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Mark Twain's Interviews: Supplement Six

2023; University of Illinois Press; Volume: 56; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5406/19405103.56.1.06

1940-5103

Gary Scharnhorst,

American Sports and Literature

I reprint here two Mark Twain interviews new to scholarship, both numbered in accordance with the sequence in Mark Twain: The Complete Interviews (Tuscaloosa: Univ. of Alabama Press, 2006).Like his contemporary George Meredith,2 Mark Twain lives a life of rare seclusion, and great, indeed, must be the claims or good fortune of the man or woman who reaches his magic presence. To interview the man who wrote Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, and the “Jumping Frog”! An interview with President Roosevelt was an easy matter in comparison. [. . .]The next afternoon when I called3 I was shown into the library and presently a white figure dressed in spotless, creamy flannels came into the room, shook me heartily by the hand, and bade me welcome. [. . .] There is something distinctive in the massive white aureole that crests Mark Twain's leonine head with its dreamy, ironical eyes, whilst the bushy, pointed eyebrows give his countenance a touch of Mephistophelian humor.4 The mobile, expressive mouth and strong, rounded chin are softened by the great mass of white hair, but one easily forgets his other features in the charm of his wonderful eyes. And his voice—how can I ever give an idea of that glorious voice with its delicious, musical drawl in which he conveys fancies quaint and gay, but so airy and delicate that to reproduce them on paper is like trying to paint the bloom of a peach. [. . .] “I am sorry I did not see you yesterday afternoon,” he drawled, “for I wasn't asleep, as they said. I keep my mornings for work. In the afternoon I go to bed, read, sleep, or smoke, or do nothing. I never go out at night now, unless I am absolutely compelled.” [. . .]“I hear you dictate most of your work now, Mr. Clemens.”“Yes, I have given up writing with a pen. I have been dictating without a pen for about a year now and have just got into the trick of it. I am not dictating now what you would call literature,” he said, with a touch of sly modesty—“just my autobiography. But autobiography is narrative, and narration and dialogue should come from the mouth, not a pen.”He paused to run his fingers thoughtfully through the great mass of his snowy hair ere he resumed—“There have been some men who could dictate literature—notably Robert Louis Stevenson.5 I would be the last man to declare that one could not dictate literature instead of writing it. I couldn't dictate at all until about a year ago. Still, I remember trying the experiment twenty-five years ago, and it didn't fit. I didn't attempt to do much—just the answers to my daily letters, but I found very soon that I couldn't successfully even do that, so I had to fall back on the pen once more. Then, when I tried dictation again I just kept at it, and now I find I can do it easily.”“Doesn't the noise of New York interfere with your work? Fifth Avenue may be quiet for New York, yet in London one would not call it over quiet.”“Oh, no,” he drawled, with a smile breaking over his face. “Noise doesn't bother me in any way. If it did, I would move to some room at the back or, failing that, I would take my work out to the middle of the street among those men breaking stones at the corner and do it there. Dictating is less of a strain on one than writing. I can now dictate fifty thousand words a month without any physical effort. Right on from now I shall do six hundred thousand words a year. During the last forty years, whilst I still worked with a pen, I never worked more than three months in the year—that is, at writing. I suppose that if I had had the trick of dictation I should probably have done much more. The work I now do in a year through dictation I could never have hoped to do in a lifetime with a pen.” [. . .]I awoke anew to hear the same dreamy, delicious drawl recording: “I understand about that letter. . . . There was another case. It was when we first moved into Paris about ten years ago. We took a house there that was one of the most curious that I ever have seen in all my life.6 I was always afraid to take a walk in it after my meals for fear I should get lost. There were corridors and corridors leading to everywhere and nowhere. Well, right at the back of the house was a big tapestry screen, and when you pulled that aside you found a quiet little room you would never dream was in existence. I liked it so much that I made it my workroom without telling anyone in the house. It was all right for a long time—my family never knew what became of me, very often; they thought I had gone out for a walk—until one Sunday my daughter began to roam round the house on an exploring expedition and, after some journeying, she came to the tapestry, pulled it aside, and saw me hard at work. She stopped for a moment as if she was unable to believe her eyes. Then she marched indignantly into the room.“‘What, papa!’ she cried. ‘Working on Sunday!’“I tried to avoid her eyes as I said: ‘But I'm not working.’”“She looked at me firmly, then she turned to the sheets of paper which covered my desk, and said: “‘Oh, papa! Not working! What would mamma say? I'll go to her this very minute.’“‘Stop, my dear!’ I urged. ‘Stop and verify your facts. Half the mischief in this world is caused by people being in such a hurry that they do not find out the real facts of the case. Read this before you do anything else.’ Then I handed her a letter which I had recently received from a man explaining that he had met with an injury of some kind which, though it was not dangerous, was very painful. A doctor was called, but he could not take the pain away. Then he picked up something I had written and by-and-by forgot his pain.”“‘Well,’ said my daughter, ‘but what has this to do with your working on Sunday?’“‘Just this: I'm not working on Sunday. I'm merely a doctor writing a prescription.’”After his quaint explanation, I felt bound to ask him why he had ceased the Sawyer books—why we had never seen books telling the story of a grown-up Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer. “We expected it as a matter of course,” I pleaded. “There are men who were boys with Tom Sawyer as well as those who will always be boys with him, who grew up expecting that he would grow up with them—and they haven't. Why have you disappointed the world of readers in every corner of the globe? And, besides, it isn't too late!” [. . .]“No,” he concluded. “I could no more make Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer grow up than I could resurrect a dead boy lying in the churchyard. No more than I could give back youth to those who have lost it. If I want to describe a grown-up man—well, I suppose, I can make one who'll be a man and behave as one. But Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn will always remain boys—they never could be anything else.” [. . .]Since I wrote the above Mark Twain has spent a month in England, which he has confessed to be one of the most agreeable he has ever enjoyed during the whole course of his life.7 [. . .] On the morning of July 13th, as he sat in a deck-chair on the upper deck of the Minnetonka, reflectively smoking a cigar, he seemed quietly pleased at the idea of having ten days’ absolute quiet at sea, in which he could recover from the dissipations of the past month.“Which part of your trip have you enjoyed the most?” I asked.He took the cigar from his mouth and looked thoughtfully at the quay were men were taking in the passengers’ luggage. “I have enjoyed it all,” he said emphatically—“all.” Then he added reminiscently, “Oxford most, perhaps.”“Did you get any idea for your funeral from the pageants?”“Well,” he drawled, “I got enough to make up several every interesting sideshows. But the funeral is postponed.”I asked him how the freak photograph which shows the curious optical illusion of a little child bending over him as he lies in bed had been brought to his notice. “It was taken in my bedroom in New York. I didn't notice the illusion. A lady in Virginia wrote to tell me about it, but I think the photograph reproduced here has been overelaborated. They shouldn't have touched it up. It looked ever so much better as it was at first” (figure 1).Then the bell rang to clear strangers from the ship. A hearty cheer rang from the ship's side as the Minnetonka glided out of the dock. I thought of Mark's words, “I have not made up my mind to come back.”The kindliest and best-loved of all the world's philosophers, Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain) was living last summer at Tuxedo Park, 40 miles from New York City, working on his autobiography. I saw him there when by appointment I took a photographer with me to make some portraits of him. He must be interviewed—that was one condition of the visit. He would be glad to see me and talk with me—but not for publication. So with this understanding I took the morning train from New York and shortly after noon was whisked in an auto ’bus to a very high place in Tuxedo Park where Mr. Clemens had his temporary abode. He is building a house in Connecticut which should be completed next spring,9 but at the time he was housed in a very beautiful dwelling on top of a high hill and so thoroughly detached that no sound from the outer world reaches it. Flooded with sunshine, it stands on a level with the tree-tops all about. An ideal place for literary work. Not that ordinary noises would disturb the current of Mr. Clemens’ mind, for his power of concentration is remarkable and Miss Lyon, his secretary,10 tells me that he writes on wholly unconscious of the presence of anyone in his room. In fact, one can take a paper almost from beneath his elbow—without disturbing him.His workroom was ideal—a roomy apartment on the second floor with walls brightly and daintily papered and with windows open on three sides to the sunshine. And his desk? Mr. Clemens does not sit at a desk when he works. Whether dictating to his stenographer or writing with a pen he usually lies in bed.In fact he does not rise until noon and his work is all completed by that time. It begins sometimes at a very early hour. If he awakens early he sometimes reads or as often takes he pen and writes. His reading is largely history and biography.At eight o'clock his breakfast is brought to him. It is the continental breakfast—a cup of coffee and a roll. I wish the enemies of coffee and tobacco could see Mr. Clemens. A calmer, more self-contained man does not live. If he has nerves he does not show them. And he has been a coffee drinker all his life and a persistent smoker.After his coffee and roll, Mr. Clemens is prepared to dictate. It is only within the last two years that he has been dictating. I have heard some speculation as to its possible effect on his style. It came from those who have never talked with Mr. Clemens. If they could note the deliberateness of his ordinary speech and the exquisite care with which he rounds every sentence in conversation they would understand that Mr. Clemens can dictate as easily as he can write. His very busy brain is full to overflowing with ideas, yet they do not burst forth in a flood of words. His utterance has a deliberateness which seems studied. Yet it is just the same at one time as at another and I remember it twenty years ago as it is today.At noon he dresses and come down stairs. Not to luncheon. He gave up that meal some years ago. In fact, he came very near adopting a diet of one meal a day. But his doctor stepped in and forbade it and, under orders, he drinks several glasses of milk during the afternoon. He takes no systemic exercise. He has his own theory on that subject. It is his belief that one exercise is as good as another—that it is not necessary to put certain muscles through a course daily. In fact, conversation in his judgment is as good as any other exercise for preserving the health; and he speaks from experience when he tells his friends that a few weeks on the lecture platform are as good as a course at the gymnasium.If the day is fine Mr. Clemens spends it out of doors. Usually he reclines in a long couch-chair of wicker, well-cushioned, on the sunny veranda, smoking his pipe. He may correct the manuscript of the morning's dictation if he is in the good; but as likely as not he does not even do that. He reads and entertains his friends and sometimes goes calling. At seven in the evening he has a substantial meal and at nine he is very likely to be in his room. But he does not go to sleep very early. He merely rests and reads. Sometimes his light is burning till past midnight. It is his habit of resting which, his physician thinks, keeps him in such fine condition physically and mentally.While his secretary was telling me something of his daily habit of life his step was heard on the stair. He crossed the hall with the tread of a man of 40 and gave my hand a grip as I was introduced to him. He was really a remarkable sight in the while flannel suit with that fine halo of snowy hair standing out from his head. There is no other such head of hair in the world. It is not long but is thick and bushy and controllable and it looks in certain lights like a halo. It was in that peculiar light that the photographer caught him silhouetted against a window. It was Miss Lyon who called attention to the exquisite shock of hair as he sat between the windows. It made a very beautiful picture and very satisfactory one, although one finds more joy in studying Mr. Clemens’ expression under a direct light. It is at all times a very kindly expression but never so kindly as when they are children about; for like all philosophers Mr. Clemens delights in the simple honesty of child nature and children all delight in him.A great deal Mr. Clemens said to me about his philosophy of irresponsibility and a great deal of his quaint and amusing conversation about his experiences and his work remain with me; but all that must be recorded only in my memory. He allowed the photographer to picture him as he liked—very patiently, although he says being photographed has come to be very like work. And so we left him to his philosophy and his friends and to that autobiography which is now amusing as much as it interests all the reading world.