No. XXXVII
An Interview With Mark Twain
You are a contemptible lot, over yonder. Some of you are Commissioners, and some Lieutenant–Governors, and some have the V. C., and a few are privileged to walk about the Mall arm in arm with the Viceroy; but I have seen Mark Twain this golden morning, have shaken his hand, and smoked a cigar—no, two cigars—with him, and talked with him for more than two hours! Understand clearly that I do not despise you; indeed, I don't. I am only very sorry for you, from the Viceroy downward. To soothe your envy and to prove that I still regard you as my equals, I will tell you all about it.
They said in Buffalo that he was in Hartford, Conn.; and again they said "perchance he is gone upon a journey to Portland"; and a big, fat drummer vowed that he knew the great man intimately, and that Mark was spending the summer in Europe—which information so upset me that I embarked upon the wrong train, and was incontinently turned out by the conductor three–quarters of a mile from the station, amid the wilderness of railway tracks. Have you ever, encumbered with great–coat and valise, tried to dodge diversely–minded locomotives when the sun was shining in your eyes? But I forgot that you have not seen Mark Twain, you people of no account!
Saved from the jaws of the cow–catcher, me wandering devious a stranger met.
"Elmira is the place. Elmira in the State of New York—this State, not two hundred miles away;" and he added, perfectly unnecessarily, "Slide, Kelley, slide."
I slid on the West Shore line, I slid till midnight, and they dumped me down at the door of a frowzy hotel in Elmira. Yes, they knew all about "that man Clemens," but reckoned he was not in town; had gone East somewhere. I had better possess my soul in patience till the morrow, and then dig up the "man Clemens'" brother–in–law, who was interested in coal.
The idea of chasing half a dozen relatives in addition to Mark Twain up and down a city of thirty thousand inhabitants kept me awake. Morning revealed Elmira, whose streets were desolated by railway tracks, and whose suburbs were given up to the manufacture of door–sashes and window–frames. It was surrounded by pleasant, fat, little hills, rimmed with timber and topped with cultivation. The Chemung River flowed generally up and down the town, and had just finished flooding a few of the main streets.
The hotel–man and the telephone–man assured me that the much–desired brother–in–law was out of town, and no one seemed to know where "the man Clemens" abode. Later on I discovered that he had not summered in that place for more than nineteen seasons, and so was comparatively a new arrival.
A friendly policeman volunteered the news that he had seen Twain or "some one very like him" driving a buggy the day before. This gave me a delightful sense of nearness. Fancy living in a town where you could see the author of Tom Sawyer, or "some one very like him," jolting over the pavements in a buggy!
"He lives out yonder at East Hill," said the policeman; "three miles from here."
Then the chase began—in a hired hack, up an awful hill, where sunflowers blossomed by the roadside, and crops waved, and Harper's Magazine cows stood in eligible and commanding attitudes knee–deep in clover, all ready to be transferred to photogravure. The great man must have been persecuted by outsiders aforetime, and fled up the hill for refuge.
Presently the driver stopped at a miserable, little, white wood shanty, and demanded "Mister Clemens."
"I know he's a big–bug and all that," he explained, "but you can never tell what sort of notions those sort of men take into their heads to live in, anyways."
There rose up a young lady who was sketching thistle–tops and goldenrod, amid a plentiful supply of both, and set the pilgrimage on the right path.
"It's a pretty Gothic house on the left–hand side a little way farther on."
"Gothic h―," said the driver. "Very few of the city hacks take this drive, specially if they know they are coming out here," and he glared at me savagely.
It was a very pretty house, anything but Gothic, clothed with ivy, standing in a very big compound, and fronted by a verandah full of chairs and hammocks. The roof of the verandah was a trellis–work of creepers, and the sun peeping through moved on the shining boards below.
Decidedly this remote place was an ideal one for work, if a man could work among these soft airs and the murmur of the long–eared crops.
Appeared suddenly a lady used to dealing with rampageous outsiders. "Mr. Clemens has just walked down–town. He is at his brother–in–law's house."
Then he was within shouting distance, after all, and the chase had not been in vain. With speed I fled, and the driver, skidding the wheel and swearing audibly, arrived at the bottom of that hill without accidents. It was in the pause that followed between ringing the brother–in–law's bell and getting an answer that it occurred to me for the first time Mark Twain might possibly have other engagements than the entertainment of escaped lunatics from India, be they never so full of admiration. And in another man's house—anyhow, what had I come to do or say? Suppose the drawing–room should be full of people,—suppose a baby were sick, how was I to explain that I only wanted to shake hands with him?
Then things happened somewhat in this order. A big, darkened drawing–room; a huge chair; a man with eyes, a mane of grizzled hair, a brown mustache covering a mouth as delicate as a woman's, a strong, square hand shaking mine, and the slowest, calmest, levellest voice in all the world saying:—
"Well, you think you owe me something, and you've come to tell me so. That's what I call squaring a debt handsomely."
"Piff!" from a cob–pipe (I always said that a Missouri meerschaum was the best smoking in the world), and, behold! Mark Twain had curled himself up in the big armchair, and I was smoking reverently, as befits one in the presence of his superior.
The thing that struck me first was that he was an elderly man; yet, after a minute's thought, I perceived that it was otherwise, and in five minutes, the eyes looking at me, I saw that the grey hair was an accident of the most trivial. He was quite young. I was shaking his hand. I was smoking his cigar, and I was hearing him talk—this man I had learned to love and admire fourteen thousand miles away.
Reading his books, I had striven to get an idea of his personality, and all my preconceived notions were wrong and beneath the reality. Blessed is the man who finds no disillusion when he is brought face to face with a revered writer. That was a moment to be remembered; the landing of a twelve–pound salmon was nothing to it. I had hooked Mark Twain, and he was treating me as though under certain circumstances I might be an equal.
About this time I became aware that he was discussing the copyright question. Here, so far as I remember, is what he said. Attend to the words of the oracle through this unworthy medium transmitted. You will never be able to imagine the long, slow surge of the drawl, and the deadly gravity of the countenance, the quaint pucker of the body, one foot thrown over the arm of the chair, the yellow pipe clinched in one corner of the mouth, and the right hand casually caressing the square chin:—