during your stay in London, and you will end by hating human beings. Let me come before you feel that way.

Mary Cholmondeley, the author of Red Pottage, niece of that lovable Reginald Cholmondeley, and herself an old friend, sent greetings and urgent invitations. Archdeacon Wilberforce wrote:

I have just been preaching about your indictment of that scoundrel king of the Belgians and telling my people to buy the book. I am only a humble item among the very many who offer you a cordial welcome in England, but we long to see you again, and I should like to change hats with you again. Do you remember?

The Athenaeum, the Garrick, and a dozen other London clubs had antic.i.p.ated his arrival with cards of honorary members.h.i.+p for the period of his stay. Every leading photographer had put in a claim for sittings.

It was such a reception as Charles d.i.c.kens had received in America in 1842, and again in 1867. A London paper likened it to Voltaire's return to Paris in 1778, when France went mad over him. There is simply no limit to English affection and, hospitality once aroused. Clemens wrote: